getting started / hardware specs

[Erik Visser]

One of my customers today asked if he could have some parts of the
application on a PDA.
It will be a few forms and not to much data (i guess 10 mb max)
I like to develop within VS2005.
Now my questions are
- what will be minumum specs for the PDA. Min memory, Min processor speed
- can i, if nessecary, store the program and data on an exta memory card?
- Will Win Mobile 4.0 do, or should i ask for 5.0 right away
- Does Win Mobile 5.0 include the compact framework, or does that have to be
installed (and how much memory will that take)

TIA

Erik

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

"the application"? It's going to be pretty hard for us to give accurate
guesses when you seem to be assuming that we're familiar with what you're
talking about.

- Speed, memory, etc. -- no idea, since you've told us *nothing* except the
size of some data, which we also don't have specs for or know anything about
the storage of. There should be 10MB free persistent storage on most WM5
devices.

- Yes, depending on what device you actually end up with.

- There's no such thing as Windows Mobile 4. The preceding version to
Windows Mobile 5 was Windows Mobile 2003/Second Edition. I don't see much
reason to start off buying an old version.

- Yes, .NET Compact Framework 1.0 is in ROM. If you want .NET CF 2.0,
you'll have to install that. No devices have it in ROM. It's several MB in
size. .NET CF 2.0 Service Pack 1 (the most-current version), however, can
also be installed to a storage card, rather than to main storage, so that's
a possibility.

Paul T.

 

[Erik Visser]

Paul,

"> "the application"? It's going to be pretty hard for us to give accurate

guesses when you seem to be assuming that we're familiar with what you're
talking about.

Well I agree I was not very specific on that. It will be a window with a
grid where the user can search an address and after selectin one, he gets a
checklist with about a hundred items , mostly checkboxes, some comboboxes.
Imagen a government inspector visiting a company to see if they comply to
all rules and regulations. And since the customer is located in Holland,
there are lots of rules nad regulations. I consider making the form
datadriven and I must discuss with the customer if he wants one list with a
scrollbar, or several windows on a tabcontrol.

- Speed, memory, etc. -- no idea, since you've told us *nothing* except
the size of some data, which we also don't have specs for or know anything
about the storage of. There should be 10MB free persistent storage on
most WM5 devices.

Could you indicate how much memory such an app will take and somethnig about
speedrequirements'?

- Yes, depending on what device you actually end up with.

- There's no such thing as Windows Mobile 4. The preceding version to
Windows Mobile 5 was Windows Mobile 2003/Second Edition. I don't see much
reason to start off buying an old version.

Neither do I, but it could be there are already some older PDA''s around at
the customers site.

- Yes, .NET Compact Framework 1.0 is in ROM. If you want .NET CF 2.0,
you'll have to install that. No devices have it in ROM. It's several MB
in size. .NET CF 2.0 Service Pack 1 (the most-current version), however,
can also be installed to a storage card, rather than to main storage, so
that's a possibility.

OK, thanks. Good to know.

Erik

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

"> "the application"? It's going to be pretty hard for us to give

accurate

Well I agree I was not very specific on that. It will be a window with a
grid where the user can search an address and after selectin one, he gets
a checklist with about a hundred items , mostly checkboxes, some
comboboxes. Imagen a government inspector visiting a company to see if
they comply to all rules and regulations. And since the customer is
located in Holland, there are lots of rules nad regulations. I consider
making the form datadriven and I must discuss with the customer if he
wants one list with a scrollbar, or several windows on a tabcontrol.

So, it's just a little form-based application. The application itself won't
take anything to speak of. The .NET CF run-time will use some RAM, a couple
of MB, probably. If you're getting information from a database, there will
be some overhead to that and you'll want to minimize the size of your result
sets to keep that under control.

Could you indicate how much memory such an app will take and somethnig
about speedrequirements'?

No. There's not enough information to say much of anything. If I tell you
that I'm writing a program for the desktop that will have a list of items
displayed and that there will be some checkboxes and some comboboxes for the
user to fill in, but I'm not sure where the data will come from or how I'm
going to get it, can you tell me how much memory or what performance you'd
expect from it? No doubt it will be too slow to begin with and you'll have
to optimize things, but that's just the way it goes when you're running on
battery-powered devices.

Paul T.