Quick Tips

Thanks go to all the people who have written tips for, and shared their knowledge of the Handheld PC, Palm-size PC and Windows CE. This includes the folks at Microsoft, manufacturers of the H/PCs, and members of online forums supporting users of the PC Companions. Based in part on these sources, all tips are written by Rich Hall (unless otherwise specified).

Eye-stopping start-up screens

The Web is a wonderful place to find graphic images of your favorite art, be it the works of Andy Worhol or James Whistler. I recently went up to the Artchive site (http://artchive.com/core.html) to download images from one of my favorites, J.M.W. Turner, a British painter of the early to mid 1800's. The images on this Web site are high-resolution JPGs.

You can use downloaded images of any sort to class up power-on and desktop screens of your H/PC. Here's how you do it.

POWER-ON SCREEN

1. Download and save your image ­ I do most of my Web surfing from my desktop PC. I right click on the image I want to save, give it a location and name, and save it. Then I open it in a desktop PC graphics program and convert it to a 256-color bitmap image. I also save it as a 640x240 image so that it fits the H/PC's screen. I sometimes have to re-capture a portion of the screen so that it fits the 640x240 proportions of the H/PC.
2. Use Windows CE Services to transfer the .bmp image to your H/PC. Connect the H/PC to your desktop PC and start the Mobile Devices application. Pull down the File menu and select "Explore." Then drag the .bmp file from your desktop PC to the Windows directory on your H/PC. I do not convert it to the 2bp format. The image seems to lose quality when you do.
3. Rename the file STARTUP.BMP. This overwrites the default image (the default will be restored if you delete this new image).
4. Open the H/PC's Control Panel, tap on the Owner icon, and make sure you check the box labeled "Display Owner Identification."

Every time you press the ON button, after a power-off the power on screen, with your custom .bmp image, will be displayed.

DESKTOP SCREEN

You can replace the background image with your custom .bmp image as follows:

1. Download, convert, and transfer the image to the Windows directory of your H/PC, as described above.
2. Open your Control Panel, tap on the Display icon, and select "startup:" from the Image drop-down list at the bottom of the dialog screen. Tap OK.

Keeping copies of important documents on your desktop PC and PC Companion

It's handy to have copies of certain documents on both your desktop PC and H/PC. For example, your company may keep its product list and description in an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document for easy distribution around the organization. It would be important for a mobile professional in that company, a salesperson for example, to keep a copy of the product list on his or her H/PC. It's pretty simple to copy it over and have Windows CE Services convert it to Pocket Word or Pocket Excel format. But it's also possible to set things up so that the H/PC document is automatically synchronized with the desktop PC version whenever that is changed. Here's how you do it.