[Gerard]

When I was just starting out with a Pocket PC and had no prior computer experience of any sort, Casio's toll-free number got a bit of a workout from me. I probably called at least twenty times that summer of 2000. The old E-115 had me confused at times, especially over installing a dialup modem and getting it to connect, but also regarding various of the built-in softwares' weird (to me at the time) behaviors. Sometimes the device would lock up and require a soft reset, and this with little or at first no extra software added, so I was frustrated and would call and ask about it.

Casio were usually very patient and sometimes even useful in this. Of course much of the time they'd tell me to soft reset... then when that failed to remedy a problem to hard reset... and when that still showed the problem they'd often bump me up to a higher level tech who could actually help sort things out. I was more or less happy, though I'd later come across a lot of forum comments about Casio's tech support being the absolute worst.

When I got an EG-800, their industrial device (HAH! - anyone who knows some of my history with that beautiful blue Casio knows well how prodigiously prone to failue they actually were), I found tech support actually improved a bit. They bumped me up a level sooner, and quite early on I found myself speaking with the vice president for Casio Mobile Devices, US centre. He was most gracious, and the first replacement unit he sent me was a little-used one that had been sitting on his desk. Blah blah... anyway, 5 EG-800s later I moved on to an iPAQ.

Meanwhile, I put in a number of requests for assistance to Microsoft regarding problems which were obviously part of the OS, nothing to do with any third-party nor OEM applications nor my added accessories. I got no responses at all for months, but eventually did get a completely useless bit of help from a support worker in Delhi (I think) who was incredibly polite in his email, but utterly off the mark with his suggestions. I had resolved the problem by use of a third party software in the meantime. Still, my understanding at the time was that Microsoft supported the Pocket PC, in tandem with the manufacturers. As much seemed to be made clear on their website at the time.