My Experiences: The MP790 and Me

Well, I got my NEC MobilePro 790 last night, and I thought I would post on my initial findings for the benefit of anyone looking into getting one.

I first ordered the device late on a Friday. I recieved the item from Unity Electronics the following Thursday via UPS Ground. I first opened the box, and I was suprised at how large the machine really was... It is not quite a laptop, but definitely not pocketable. (I will try to post photos later.) I opened the device, and powered it on. I was met suprisingly by a fully charged MP790's 640x240 screen. However, I did notice something rather upsetting... The screen had a few very noticeable scratch marks and what looked to be pen marks. My purchase was refurbished, thus I should have expected as much. I eventually came to terms with the problem, and moved on.

I began to install applications onto my MobilePro, as I already had ActiveSync installed I just plugged everything in and gave it a whirl. It took me awhile to get everything to work just right, but it synced and made a partnership. I only got it to work twice. After that, for some odd reason ActiveSync just... won't work correctly. It was probably user error, but oh well. I got the basics installed: Deseppear, my wifi driver (more on that later) and a wallpaper. Man that took forever! The serial connection was just slow, so I tried to up the bitrate with no avail, as it just would not sync... period.

About the wifi adapter... I have a Dlink DCF-660W CF wifi adapter that I am using with a PCMCIA --> CF adapter I bought locally. At first, the device just choked when I inserted the card. Start up time was significantly increased after I installed the drivers. Also, note, the driver I needed I had to get directly from the Dlink FTP site, as it is not supported (HPC2000). If anyone needs that driver, I can get it for them.

After installing the adapter, I set up my wifi settings (wep etc.). I still couldn't ping the router. After many card removals and reinsertions, I turned the machine off and back on, and it started working... Weird.

Total Commander, Wisbar, and H-Bomb I got installed using the cabs that I put onto my 128mb CF card.

Wisbar was useless. Just too much bloat for the machine to handle. H-Bomb worked as expected (am working on a site made and for the MP790!). Total Commander however... confused me. Took me all night to find out that you need to browse to /// to get to the plugins. Opening /// will get the ftp plugins and the like to work. Very helpful to know!

Battery life with wifi on was approximately 1 hour to 60%, so I am guessing 2 hours max? I may be wrong, but I think I can turn on power saving mode to get more.

Anyways, more to come later.

Your first day sounds much like mine was. A little disappointment and confusion and some frustration.

Ditch the Dlink drivers. The 660, which I also have, is prism based and the prism drivers from here are 100% stable and rock solid. In fact, you can use many different drivers. The Compaq wl100, Linksys WPC11 v3 are some that work fine.

Since you have made a partnership you can AS over wifi now. It's so much faster and seems more reliable to me.

I'd suggest adding GSfinder, a very Win like file explorer, VXutil, a complete basic network toolkit, WRtools, a tray monitor, and TcpMP, the only player you'll ever need. all install and run fine from CF.

Backlight settings on my hpc devastate my battery. On the 2nd lowest setting I add 2+ hours to my runtime. Perhaps the 790 is the same.

Once you're comfortable with the basics you can start adding the ppc mips apps.

I'm going to ask you a favour. Download the attached file, run it and post your results. It's a simple benchmark program and I don't have results for a 790. TY

Edited by wallythacker 2005-08-05 3:49 PM




Attachments
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BMQ.zip (9KB - 10 downloads)

AS still doesn't work? you can try reading the forums, you'll find a lot of helpful tips. but as a workaround, you can try using wlan sync (if you already created a partnership). that's more reliable, and much much faster. or if you need only file transfer... total commander works a charm
dlink driver can be found in the HCL too sorry to hear it is that crap.. my wlan driver never caused this slowdown.
you can try to find a new battery, as apparently this one no longer has full capacity! or refurbish it! Snappy will help you with that! i've had one of my batteries rebuilt to 2400 mAh capacity with a friend's help.. so i can't help more now it can do wlan for more than 8.5 hours now (and actively!)!! (new 18650-sized 2400 mAh cells can be found here: http://batteryspace.com)

oh... unlike me.. my first day was very good with the jornada 720 oh it's so funny remembering it... everything worked, except the gprs connection i couldn't get that to work even though i was trying all night... oh no, that was the second night! first night i just used the built-in dialup modem and it worked very well. i was really fascinated!

i was surprised too at the MP900.. the jornada 720 is so much smaller

My first night was straight in with the beta testing and support overview for the site.... and that's never changed.

One day I'll actually get to *use* a 720.

Truthfully, I haven't loaded my PIM stuff into my 6651 yet, I'm still having fun experimenting and trying ppc programs. My ppc has my PIM stuff.

Now if I can figure out executability check I'll be happy. Monica, have you had any luck with it yet?

Aside from it occasionally wrecking file headers, on the sporadic instances when I've used excheck, I've never had issues.

what do you use then, a 360LX?

yeah.. just read the acrobat 2 BN thread i deleted (or renamed, has the same effect) a file that executabilitycheck created on the first run and after that it would show me the results or maybe it was coincidence... i wouldn't try to hexedit the files with executabilitycheck though. i wanted only information.

...and i have always had! except the the last occasion!

OK, walk me thru how to use execheck cuz I'm missing something. It never returns any results

well this is how it worked for me: run it and select the .exe you want to test.. then delete the file it creates then run it again and it should work.... ?

I ran it using Inesoft calcnote.exe and a 1Kb file called calcnote.exe_check.exe was created.
Now what? Why would I erase the file it just created?

So.. Back on topic


2 hours with wifi usage seems very low, to be honest. With the stock battery I'd say I get at least 3-4 hours, more with the refurbished batteries. I try to turn my backlight down as well to minimize battery drain.