I've read about Home Media sometime ago and to be honest my two first thoughts were a) it probably won't work, at least not easily b) luckily I don't have compatible phone.
Time went by and I got more and more curious, especially after getting a Nokia N96. So what did I do? I tried it out, of course.
Part I / Installation:
- Downloaded and installed SimpleCenter to MS Vista.
- Clicked OK couple of times until SC wanted me to register. I really wonder why this software required registering? Well, I registered which was simple task as long as you find proper username that is not taken.
- After installation HMS wanted to add the media from my computer. I just clicked OK-OK-...OK. Then I realized that HMS is about to add all our pictures, roughly 3000. Then everything stopped. No response, nothing at all. I had to kill the adding process and still my 2 cores are going at 100%. What about restarting the computer?
- After restarting the computer and double-clicking Home Media Server, it opened normally and finished adding files.
- Found Home Media from Menu - Tools - Connectivity - Home Media and opened it.
- Wizard started and after 9 OKs and some other clicks (device name, accesspoint, shared content, etc.) it finished.
- Does everything work now? No, it seems that I need to add device to Home Media Server by choosing Devices - Add device - Refresh and choose your phone. (N96's icon was N80 but maybe I can live with it. :)
I believe now it is time to connect N96 to Home Media Server. Let's try it.
Part II / Using HMS:
So, what you can do with this HMS? Let's check it out.
OK, most probably everyone knows that you can transfer pictures, videos, podcasts etc. easily from your phone to your computer or vice versa. Actually this is really easy, basically just click and the magic happens. One of the problems is that when I've been using PC Suite for transferring music, PC Suite had made another copy of each song and now HMS shows all these files. Probably this could be handled in Settings or then stop converting mp3's to AAC+, there are enough space in N96.
There are some other "flaws" like that you can see your music what you are about to transfer only by song title but luckily you can see more information using your phone. With a quick look, it seems that it is easier to transfer data from a computer to your phone by using your phone, but I'll find out about this after I've been using HMS for a while.
So you can easily transfer content between your two devices and you can also use your phone as a remote control for playing music, videos, etc. on your computer.
You can also define that pictures are automatically transferred from your phone to your computer when you come home. Now you won't lose your pictures so easily.
This means bye bye PC Suite and bye bye slow bluetooth connections when transferring files/music. Well, probably these aren't final good byes because standard HMS cannot convert files, e.g. movies to phone compatible form. There are also a premium version which has more features.
HMS really stands up to the exceptations and is worth trying out. It doesn't solve every problem but makes life again little easier, especially when transferring large files or multiple files where bluetooth/cable is slow. It won't replace PC Suite for good, because with PC Suite you can handle your PIM data.
Most probably you'll see another post about HMS after I've been using it for a while.
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