One of the most overlooked ways of installing a programs to your Pocket PC is a .cab file. "What is a .cab file"? You ask? A cabinet (CAB) file is a compressed file that holds all of the items necessary for installing a program on your Pocket PC. .cab files are extremely portable because you do not need Activesync in order to install a program on your Pocket PC. As long as the .cab file is on your device, then you can perform the install.
We'll install Battery Pack using a .cab installer.
For the purpose of this walk-through, you should see what a .cab file looks like. Below, you can see a picture of what a cab file looks like on the typical Windows desktop PC. It is the file labelled
batt.arm:
I have
WinRar Archiver compression on my desktop PC so my .cab files look like a small bundle of books (WinRar is
not required or recommended for this tutorial):
Step 1: First step is to copy the .cab file on your Pocket PC. If you have a memory card reader, you can copy it to the card and insert it into your Pocket PC. If you simply download the .cab file from the Web you can get it that way. However, for the sake of this tutorial, we'll copy the file via Activesync.
So open Activesync on your desktop PC and hit the Explore Button.
Step 2: You should now see an Explorer type of window that lists the contents of your "My Documents" folder.
Step 3: Drag and drop the .cab file from the folder on your desktop computer to your Pocket PC.
Step 4: Go to your Pocket PC and Find File Explorer in your Programs directory:
Step 5: Navigate to your My Documents folder on your Pocket PC and you'll see the batt.arm file listed.
Step 6: Tap the .cab file one time and it will install!
You may be thinking "That's great! But where do I get .cab files?" The answer is often on your desktop computer. When the desktop installer runs on a Windows machine, it creates a directory with .cab files to install through Activesync. So try looking in your Program Files directory for the PPC program installers you want. Mac users can usually write the developer for .cab files.
Conclusion
.cab files are an extremely portable way of transporting the installers of the most used programs on your device. Many travelers use them in the case of an accidental hard reset where the backup fails. Mac users are almost
required to use them because there is no Activesync for Mac. And finally, what about those programs that throw errors during desktop install? Try the .cab files - they always work! 8)