News archive - February 2001

REX 6000 Help Page News Archive

February, 2001

February 28, 2001

Update on the Xircom Software update: I received a call today from a Xircom employee asking for feedback on my tech support experiences with Xircom. (A very nice call by the way - thank you Xircom!) During the conversation he confirmed what some have heard via various emails with Xircom:

"Work on an update is going on and they hope to release it in about two weeks."

I reminded him that we've been hearing "two weeks" for more than two weeks, and he could only say that they are working on it and his current information is a release in "about" two weeks.

Interestingly (hopefully not unfortuanately) he said it was going to be an Intellisync for REX update, not a firmware update (or at least only an Intellisync update would be released in the near term).

I'm looking forward a bit more positively to the upcoming update, and hope it will resolve some of our issues. However, without a firmware update I don't think they'll be able to address things like slow speed of the REX on some tasks (unless that is a data storage issue), interface issues, wasted memory during input on the REX, etc. Still, something is better than nothing!

REX 6000 SDK: More confirmation that the promised REX 6000 SDK is coming. From Europe Tech support today:

"Concerning the SDK, this is planned for the second semester of 2001 as we know, but please check out the rex.net homepage to get the up to date infos about the Rex6000. . . Kind regards, Michael Tichatschek Xircom Europe Technical Support"

So it seems it really is on the way, right? Right?!?! <g> We'll see - fingers crossed.

February 27, 2001

Exciting Add-in news!!! Mr. Idogawa (author of Tiny Draw) has created an English-language version of Tiny Draw that loads and runs on my REX 6000! It is so cool to see all the menus in English, instead of black bars that show up with Japanese versions of add-ins. Find this new add-in at: http://www14.u-page.so-net.ne.jp/ka2/idogawa/addin_r.html.

To create this English version Mr. Idogawa had been researching the differences between the DS2 and REX 6000, especially text display. He examined the REX add-in "wmladdin.rex," which ships with REX Tools, but is simply an alternate version of the Web display capability already on the REX. Mr. Idogawa disassembled it and compared it with his own Japanese add-in for the DS2, Tiny Draw. Based on his research he remade Tiny Draw in English, and it appears he was entirely successful!

Here is more on REX 6000 Add-in programs, and look here for more on the (as yet unavailable) REX 6000 SDK and English-language add-ins.

A potential new case option was pointed out to me by Mr. Idogawa. We're still trying to figure out if it's actually for sale!

Some new interesting links, also from Mr. Idogawa. Most are in Japanese, but you can use www.babelfish.altavista.com to translate them if you are interested. These will also be added to the "Links" page.

Some Japanese sites for Data Slim 2:

The following site is a general DataSlim2 site in Japanese, similar to the REX 6000 Quick Help Pages: http://www.navi.hostmycgi.com/cgi-bin/ds2.cgi. The name of this site is "Data Slim JOUHOU-KYOKU" in Japanese, which means "the information center of Data Slim." It consists of collection of links to the almost all sites related to Data Slim (1 or 2). Although all of the site are written in Japanese, you may use the babelfish...

One of the three known persons writing DS2 Add-ins is Mr. Hideo MOROTOMI, who is the author of "MOGURA" (also known as "Whack-a-Mole" and "Mole Mince Meat" to English speakers). http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~qn6o-mrtm/indexe.htm

For a detailed history of the REX/DS1-2, see http://amag.uz.ascii.co.jp/EASCII/ASCII.BNA/a199904/312-313.html. It is also in Japanese, but again, you may use www.babelfish.altavista.com to translate. According to this report, CITIZEN had made a prototype of REX/ DS at first and they took it to Starfish, who had been also considering a similar PDA with IBM but gave up it by the reason of costs. So they decided their roles, CITIZEN as hardware, Starfish as software and Franklin as marketting...