iPAQ Upgrades Revisited

[Andy Sjostrom]

I am sure we'll continue to visit this topic many times in the near future, but here is my take and a follow up on <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=129015">Janak's recent post</a>:<br /><br />There are many and complex issues that go along with a complete upgrade. It is not as simple as getting bits from Microsoft, slamming them into a box and give it away. HP has technical, quality and testing issues to address. I certainly don't want a first round of upgrades that potentially cause iPAQ users any problems. I want documentation and support to be ramped up and ready. In other words, I would rather see HP err on the side of stability and reliability vs. a quick shipment and lots of hassles and support. With regards to pricing... My educated guess is that the upgrade costs HP approximately $85 000+ for each system (3850, 3870, 3900, 5400 and so on), meaning the cost can very well be above $400 000 for HP, which is why this isn't a freebie give away.<br /><br />As far as I have heard from unofficial sources, HP got the final bits about four weeks ago and has been busy testing and readying the upgrade since -- with an ETA in the third week of July.

[Gremmie]

Good article, helps remind people that it is not quick to release upgrades and that there is a cost-benefit ratio for new ROMs.

[cmchavez]

I would prefer in HP could at least clarify that the upgrade is not currently available for purchase. The way the pages are setup now makes it appear that you can purchase and download the update now. Plus, the navigation through the "smb" store isn't the most intuitive structure. :confused totally:

[Chris Spera]

As far as I have heard from unofficial sources, HP got the final bits about four weeks ago and has been busy testing and readying the upgrade since -- with an ETA in the third week of July.

I for one am not complaining about paying for this upgrade. I'll be happy to pay for upgrades for both my 3955 and my 5455. That's not the point, though your comments regarding the cost of this upgrade are important.

They have had the code for a month. They have a specific and directed purpose for developing the upgrades. They (should) have a documented and repeatable QA Process. Pull all of this information together with all the other bits and bobs of development prognostication that goes with this, and they should be able to guess-timate how long it will take them to release their upgrade.

HP is the LEADER of the Pocket PC OEM's because their iPAQs are the largest selling PPC devices on the market. We're busy b*tching and moaning because they aren't leading. In fact, this is shaping up to be a nasty rerun...

All we are looking for is information. If i have to wait until November or December for these upgrades, THAT'S FINE! I'll smile all the way to 2004 if needed. That's not the point.

The point is I'd like to know WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON!

Accurate information is what we crave here. Nothing more. As a Software Quality Director myself, I can appreicate the time and attention that HP is trying to give the WM2003 upgrade and I applaud them for it. However, you can't tell me they don't have a realistic idea of when it might be available.

I've released both Enterprise and Retail titles before... I know the pressure they are dealing with (especially from THIS outspoken group..Sheesh! :mrgreen: ); but that doesn't excuse them from this serious lack of communication, especially when sites like Thoughts and others are clamouring for this information from someone of authority and reliability at HP.

I for one, am seriously disappointed in HP.


Christopher Spera

[TrojanUO]

It's been 1 day.

The tone of most of the posts bitching about HP on other threads make it seem like HP has been jerking people around for months. It's been 1 day. Are 24 pt fonts really necessary?

I realise we're turning into an everything yesterday culture but good lord.

It's been 1 day.

[Trokair]

I've released both Enterprise and Retail titles before... I know the pressure they are dealing with (especially from THIS outspoken group..Sheesh! ); but that doesn't excuse them from this serious lack of communication, especially when sites like Thoughts and others are clamouring for this information from someone of authority and reliability at HP.

I think Chris hit the proverbial nail with the hammer on this one; I, for one, never expected this upgrade to be free, or anything of the sort. I don't mind paying for it; that HP is doing this at all is something to be thankful for. What I am not happy with is, like Chris said, the lack of communication. If the upgrade site has all the link in place, people expect to be able to click them and order the blasted thing, not be redirected to some other page that holds no information whatsoever on what they're trying to buy. Maybe HP should change the Upgrade page around a bit to notify us that the upgrades are not available yet, and that they'll list them there when they are?

-Kyle

[Andy Sjostrom]

It's been 1 day.

The tone of most of the posts bitching about HP on other threads make it seem like HP has been jerking people around for months. It's been 1 day. Are 24 pt fonts really necessary?

I realise we're turning into an everything yesterday culture but good lord.

It's been 1 day.

It's been 1 day!

