One of our team here at Microsoft UK spotted an iMate poster on the Tube last night and she couldn't resist whipping out her Windows Mobile device to take a snap. Nice to see the devices starting to pop up in places like this - word is getting out :)

With the announcement yesterday of the Palm Treo running Windows Mobile, there is a useful article on MSDN for folks with Palm experience looking to develop with on the Microsoft platform.

Summary: Learn how to help the Palm OS developer make a transition to programming for Windows Mobile. This article describes how to produce powerful software on a variety of Windows Mobile–based devices and how to use existing knowledge to master Windows Mobile programming. (15 printed pages)

There has been lots of speculation about certain hardware manufacturers and Windows Mobile on the web for a while now. Mike Hall from the MED product group in Redmond has posted a little teaser video on his blog that hints at an announcement coming on Monday from the Windows Mobile group, Verizon and a certain well known hardware manufacturer.

Check out the video at http://blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/archive/2005/09/23/473531.aspx

Well I know Jason has been blogging about his new Pocket PC Phone Edition - the HTC Wizard - and I decided I should do the same. This is a fantastic device that has pretty much everything you need - the once excpetion vs. the Universal is 3G which is a shame but I'm prepared to let that slides given the size of the Wizard. It's not much bigger than the old iMate Jam (which is now looking on forlornly at the Wizard in my hand) but has a better camera (1.3mp), wifi, more memory and of course Windows Mobile 5. The slide out keyboard works a treat and is very usable compared to some others I've used. I know several people were keen to know if Skype works and I'm pleased to say that works great too. I've loaded up some of my favourite apps (Infomill's Parts Arena, Tube 2 & Egress and they all work great too. It's a bit of a killer package I think and I suspect it'll ship in big numbers as it becomes available. Our friends at eXpansys are already taking pre-orders on the QTEK and iMate versions. I'll post some photos later today so if you want to see it compared against anything or ask questions, feel free!

Check out the new article posted on MSDN for some high level information about what developers can achieve with Windows Mobile 5. It is a great read, even if you are not a developer, to get a feel for what can be achieved on the devices and how simple device development is. Here's the official blurb:

Summary: Jim begins a series of articles exploring the new tools and application programming interfaces (APIs) that developers will find in Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, Visual Studio 2005, and the .NET Compact Framework version 2.0. The series begins with an introduction to Windows Mobile 5.0 and the tools needed to get started developing for Windows Mobile 5.0 today.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dntake/html/yctiwy_wm5.asp