Pocket PC Thoughts: Goodbye Annoying Password Time-Out Problem!

Quickly after the introduction of the AKU 2 release of Windows Mobile 5, I noticed a really annoying problem. In previous versions, whenever you left your device on with external power (With power properties set not to turn off the device), the password time out period was disabled. Thus, you could have the device nicely docked in your car, drive along happily, and rest assured that the device wouldn't start prompting your for your password as you operated a 2 ton piece of metal propelled down the highway. Or you could have your device act as an alarm clock and not have to key in your PIN number just to turn the dang thing off in the morning. Life was good.

All that changed with the AKU 2 release. Now that administrators could control the password policies on your device, more control was added to this time-out thing. The most annoying of which was the way it handled always-on power. Now if the device was powered on, but received no input within a set amount of time, BANG - password screen. Effectively annoying GPS users around the world, and promoting lax security habits (for example, I simply stopped using a PIN number - not a good idea!). Now I can see perfectly reasonable arguments why this is a good thing - devices left in a cradle at the office come to mind. Your desktop computer locks automatically after a period of non use, why not your Pocket PC as well. But for some of us that didn't find ourselves in that situation, the new 'feature" was more annoyance than anything.

I'd been mulling over the issue for months, searching bulletin boards for solutions, and finally gave up somewhere in May of this year. But today a ray of hope dawned and what I was searching for was finally found - how to turn back the clock and make things the way they SHOULD be!