Sheeeesh

[cmchavez]

From HP Support:

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 2:23 PM
To: cmchavez
Subject: RE: iPAQ H3900 Series Pocket PC P-hand-dg <ID:NAD030627470874-269662185>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please retain this line in all replies: <ID:NAD030627470874-269662185>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting HP eServices.

We appreciate your patience and co-operation regarding this matter. As the volume required is too high, the online purchase may not be enabled till Monday 30th June 2003. For more information, please call 800-888-0262. We once again apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please e-mail us if you have any further clarification and we will be glad to help.

Regards,

HP eServices


At least now I know when it will be available! :wink:

[Gremmie]

:clap: Bravo cmchavez, now was that so hard to get information?

[Jason Dunn]

I realise we're turning into an everything yesterday culture but good lord.

Indeed. The Internet radically altered our expectations of how fast information should flow - there's no going back now, but it is sort of amusing to watch, isn't it? :lol:

Calm down everyone - enjoy the weekend! Put away your Pocket PCs and go for a walk in the sun. :rainbowafro:

[Chris Spera]

Are 24 pt fonts really necessary?

I realise we're turning into an everything yesterday culture but good lord.

It's been 1 day.

Of course not. But then again, I'm not sure if you've grasped what I'm getting at... Let me try again

It really hasn't been one day. Rumours of the new 193x/194x, 2200 and 5500 have been around for moons. Those of us who can read between the lines kinda figured that they would have the new OS on it (that being one of the reasons why it took a while for the new devices to be announced and then released after rumours of them leaked to the 'Net.)

I bought my 5455 in January. I KNEW that an upgraded OS was in the making, and bought the top of the line device because I knew it would be upgradable. (I also like gadgets...a weakness of mine.)

Windows Mobile 2003 is perhaps one of the most anticipated releases of Pocket PC OS because it was reported to address much of the concerns that the Community had about the newest devices with the newest processors. As such, our Community knew what it was rumoured to do... A lot of things were reported, said, etc...

All we are asking for and I think we deserve because iPAQ's aren't cheap, is an update that says, "Thanks for buying our products. You can expect to order your upgrade on MM/DD/YYYY."

Its not a lot to ask for, especially knowing what I know about Software Life Cycle. The moment they have any Part of the SDK (or they get an indication of when they will have it in-house), HP's Project Managers began developing project plans to deal with the dev requirements for the ROM Upgrades. They simply don't WANT to address these customer concerns... or at least that's what I am forced to conclude given the authentic information that I have gotten directly from HP; or in this case, the lack of it...

Kind Regards,


Christopher Spera

[cmchavez]

:clap: Bravo cmchavez, now was that so hard to get information?

Nope! :wink: I don't mind the wait, but (HP) just give me the courtesy of knowing that there will be a wait.

[Gremmie]

Of course not. But then again, I'm not sure if you've grasped what I'm getting at... Let me try again

It really hasn't been one day. Rumours of the new 193x/194x, 2200 and 5500 have been around for moons. Those of us who can read between the lines kinda figured that they would have the new OS on it (that being one of the reasons why it took a while for the new devices to be announced and then released after rumours of them leaked to the 'Net.)

I bought my 5455 in January. I KNEW that an upgraded OS was in the making, and bought the top of the line device because I knew it would be upgradable.

That is very wrong, this is one of the reasons (potential cash flow problems being #1) that companies don't release this kind of information long before a release. Any feeling of disappointment is of your making and a by-product of speculation of OS upgrades. It has been 1 day.

[tewmgd]

I'm totally agree with you Andy but I think it's more a project management problem and also communication one.

It's the third upgrade for the PocketPc OS and like other upgrade we don't have a good information. HP France where I live seems to ignore the upgrade and there's no page to inform their customers of upgrade programm.

They know that the new OS would be relaese the 26th June, They know that they'll have a lot of requests about upgrade programm, why don't they prepare a page ?

The "official" (hidden in the SBSO website) page of HP it's not clear, the link they put to purchase is linked to the home page of the online shop for SBS customers without any additional information.

Why do we wait for unofficial posts and rumours ?

Matthieu

[tekguru]

Honestly you chaps over in teh US of A shoudl stop complaining.....

I spent over an hour on the phone to HP in the UK this morning. In the end I did not get an answer until 3:45 tonight that the UK PPC2003 upgrade MAY be available to order withni the next 3-4 weeks... MAY... Sheesh and you think you guys have it bad!

