Newbie questions on Sigmarion and alike

Hi, I'm new to the forum and handheldPC world.

I just got to know about Sigmarion III (yeah, I know it is old!) and was looking for more details on it. I know it is japanese... I know its technical specs.

What I wanted to know more specifically is: will its UTMS/3G connection work with other operator (from Europe) like Vodafone?

The 3G capability is the main feature I looking for (maybe if you know of other alternatives with this features the also supports a large screen).

Now, I was a ppc user (right now I have a palm T|X) and I use ppc often but never touched a winCE device. I know that (at least) old PocketPC OS were based on WinCE... but, what does this mean? does this mean that software from PPC will work on WinCE?

I heard that some SIgmarion users are using WiFi... how? Is there a bluetooth possibility? And just to make sure, CF port supports large storage CF or microdrive (like 4 to 8GB)?

Well, maybe my question are not easy to answer... or maybe sigmarion is not that well known... does anybody know if it has a slot for a USIM card? I read that FOMA is compatible to UMTS so maybe I could get my 3g/UMTS account to work with Sigmarion... but then maybe it is locked to the network... then I would have to unlock it...

sorry shriek, i was away, and i1m sure others just didn't see this thread yet. they will i'm sure

so... sorry to disappoint but the sig3 doesn't have any 3G capability built in or if it does (i'm not sure), then that will only work in japan, trust me there.

ppc is still running on top of WinCE yes you can run some ppc software on the sig3, some others will not work. trial and error. and this requires a little (really not much) hacking/patching.

wifi and bluetooth work just fine, i have a socket bluetooth in mine, it doesn't stick out at all so it feels like it's built in
wifi is OK too. both CF and SDIO wifi!

yes microdrive should be fine too.

Thanks very much!

Bummer that 3G doesn't work... but its strange because it is market as a FOMA capable HPC, and FOMA is (supposedly) compatible with Europes UMTS (unless it is locked to NTT DoCoMo)... it even boast the 384kbps connection to it... are you sure? If so, then it must be supported by somekind of addon...

i really dont know.. never heard of anyone who's using 3G on the sig3 in europe. i don't see a place to insert SIM card either. do japanese use the GSM based system (i.e. SIM card) at all?

cmonex: from what I read in wikipedia Sig uses FOMA (Japanese 3G/UTMS): "FOMA is compatible with standard UMTS, both via the radio link as well as via USIM card exchange, and hence provides several alternative options for global roaming: either with or without change of handset." then (U)SIM card should be available...

also, cmonex: I left you a PM

ok, show me where the sim card can be inserted. will answer pm later

sorry... my email notifications were not working and I didn't noticed youanswered PM... I found loloc on ebay thanks for the tip...

I can find any photos or descriptions of the SIM card around the web... thats why I came here in hope... either way.. the big screen of Sig3 insterests me...

What would you say about battery performance with, lets say WIFI turned on?

Is the keyboard better to use than... say, the MC218 (you told me you have one)?

Do you carry (or used to) around with you?

glad to hear you found loloc

battery is like on a normal pocketpc for example.. let's say 5 hours.. half of that with continuous wifi.. a spare battery is relatively cheap, i got a couple..

oh the keyboard, it is much better than on the mc218, imo, more sensitive, easier to type on, more keys screen is very nice as well... blows the mc218 away

and yes usually i have one sigmarion with me

thanks... I'm really interested in the form... specially the bigscreen... but I suppose I can't turned it into a PDA form by open the screen all the way to the back? I would use it as a tablet...

I'm currentely trying to know more about winCE platform... software available... I would expect a WinCE.net platform to be quite future proof in terms of software but HPC is such a niche market that I'm a bit troubled...

I was looking for a good browser... I read that there's a way to enable flash... but not sure if it will support flash in browser... are there any other browsers for Sig3? How is Mozilla minimo?

I would use it mainly for notes taking but probably alot of net surfing on the go... so I need gmail/AJAX support...

I'll be studing design so I would be glad to use such a large surface for sme sketching... do you find it good for this?

Sorry to bombard you with all these questions but this forum seems to be the most reliable...

no, you can't use it as a tablet then it would be perfect

ce.net is OK in terms of software!

you can run minimo but it sucks on every pda i've seen, it's not the sigmarion's fault, minimo is just bad. slow, resource hog, can't render pages decently, alpha version. though you mention AJAX.. Rocketman says minimo can do that (and that's why he's using it ). so it may be useful? anyway, the default IE 5.5 is very good. only alternatives netfront 3.0 and 3.3 but i never use them, IE 5.5 is really good. opera will run but won't load pages.

you can install flash 6.0 made specifically for the sig3 but then forget the english interface, flashplayer is not compatible with it i'll check out the latest 7.0 flashplayer once, maybe that would work..

i dunno what you mean by sme sketching - edit: ok i see thats a typo.. "some sketching"? yes it is very good for that, screen is nice and sensitive!

no problem.. yeah this forum is the best

For what it's worth, I normally have the sig3 for meetings and I have yet to fail to have someone ask "what's that?"

For future proofing, well, it's not great really. The Sig3 runs a Japanese version of ce.net 4.1, which considering MS are releasing WinCE 6 shows that we're a bit behind. The OS isn't flashable either, so we're stuck with it. The hardware is so well considered that it makes the slight shortcomings of the OS a non-issue to me

My educated guesses:

The USB host port was actually used for connecting FOMA cellphones, and the Sig3 has built-in software (drivers and utilities) to use these phones.

Support for other USB devices thru the same port was added later in an official patch.

takwu, that absolutely makes sense!! puts the bits together perfectly.

chiark, i don't see any version of CE 6 released. CE 5 doesn't offer anything new that i would have heard of. i'd just like 4.2 on it...

it was demonstrated on may 9th.... and was released to manufacturing on 15th September

Admittedly, 4.2 natively would be damn fine .