I'm so excited about the Microsoft Pocket PC general discussion group that I'm tempted to begin by going on at length about what a great bunch of people it is. But let's do that later. Click here for a list of some of the best Pocket PC Web-based Discussion Groups.
Rather, let's start by acknowledging that if you use a Pocket PC or other Windows-powered handheld, you're inevitably going to need to ask questions. And the Internet is a wonderful and indispensable opportunity to do so.
I've posted questions asking for useful Web sites. I've asked dumb questions, such as when my Start menu suddenly started appearing in a different place. I've asked for help (and elicited considerable sympathy) when I dropped my Jornada and it wouldn't recharge. I've tapped the expertise of those Mac users who knew how to install software without using ActiveSync.
And I'm a shy guy. That first post wasn't easy. But very quickly I realized how eager and helpful everyone is and how I'm not risking anything when I send off that post. Now I feel absolutely no hesitation to ask whatever question is on my mind.
Some of the most active online discussions are the Microsoft groups, which you can find by clicking on the Newsgroups link in the Club Pocket PC area of PocketPC.Com (www.pocketpc.com). There are six discussions listed: General Pocket PC, Microsoft Reader, Multimedia, Marketplace, Downloads, and Developer Questions. Click on a link and it will take you to a Web-based discussion. I prefer the Microsoft groups over the other very helpful Web-based discussion groups for the simple reason that I can also access them more efficiently via Usenet—which I'll explain in a moment. You can find a list of these and some of the other online discussion groups on our Best Sites page
(www.pocketpcmag.com/bestsites.stm ). (See
Web based Discussion Groups for information on some non-Microsoft Web-based groups.)
Of the Microsoft groups, I've primarily participated in the one that Microsoft titles General Pocket PC and that has the Usenet address of "microsoft.public.pocketpc." It seems to be the most active, with approximately 250-450 messages posted each day.
In my opinion, the best way to interact with a discussion group that has so much volume is to use a "newsreader." You are likely familiar with Web-based discussion groups and the fact that you have to wait for a new page to load each time you click on a message to read it. In contrast, messages load much faster into a newsreader, which is purely text-based.
If you're using an e-mail program such as Outlook Express, it's much faster and easier to manage the volume of messages using its newsreader capability. You can quickly scan down a list of hundreds of threaded messages and read the ones that interest you. You can sort them in a variety of ways, and you can do a keyword search of the subject lines.
To use the newsreader part of your e-mail software, you need to find out from your Internet provider the address of your news server and enter that information into the settings. Then you need to download the list of all the newsgroups (as many as 80,000, on every imaginable topic). Then type in "microsoft.public.pocketpc" to access that particular discussion. The messages will appear on your screen in almost exactly the same fashion as your regular e-mail.
Very convenient
I find that several techniques make it easier to follow the discussion. I always choose to view the messages in "threaded" fashion (View > Current Views > Group Messages by Conversation). And after I've scanned all the headings and read the ones that interest me, I use Mark All as Read so that when I come back the next day I only see the new messages.
I also increased the default in my Account preferences so that it downloads 500 headers at a time in order to accommodate the volume of this group.
Ed Hansberry is a CPA from Nashville, and one of the more frequent posters on the MS Pocket PC newsgroup.
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