Think Outside Stowaway driver 4.4 has been released

http://www.thinkoutside.com/

I've always been a big fan of the Think Outside Stowaway (TO SA for short) foldable keyboards, especially the Bluetooth (BT for short) ones. When folded, they're considerably thinner, smaller and lighter than any of the alternative keyboards (the Chainpus - also know as Brando or Freedom - BT keyboard, the HP BT keyboard or, as far as Symbian keyboards are concerned, the Nokia one) while having the largest possible keys (unlike those of, say, the Chainpus) and having no battery life problems (unlike that of the HP BT keyboard). They surely have their own share of problems, especially their price and the weak, easy-to-break latch; still, I think its price/performance ratio is the best. Think Outside's support is pretty good, as far as releasing new driver versions is concerned. Their latest one, version 4.4, was released just a few days ago, two months after the previous one, 4.3. In the last few days, I've actively been using it to find out if it's really better than previous versions and is, therefore, worth downloading. Differences from earlier versions There are not radical changes - the menus, the supported national layouts etc. are exactly the same. If not for the inner bugfixes/small improvements, it may be worth upgrading if you use Bluetooth a lot for other purposes; particularly, if you connect to the Internet via Bluetooth (via, for example, a GPRS phone). Disconnections have always been a major problem with BT connections when you type very fast on the TO SA keyboards or keep pressing the Backspace button continuously. This problem is likely to come up particularly when the keyboard wakes up from the power save mode. The problem is seemingly less common with the new version. I've only managed to bring down the GPRS connection twice with massive input / deletions / waiting for the keyboard to hybernate itself and then, wake it up by starting to enter text very fast. BT disconnections may have been a bit more common with previous versions. Also, I haven't had the "you must reset your Pocket PC multiple times before it can boot in" Pocket Loox 720 problem that was present with version 4.2. Downloading As with before, the CAB installer file itself can't be directly downloaded from the regular site, via the standard, desktop-optimized device chooser menus ( http://www.thinkoutside.com/support/Drivers.asp ) unless you visit the site right from your PDA. That way, you can

1. save a lot of Web page navigation
2. save 1Mbytes of download bandwidth (the ZIP file containing the installer AND the CAB file is 1.7Mbytes in size, while the CAB file itself available directly on the PDA-optimized page is 700 kBytes) – important for, for example, GPRS users
3. get indeed access to version 4.4, unlike with navigating the (still not really updated) device chooser menus. This is because the device chooser menus aren't updated yet to reflect the new version where it'd otherwise be possible. For example, it still offers version 4.3 for both the iPAQ 2210 and Pocket Loox 720, while both of these devices work flawlessly with version 4.4.

That is, if you go directly to http://www.thinkoutside.com/ from either Opera or Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) on your PDA, you'll be presented a PDA-optimized screen where, depending on your Web browser (more on this later), you will be offered either the "universal" version of the driver or the WM5 one (if you go there from a WM5 device with PIE). Note that there's not any difference between the two versions (except for the CAB file being signed) so you can safely install the generic, non-WM5 version on your WM5 device. click for PIE screenshot click for Opera screenshot As can be seen (if you cast a glance at the filenames in the above screenshots), PIE offers the WM5 version, while Opera, which doesn't send out any operating system-version information to the server (see the "geek" section below for more info if interested), "only" the generic one. Incidentally, the Think Outside page doesn't know Netfront – you'll be greeted with the standard desktop interface if you visit the page with NetFront. Finally, the two alternative Pocket PC Web browsers, Minimo (as of version 0.012) and Thunderhawk (as of version 2.1) don't support file download. Note that if your browser uses a "fake" User-Agent HTTP header (that is, it identifies itself as a desktop browser), you can go directly to http://www.thinkoutside.com/pda/pda-index.asp (if you don't want to navigate through the standard, desktop-optimized device chooser & downloader pages), but then, you will also be presented a non-device-specific interface (see screenshot here) and, therefore, you will need to go through all in it again. Alternatively, particularly if you're on an expensive dial-up connection (the files are compressed, unlike the ones on TO's homepage), you can pick up the files right from my homepage. Here's the generic and here is the signed (WM5) driver CAB file, both compressed with ZIP. Test results I've tested the new version on my WM2003 iPAQ 2210, WM2003SE Pocket Loox 720 and WM5 Dell Axim x51v (A06 ROM version). All the three installed and run flawlessly. Note that, again, the only difference between the WM5-specific and the generic version is that the first CAB is signed (and, therefore, doesn't show an installation-time message), while the second isn't. Otherwise, they're perfectly identical. That is, you can safely install the generic version on your WM5 device – you won't lose anything. Some geek stuff - only for Pocket PC coders/hackers/gurus To find out whether the headers the Pocket PC Web browsers send out reflect the operating system version (as they should – the usefulness of this is clearly visible in this case where the Web server would have needed some information on the actual version of the operating system), I've listed them all. PIE sends out the following headers; as can be seen, the UA-OS header contains the version number of the operating system too. GET / HTTP/1.1 Accept: */* Accept-Language: en-us UA-OS: Windows CE (Pocket PC) - Version 5.1 UA-color: color16 UA-pixels: 480x640 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate UA-Voice: FALSE UA-CPU: x86 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320) Connection: Keep-Alive While, on the other hand, the WM5 version (build 1616) of Opera sends the following: GET / HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; PPC; 480x640) Opera 8.50 [en] Accept: text/html, application/xml;q=0.9, application/xhtml+xml, image/png, image/jpeg, image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, */*;q=0.1 Accept-Charset: iso-8859-1, utf-8, utf-16, *;q=0.1 Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, x-gzip, identity, *;q=0 Connection: Keep-Alive Finally, NetFront 3.3 (the latest TP 1.03), the third file download-capable browser, sends the following: GET / HTTP/1.1 Accept: image/png, image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.08 (PDA; NF33PPC3AR/1.0) NetFront/3.3 Connection: Keep-Alive Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip As you can see, it's only PIE that passes the version of the operating system; this is why it's only with going to the http://www.thinkoutside.com/ page using PIE that the server can correctly recognize the operating system version.