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  Symantec's Gulliver's Travels Direct connections can be made over your HPC's serial cable or infrared port. Dial-up connections can be made directly (point-to-point) to a pcANYWHERE CE host or pcANYWHERE32 7.5 host, or they can be made over a TCP/IP connection. However, the HPC cannot serve as the remote-control host; the host included with pcANYWHERE CE is a smaller version of the 32-bit Win95 and NT host that only provides CE hosting. The bad news is that network PC Cards are not yet supported in Windows CE. Additionally, Symantec supports only TCP/IP for dial-up PPP connections. Support for other LAN protocols, such as IPX/SPX, are planned for future releases. To log in to Windows NT or invoke the NT Task Manager, pcANYWHERE CE lets you enter a ctrl-alt-delete interrupt via its "CAD" command-bar button. Unfortunately, the CAD button does not perform the same function when connected to a Win95 host, as it wo uld disrupt the pcANYWHERE host and terminate your remote connection. I successfully mapped a drive to our NetWare server's /sys/public directory, launched RCONSOLE, and easily loaded and unloaded NetWare Loadable Modules (NLMs). I created users in NT's Domain Manager, viewed an SLIST and even rebooted servers--all on a small, lightweight and very portable handheld unit. Since the HPC does not have a power-on self-test (POST) or system startup, the time from power-up to remote-control session is under a minute. When Size Matters I launched productivity applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Access, but found that the HPC's screen was far too small to effectively control the 640x480 NT screen or my 1,024x768 Windows95 screen. pcANYWHERE CE is designed for quick, short hits; this is not a portable solution for detailed, complex remote application access. I attempted to surf the Internet using Netscape, but the small screen and four-color display left me wanting more--much more. Symante c has provided a rich set of viewing options that lessen the constraint of the HPC's screen. One, called Scre en Scaling, displays the entire host display, which is horribly scrunched into a barely legible mess. I thought it was practically useless as a viewing option, but it does provide you with an overall view of the host screen--useful if you are already familiar with the host screen layout and location of desktop icons. Another option, ezZOOM, is closely related to Screen Scaling, since it also scales the entire host screen to fit in the HPC screen. ezZOOM is an alternative to scrollbars, as it uses a movable frame to select a portion of the screen. Traditionalists will like the scroll bars. However, the scroll bar takes away precious space from the small HPC screen. For scrolling without scroll bars, Symantec offers ezSCROLL--a method by which you can scroll the screen simply by dragging the stylus across the display. This is my favorite display management technique. In fact, I found that minimizing the command bar, while using ezSCROLL with a hot-key combination, afforded me the largest viewable screen space. The Windows CE version of pcANYWHERE offers neither the file transfer nor chat functionality found in the 32-bit version. Symantec offers pcANYWHERE CE in two versions: a host and remote version and a remote-only version. The pcANYWHERE CE Remote also can connect to pcANYWHERE32 7.5. Kevin D. Cooke can be reached at kcooke@nwc.com. |
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by David Willis Updated March 7, 1997 |
