A Salesman's Pocket PC

It's 8 a.m., my alarm just went off, and I'm running a little late for my first appointment. I take a quick shower, get dressed, and dash to my car, grabbing my Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC as I head out the door.

I turn on my color-screen iPAQ and launch Pocket Informant (see Screens 1 & 2) to get the address of my first appointment. Pocket Informant by Web IS (www.pocketinformant.com) replaces Calendar, Contacts and Tasks on the Pocket PC. It is a single, integrated application that is more powerful and flexible than Calendar, Contacts and Tasks combined. For example, you can see all appointments occurring on a particular day as well as tasks due on that day, create a link from an appointment to tasks or documents, access Contact information via a detailed split screen, and more. Pocket Informant not only gives you detailed information about your appointments and contacts, it gives you the ability to customize viewing. In my case it is important to be able to schedule appointments on the run, and Pocket Informant gives me that flexibility. Pocket Informant lets me view all my appointments for the week or month and view my contacts by company name or by contact name. The built-in Calendar and Contacts programs don't allow me to do this.

Screens 1 & 2: Pocket Informant is a more powerful and flexible alternative to= the PIM applications built into the Pocket PC. Shown here are= Agenda view (left) and month view (right).

Using iPAQnet to find directions to my appointment

After viewing my appointment, I jot down the address, plug in my Sierra Wireless Aircard 300, and launch iPAQnet, my wireless Internet provider (see Screens 3 & 4). I browse Mapquest.com for directions to my customer's location. IPAQnet (www.compaq.com/ipaqnet) is the newest wireless Internet service provided by GoAmerica for iPAQ owners. It gives you speeds up to 19,200kbs using the Sierra Aircard 300, (www.sierrawireless.com). A high-compression browser is bundled with the service, giving you the flexibility of fast Web browsing. This browser is specific to IPAQnet. Internet Explorer is very slow with IPAQnet, so Go America created this browser to speed up your Web surfing.

Screens 3 & 4: The opening screen (left) for iPAQnet, my wireless Internet service provider. From here I can check news, stock prices, weather, directions (right), and more.

I like that this browser gives you the option of low, medium, or high detail in your Web browsing. Also, Go America has a useful home page offering directions, sports, news, finance, shopping, and movie schedules.

Documenting and following up on the sales call

I arrive at the customer's location and pull out my iPAQ to take notes. Over 90% of my meetings require me to take notes and Pocket Word is great for this. I work in the computer industry and occasionally need to diagram network connections for my customers. I just got my hands on "First," a nifty application created by Matter and Motion (www.matterandmotion.com). First lets me create diagrams of a customer's networks or current workflow procedures (see Screen 5). I like this tool because it's a scaled-down version of Microsoft Viso, a full-featured desktop PC program that I am pretty fluent with.