Random rantings about the Sharp Mobilon

I decided that I wanted a color CE 2.0 device - so I got me a Sharp Mobilon HC-4500. Cool little toy - about the same size as a Jornada (fits nicely in the ol' Otterbox). Nice bright screen. Looks cool too. Oh, and I got the digital camera PCMCIA card with it. I'm really impressed with the whole package.

Downsides:

1) No CF card slot.
2) I still like the Jornada keyboard better; I'm having trouble with my big fingers grazing adjacent keys.
3) Battery life? It came with a dead battery, so I bought a reburbished one on eBay. The seller of the battery said in the listing that it should last 1 1/2 to 2 hours on a full charge. (Is it really that short?) The one I got lasts about 15-20 minutes, so the seller is sending me a replacement.

Oh - and, silly me, I can't figure out how to apply the color skin I downloaded from this site for Hum Media Player. Where do I put it - in the app folder, in \My Documents, in a dedicated (eg, "Skins" or "Hum skins" ) folder in one of these or another place?

Edited by CE Geek 2006-09-01 1:31 AM

3) ah well ah well. mine held a charge when it arrived but i foolishly plugged it instantly in AC ... you know the rest, bad memory effect immediately, trying to get rid of it, but i guess it's just too old and the mem effect cannot be cleared permanently any more.. only temporarily

My first CE 2.0 device was a Velo1, so I was pretty delighted with my Mob 4100 keyboard. Yeah, the lack of a CF slot is maddening (but again, the Velo1 doesn't have ANY slot). I stayed away from the 4500-4600 because of the battery questions.

On beefy NiMhs (2500) in my 4100, I can run an Orinoco Gold card for a hour plus, probably more, but running the card and the backlight together soon makes the backlight shut down, something about power dispersal, I imagine. But not having to mess around with a 10-hour charge on the 4500 on the road is key. On the other hand, I miss the brightness of color, just because it's easier to see.

The screen real estate on all the 4***'s is great, though.

Jake

Now, do you carry this new baby with you everyday, too?

Natch. (Well, it's in the trunk of my car on those rare occasions when I'm not using it.)

Oh, another downside, though - it doesn't appear to charge the battery while turned on using AC power. I'd like to be able to use it while it's charging.

What happens to all the other ones - when you're using this one?

What is this - Twenty Questions?

They sleep in the trunk too.

If so I'm only up to 2.

And what do they do in the trunk - when you're not around?

Probably plotting how to take over my life.

Well, shortly after that last post, I lost the use of the Mobilon. It wouldn't even charge the batteries, and could no longer power on. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I opened up the case and looked inside. I found what appeared to be a broken battery connection, so I attempted to solder it together. Seeing that it still wouldn't power on or charge, I reattempted the soldering job a couple of times - and accidentally melted the plastic that held the connection in place. (Serves me right - I should know better than to try a repair job when I can't install a light bulb without hiring an assistant.)

Back to eBay I went to find a replacement and/or parts unit, finding one from a local seller for $15. That one had a broken display, so I just switched displays, and voila! - my Mobilon is back. The second refurbished battery sent by the other eBay seller mentioned in my second post here appears to hold a decent charge, though it's too soon to tell for sure. Along with that I have one fully dead battery and one that, as noted above, lasts maybe 20 minutes. I'm thinking about opening the dead one up to replace the cells, but given how the last soldering job worked out, I don't think I should go within a mile of the cells with a soldering iron (unless I'm well-insured).

During my search for a replacement/parts unit, I saw a couple of HC-4600s on aBay as well. Great variance in price - for one the seller was asking $200(!) as a starting bid, while earlier today an "as-is" HC-4600 went for 99 cents (plus $10 shipping). I'm not clear, though, what the diff is between that model and the HC-4500. Can someone enlighten me?

Edited by CE Geek 2006-10-11 4:17 AM

There is only one diffrence i could tell between the 4500 and the 4600, ofcourse its bult in rom software, But the boards are diffrent when it comes to the ram and rom, the 4600''s ram wont fit in 4500's vice versa with rom as well, i tried it.....

Edited by thcrw739 2006-10-11 6:29 AM

From the listings I saw, I looked like they both had 16 MB of RAM. I thought maybe there was a difference in processor speed. Anyway, I was looking at 4600s as possible replacements rather than for parts.

I checked out Primer 2.3 on the Mobilon and it works great! The display quality is very good, and scrolling is actually reasonably smooth. I also have a small display utility called Color Tweaker, and have been able to change the color of any interface element I want. However, if I change the desktop background color, the "Windows CE" logo in the middle of the screen keeps the original dull light blue color background. There's no selection in Settings -> Control Panel -> Display for "Default Transparent," as in my newer color H/PCs. Is there another way in CE 2.0 (another utility, etc) to make the logo background transparent, so that the background color is uniform across the entire screen?

Also, I'm having some trouble with video. The color in Wodeon is really weird (kinda like a photograph negative even when viewed directly), and the CE 2.0 MIPS H/PC version of PocketTV doesn't support MPEG-4 video. (Maybe I can convert it to MPEG-1 video on my PC.)

The only utility program I know for display properties is a Grundle one. But whenever I had used it, it had some kind of conflict and would mess up somehow???

Do you actually watch videos on this device?

I know, that annoys me so much

quiche: Wodeon works in CE 2.0 (there's even a separate version for CE 1), and as I mentioned above, PocketTV does have versions for CE 2.0x. I'm just trying to figure out how to make them work.