Meryl's Notes Blog

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OmniSky, a wireless service provider, has filed for Chapter 11 and sold its wireless assets to Earthlink. Earthlink released a software upgrade for its wireless customers including those who transitioned from OmniSky. After using it for one week with a Palm Vx and Minstrel modem, I’m disappointed with the software because it’s less usable and slower than OmniSky’s software.

It has nothing to do with change since that occurs daily in an IT business environment. It has everything to do with the usability and speed of the application. There are only minor improvements, but they’re overshadowed by the problems.

New Earthlink Wireless users who have never experienced OmniSky likely will be somewhat satisfied with the software not knowing what they’re missing. The only thing they may notice and dislike is the slow connection when surfing the Web.

Trashing

Previously, when deleting an email, there was a popup box that provided the options of deleting it from the Handheld, Handheld and Server, or Cancel. If I wanted to save an email for the home PC, then I’d delete it from the handheld. If I was finished with the email and had no need for it, I’d select to delete it from the handheld and server so I wouldn’t have to deal with it again on the home PC.

The new software makes it an application preference. You can either choose to Delete from Handheld or Delete from Handheld and Server for the entire emailbox. There’s no option to do it on an individual email basis. Now, I am stuck with a handheld mailbox full of emails that I want to address on the home PC, but don’t need on the handheld, and this further clutters the tiny space.

Another timesaver on the old software is that when you deleted an email, it opened the next email for immediate reading. The new one takes you back to the Inbox screen where you have to select the next one to read.

Composing

Replying to emails is time-consuming process with the new software. When replying, it puts your cursor at the top of the email body followed by your signature. It doesn’t allow you to select a bulk of text with the stylus or the keyboard and delete them with one move. Plus, it doesn’t differentiate the sender’s message from yours with > or some other character.

The old software had this capability. I realize many users do reply at the top, but I also know many that reply throughout or at the bottom. However, this is a handheld device and it’s hard to review the original email when your cursor is at the top. The previous software made it easier to review the original response as you entered your response.

When forwarding or composing a new email, the new software puts the cursor in the Subject: of the email and the tab doesn’t work. The old software put the cursor in the TO: and allowed me to tab from To: and Subject: to the body of the email. To boot, the scrolling button scrolls line by line instead of page by page in the old software.

The first few days, the modem failed to connect to the network more often than it succeeded. This has somewhat improved, but not to the excellent levels that OmniSky provided. The handheld keeps spitting a Fatal Alert error (DataMgr.c, Line: 8589, Index Out of Range) requiring a soft RESET. I’ve been able to work around it.

Once, it happened every time I tried to Send and Receive Email and I couldn’t work around it. I called the Earthlink tech support. He instructed me to uninstall and reinstall the software. Since I wasn’t near the home PC, I tried again to bypass the error and got email working again. Unless needed, I don’t plan to uninstall so as to avoid further messing up things.

Mini-Web Surfing

Rarely do I explore the Web on the handheld device, but wanted to see how it worked with Earthlink’s software. It’s much slower and painful to use than OmniSky’s software. It took so long to access a Web site, I lost patience and quit the application. Even with OmniSky, it did occasionally take a little time to load a page. In this case, it happened every time.

OmniSky gave the user the option of using PQA (Palm Query Application), and/or buy a browser, such as the Handspring Blazer, to use in conjunction with the fast Web-clipping format. Earthlink has built a new client on the Handspring Blazer and trashed Web-clipping capabilities. The result is a snail-like and unstable browsing experience

Improvements

The software has a few improvements, but not enough to ignore the problems and live with the software. If you forward an email with an attachment, it sends the attachment. The old software didn’t include the attachment when forwarding. It also has the capability to view attachments.

You can select multiple emails for moving or deleting from a folder. The Inbox interface is better since it provides more information in four columns: Mail, From, Subject, and Date. The mail column indicates whether or not you’ve opened the email and includes a paperclip when there are attachments.

The new software comes with new options such as Select All Messages, Empty Deleted Items, and View Options. There is also a Deleted folder, which wasn’t in the old software. At first, I didn’t like this folder because it added another step to delete messages from the folder. It may be helpful to have this, but it depends on how the deleting works and it’s been tough to figure it out.

There’s no documentation detailing whether or not an email that’s in the Deleted folder will remain on the server for PC retrieval. I tested it and the email did remain on the server and the PC retrieved it. However, it’s confusing because of the Delete from Handheld or Delete from Handheld and Server preference. Does nothing get deleted from the server unless it’s deleted from the Deleted folder? Or does it depend on the preference?

The software has the capability to manage up to 10 accounts. Adding a Yahoo account went without a hitch. It’s easy to switch between the two accounts using the drop-down box.

Earth To Earthlink

Earthlink has been an ISP for a long time and I believe they were thinking like the PC user instead of the handheld user when developing the software. It would’ve been simpler to take OmniSky’s software and add required elements, if any, to make the service work.

It’s commendable they attempted to better the product and try to give us something new, but not at the sacrifice of usability and speed. I never received a survey from Earthlink asking how I liked my service and software.

The software title has a version number tied to it, giving the impression they plan to upgrade. If you use the service, tell them what you’d like to see in a future release.

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