Testing ActiveSync and SmartPhone features with Windows Mobile Emulator

Howdy from Los Angeles! I have just about spent more time in California and Seattle this year than I have at home. A couple of times over the past few months I have had the need to test ActiveSync or to demo SmartPhone functionality. Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET and 2005 both have built-in emulators to testing programs written for the Windows Mobile platform. As a non-developer, though, installing Visual Studio just for the emulator is a serious pain in the neck.

Microsoft is working on a neat new tool that does Windows Mobile emulation, but can be installed standalone (without requiring Visual Studio). I read about this initially at http://www.pocketpcfaq.com/faqs/5.0/emulator.htm but it has been discussed in some of the newsgroups. The emulator is called the Microsoft Device Emulator 1.0 Community Preview and it currently only supports Windows Mobile 2003, but I'm hoping as they polish it off, it will support Windows Mobile 2005 and the new Windows Mobile Feature Pack that works with Exchange 2003 SP2 ActiveSync features.