You can connect the emulator directly to the network without involving ActiveSync.
... and that's no April fools day joke.
So, there are two ways to connect to the network
1) simply cradle the emulator and connect via ActiveSync to the network,
2) use the VPC network driver to directly connect to the network (no ActiveSync involved).
If you want to achieve the latter, the first step is to see whether you have the VPC driver installed. Start the emulator and choose File->Configure ... from the top menu.
In the configuration dialog window, choose the Network tab. Check the "Enable ... network adapter" box. If you do not have the VPC, you will get a message at this point. If you are able to check the box, you have the VPC driver already.
If you do not have the VPC driver, go
download and install it. Then try to check the network adapter box again in the configuration dialog of the emulator.
To test whether you can connect to the network with your emulator, just start the Web browser and try to connect to a Web site (i.e., google.com).
If this does not work, check the following:
In the emulator, choose "Settings" from the start menu (drop down from the top left corner).
In settings, choose the "Connections" tab, then click on "Network Cards". The drop down list for "My network card connects to" should show "The Internet".
MH