Saturday, November 05, 2005

Gadget Hell!


Gadget Hell!
Originally uploaded by Major Clanger.

I thought I would upgrade the OS on my Pocket PC (Dell Axim) to Windows Mobile 5.0, it is supposed to be more robust and uses the flash memory much more sensibly.

I was up until 1:30am on Thursday. Of the 6 “killer” tasks I do on my Pocket PC, 4 no longer work.
(For example AvantGo and Vindigo don’t work at all, and Bluetooth don’t work like before). ActiveSync 4.0 sucks.

I gave up and took it to work. Later on Friday afternoon I noticed that it had died completely (I think it crashed and drained the battery).

On Saturday morning I called Dell. They told me to revert to the previous version of the OS, luckily I found out how from their web site as the Customer Support Person couldn't find it. In their defence, they did offer me a replacement Pocket PC, but a downgrade works just fine.

Current status: I've finally reinstalled everything and got it working like before, but I've wasted $42 and several hours of my life!

Arrrrgh. Don’t upgrade to Windows Mobile 2005!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I also have tried upgrading my pda to a newer version of pocket pc. I have just the same experience...

Anonymous said...

I am so sick of gadgets failing when you need them the most and rude, callous, indifferent behaviour of billion dollar companies customer support staff, that I wanted to create a blog by the name "Welcome to Gadget Hell" in which one can tell about his descent into gadget hell. On my HIT LIST are currently
Hewlett Packard-Their Business Inkjet pro K550 DTN, failed , infact this peice of trash just printed 105 pages(company claims 7500 pages duty cycle per month) and then started tearing pages, and the print head stuck.For the last 3 weeks HP India could neither repair, replace or refund, so I have to sue them in consumer court.
In fact almost every gadet I have owned including the HP Presario V 2000 has failed.

Most big companies are bloodsucking leeches who feed on the little guy. My second object of Hate even though its not a gadget is Citibank.

Lets go back to the simple life when there were no gadets, people never went back on their promises and the air was breathable.

Cheers!

vivekvir@gmail.com , vivek@indigopress.com