Hello everyone!

Hello everyone!

Long time lurker, first time poster here.

Let me introduce myself.

I've always appreciated the simplicity of Windows CE (I spent too much time playing with it using emulators) and grew up dreaming about having a Sharp Mobilon of HP Jornada. They were too expensive for my teenager budget, though...

However, now as an adult, I developed an interest in retrocomputing and online privacy. I host my own servers in different locations (my friends and relatives host some computers for me for full high-availability), and I intend to start hosting my own e-mail soon. I don't have any social media accounts (the only service I really use and enjoy is YouTube). Above all, I hate to see perfectly good hardware going to waste due to forced obsolescence. I hardly ever buy anything new (unless it's new old stock) and I maintain my hardware for as long as I can, whilst trying to keep everything secure.

My personal history with pocket computers began in the late 90s, early 2000s.
I used Symbian for as long as I could. I owned a Nokia 7650, a Nokia 6600, a Nokia 9210 Communicator and a Nokia E65. These devices were not enough to provide a complete experience, so I owned a Palm Tungsten T3, a Palm LifeDrive and a Dell Axim x51v (that I ended up breaking). My employer soon started issuing BlackBerries and then iPhones and I ceased owning my own device.

I honestly can't use an iPhone for anything serious. If I am to track my expenses as soon as they happen, I need to open a very clumsy application and input everything using the horrible error-prone touchscreen. Voice recognition and Siri are bad too. If every 10th word has a mistake, it ends up being faster to just type everything in using a computer with a real keyboard. Yes, it's great for watching cat videos but awful for getting real work done. I also have an iPad from my employer and the problems are more or less the same.

...until now.

I've just received a Compaq Aero 8000 and I'm in love with the thing. Excel has all the formulas that I need most often (including VLOOKUP). Pocket Word has the same features as Windows 9x WordPad and works pretty well. The battery life is great. The keyboard is a bit mushy, but beats a touchscreen at any day. The limited multitasking capacity allows me to focus longer on my work. It loads Word, Excel and Access faster than my ThinkPad T480s with 24GB of RAM and a Quad Core processor. I was just a bid sad that the version of Windows CE doesn't have the Windows 2000 icon style - I hate the Windows 98 recycle bin.

I also have on the way a touchscreen device with Windows CE 6 and a serial port. I plan to get my server management and home automation done there (it's cheaper than using a Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen - I owe one and use it for different projects).

I'm also considering a Windows CE 5 device (I am documenting some of the history of Windows CE on YouTube. The Windows CE videos there are HORRIBLE).

So yes, I am open for tips and suggestions of programs to use... I am fluent in Bash and PowerShell (useless I know). I more or less know Python and I am open to learning something more universal like C.

So my questions are...
What programs should I look for to make my Aero 8000 more useful? I know the availability of VNC clients and the sort will be limited, but maybe telnet, putty? A serial console? What would be a good NE2000 compatible PCMCIA card for me? Anything that I could find on eBay?

I know the options are better for Windows CE 5 and 6 but anything there? The Windows CE 6 device will be attached to my "rack" and connected via serial port to my management server.

What good programs and games for each version of Windows CE that I own to make it fun? Some light games? A media and mp3 player?

I welcome any tips and look forward to contributing back to the community.

Programs for Windows CE that include SH4 versions are a bit harder to find, since there were only a few CE devices produced that used that processor. However, one cool thing is that Adobe released a Windows CE 2.11 version of Acrobat Reader 4.0 that was only compatible with the SH4 processor. Have a look in the Software Compatibility List here:

https://www.hpcfactor.com/scl/

There is a small number of SH3 programs that will work on an SH4 device, but they are limited almost entirely to programs written for CE 1.0. I talked about this here:

https://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=13677

Also, there are runtime libraries within which you can run programs that are not processor-specific. Such runtimes include Orbworks' PocketC, Microsoft eMbedded Visual Basic, and .NET Compact Framework 1.0. (PocketC programs have the file extension .app, while eVB programs have the extension .vb.) The runtime libraries themselves are processor-specific, but each of these has versions for the SH4 processor. .NET CF 1.0 for Windows CE 2.11, and PocketC, can be found in the SCL above, while the eVB library files are here:

https://www.hpcfactor.com/developer/

Look under the heading "Handheld PC Global MFC / VBRT Redistributable."

I agree about the existing YouTube videos about CE history. They're full of errors: wrong desktops, etc.

What touchscreen CE 6 device do you have? There weren't many - most CE 6 devices were netbooks.

Hi, and welcome aboard! Your history and mine are pretty similar to how we developed an affinity towards handhelds.

Dobrý den, welcome to the community

Czech C:Amie? I remember that phrase back in my military Russian language training days.

A family member married a Czech girl, I spent a fair bit of time in Prague back in the day.

Hello everyone!

Well... I live here for 10 years but I'm not actually Czech. I am Brazilian.
I speak some Slovak because of my girlfriend but never learned Czech. I also speak Russian quite well because I lived there for some time before moving here. Anyway... life has taken me to places.
I thought I'd be here for 6 months only but life is pretty good so I stayed.

Thanks for the warm welcome.

My Windows CE 6 device (to be - it hasn't arrived yet) is a FW659PC by Feelworld. I have no idea whether it is good or not, but the same setup using a Raspberry with a touchscreen would be far more expensive (as I mentioned before). It has a full serial port and this is what I need. As a bonus, it has a VESA mount, so I can get an articulated arm to have it attached to my rack. I don't want to have it fully connected to the network as I'm deploying my home automation in a VM and I'm using Raspberries and Arduinos. I might later on run some things on Windows CE, depending on what I can get, and have it running totally offline via serial, for security reasons. I will see...

Thanks for the links and the documentation. I will get to it as soon as I have time. Now I am going to install 2x 16GB CFs in my Aero (I could get a 3rd one on the PC Card slot but I will keep looking for a network card - any ideas?). Then I will look for a 64MB PC66 stick and I guess it will make a lovely little offline productivity machine and terminal.

Here are some photos:
Feelworld gallery

At least it us an ARM based CPU so you will have plenty of applications you can use on it. Too bad it's another resistive touch screen device.

And whatever happened to WEC7? Arrgh…