Motorola Q Hacks

[Pony99CA]

soft reset the phone (take out battery and put back in) then turn back on and your set

That is not a soft reset. A soft reset is just turning the phone off and back on.

Some people call pulling the battery a "hard reset", although long-time Windows CE users don't because a "hard reset" implied resetting the device to factory settings (a Master Reset on the Q). I just call pulling the battery, well, "pulling the battery".

There is no need to pull the battery unless your Q is locked up or displaying strange behavior that a soft reset doesn't fix.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

You can also change the sound characteristics of Normal to whatever you want them to be (i.e. the same as Outdoor).

I was going to suggest that, too, but was also going to suggest renaming the Normal profile to Outdoor, renaming the Outdoor profile to Normal (or whatever) and changing its settings to whatever you wanted.

A simpler way to do it, although I haven't tried it, might be to rename the Normal registry key to Loud and vice versa (although you may need to use a temporary name to prevent conflicts). I don't know if that would affect other profiles, though, like Headset and Car (Headset seems to revert to the previous profile, not Normal, but maybe not always).

Steve

[scottjb]

Anyone know how to get the meeting reminder to give up alarming after 10 or 20 seconds rather than continuing to chime for like 2 minutes?

I hate when I am meeting with someone and my Q continuously chimes because I have a meeting reminder. Sometimes it is not appropriate for me to pull out my phone and start pushing buttons.

Thanks! Great stuff here!

Two things you can do.
1. Go into Start, Settings, Profiles and change the Alarm Type to something other than Increasing.
2. Put your phone on Silent or Vibrate before you go into a meeting.

[Pony99CA]

Is there any way to move the default 'My Documents' directory to the Storage Card?

Try changing My Documents in HKLM\System\Explorer\Shell Folders to \Storage Card\My Documents. There are also other folders you can remap.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

I wanted push mail so I signed up for a hosted exchange server account, thus the Q is configured to no pop accounts. My understanding is push mail is implemented via Activsync and operates more like SMS (constant listen mode) but does not use an active data/internet connection.

All E-mail connections use data (except for syncing E-mail from Outlook while connected to your PC via USB or Bluetooth).

What makes me wonder is the icon that my display always shows the data icon (two horizontal arrows) rather than the standard icon. The EVDO icon is always showing as well, so maybe that is how it supposed to work.

The EV-DO icon just lets you know what type of data connection is available. The two arrows do not mean that data is transferring; they just mean a data connection is active (but could be dormant). When data is actually transferring, you'll see the little PDA icon.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

Is there any consensus on minimizing energy consumption or if it is much of an issue with a Outlook-Exchange-Activesync via EVDO/data link configuration? Any tips-hacks to maximize battery life?

There are probably lots of threads discussing battery life. For example, try the Whats the best way to save on Battery Life? thread, or just search on battery life.

Unless it's some kind of hack, this thread isn't really the right place for that discussion.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

My question for you guys is this... is there a way to remove items from the start menu altogether. Specifically I am referring to the "Get Applications" link that Verizon places on the start menu.

Just do what you would do on Windows -- delete the icons (or, better yet, move them to a folder just in case) from the Start Menu. Look in \Windows\Start Menu.

One other request, is there a way to changed that background of the start menu & messaging window?

You can change the colors using a Scheme file. You can put an image background in the Start Menu using a registry hack. The following should be suitable to import in Resco Registry Editor:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\:M SStart]
"BKBitmapFile"="\\Application Data\\Home\\GoBlue.jpg"
"BKBitmapLogPixelsY"=dword:00000083
"BKBitmapLogPixelsX"=dword:00000083
"BKUnselected"="COLOR_ALERTWINDOW"
"BKFlags"=dword:0000001A
"BKBitmapTransparent"=dword:00FF00FF

NOTES: This is for Resco Registry Editor. It may not work properly with other registry editors.

Also, note the two backslashes in the image file path (just before my image name of GoBlue.jpg). Those are required.

Finally, the numbers shown are Hex, not Decimal.

Do the following:

1. Copy the quoted text above.
2. Paste it into Notepad.
3. Replace the bold text above with your image name.
4. Save the file as Start Background.reg (the name isn't that important).
5. Copy the file to your Q's \My Documents folder.
6. Run the file on your Q. (If you also have PHM Registry Editor installed, you may need to use File->Import in Resco.)

For reference, here's my custom Michigan Start Menu.



Credit to JAmerican Junction, but ignore the comment about not being able to undo it without a Master Reset.

Also, a similar trick does not work for Messaging.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

What exactly does that do?

Changing HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\GDI\GLYPHCACHE allocates more memory to the glyph cache. Glyphs are things like characters, so this allows the display to be drawn faster.

Changing HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\STORAGEMANAGER\FATFS increases the cache size for the FAT file system to speed up file access. It's similar to your hard disk having a bigger cache.

Like many PC things, you're basically trading space for time. You'll probably have less RAM doing these, but the system will be faster.

NOTE: These are basically educated guesses. I'm not an expert on Windows CE/Windows Mobile internals by any means.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

I didn't see this posted, and I don't know if it works, but I think you can limit the cache size by changing the CacheLimit value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\Cache\Content.

You can probably do similar tricks with the same value in the ...\Cookies and ...\History keys.

I think the values are expressed in KB, so 17164 KB for Content would be almost 17 MB. I'm dropping mine to 4096 (4 MB) to see what happens.

Steve

[BigOrange]

I didn't see this posted, and I don't know if it works, but I think you can limit the cache size by changing the CacheLimit value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\Cache\Content.

You can probably do similar tricks with the same value in the ...\Cookies and ...\History keys.

256 seems rather high for a history, I put in 20, and 1024 is A LOT of cookies!
Cachelimit 1024
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\Cookies

Cachelimit 20
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\History