[CoreyJF]

As I said in another post, its not that they haven't met there expected goals. One day or 3 months is not the point. Don't waste my time putting up links that go nowhere. If you say you will have information avalible on the 26th and you don't fine. Update your website and say information will be avalible on the 27th or after COB on the 26th. Whatever... If you say an upgrade can be purchased here... then make sure you can purchase it there, or post info on the page it takes you to saying that it is not avalable yet. It is common curtesy and good buisness. Post accuarate info and do not waste your customers time!

[SassKwatch]

Why do we wait for unofficial posts and rumours ?
Good question. Why do you?

I can't believe that so many people are so upset about this. It's an upgrade to the OS of a PDA, not the blueprint to the next 5 Al Quaeda terrorist attacks.

Good grief....what HP *really* needs to do is create a virtual bong loaded with Prozac. And anyone who clicks the 'Download this upgrade' link more than once every 48 hr gets sent to the Virtual Bong page.

[tewmgd]

Why do we wait for unofficial posts and rumours ?
Good question. Why do you?

I can't believe that so many people are so upset about this. It's an upgrade to the OS of a PDA, not the blueprint to the next 5 Al Quaeda terrorist attacks.

Good grief....what HP *really* needs to do is create a virtual bong loaded with Prozac. And anyone who clicks the 'Download this upgrade' link more than once every 48 hr gets sent to the Virtual Bong page.

Don't be sarcastic, the post of Andy was about the true will of HP to offer an upgrade to their customers. I point just that it's the third time that faced the problem and third time they failed to manage it.

I work for IT department in telco and when marketing guys said "be ready for week number X because we launch X product", we go. And when the d-day comes and when we've software problems, there's special manual process to hide the glitches to customers.

Well it's not essential but hard to unterstand that a global company like HO, which works in IT industry failed to coordinate this, like you said, little upgrade.

Matthieu

[SassKwatch]

I point just that it's the third time that faced the problem and third time they failed to manage it.
All the more reason to not go off half-cocked this time....they've proven twice already they don't handle these situations well. So why does it surprise, much less get anyone riled up, when it happens again.

It'll be available when it's available....not a moment sooner.

[bigkingfun]

All the more reason to not go off half-cocked this time....they've proven twice already they don't handle these situations well.

Good point. It seems to me that with the general direction service and support has gone over the past few years, this should really be no surprise. The big companies all seem to be cutting their support structure back as thin as they can, and I don't think we should expect them to deliver anything better than they have in the past.

I'm not trying to make excuses - I think the general level of service is pretty poor actually - but realistically, I think we expect more than we should, based on our past experiences. I would be impressed if things changed, but I'm not particularly surprised when they don't.

I don't think this is limited to HP either. I've been an avid PPC user and follower for a couple of years now and it seems that pretty much all the companies making them have had issues that caused their users to get up in arms. I think we need to keep in mind that HP has expressed their plans to upgrade these units so we should counts ourselves fortunate. We could be in the same position as the 1910 owners, e740 owners or any others for whom it doesn't look like they'll be getting an upgrade at all.

[JonnoB]

HP is too blame for much of this frustration and I think we (consumers) should shoulder some common sense as well. We should have enough experience not to expect more from a company like HP.

HP makes great products (most of the time) gives adequate service (most of the time) but mess up just often enough (too often) to make people grit their teeth. It would all be solved if some forethought was given and the website ready at the time of launch - perhaps to even pre-order the OS and have an expected ETA date.

The problem for the most part stems from a lack of a coherent and meaningful communicaiton. Maybe it stems from an internal corporate communication problem inside HP? Companies that communicate well internally and communicate well with its customers create repeat customers. Repeat customers make more money.

[LouL]

Just got off the phone with Scott at Qmedia (the folks that will be distrubuting the upgrades). Apparently HP has not submitted the list of serial numbers to Qmedia (this won't happen until July 6th). Also HP has just re-submitted their tweaks to PocketPC 2003 back to Microsoft and that process (Microsoft testing and certifying their tweaks) will not be complete for several weeks. Qmedia is hoping to start shipping out the upgrades probably sometime around July 26th or so.

This is why you can't go through the online process to get the upgrade.

Lou

[bkerrins]

Is HP going to offer the upgrade to 3700 users? It should have the appropriate allocation for memory and I'm fine buying it for 29.95...but I haven't seen it mentioned if it would even be available.

[Chris Spera]

HP is too blame for much of this frustration and I think we (consumers) should shoulder some common sense as well. We should have enough experience not to expect more from a company like HP.

I don't agree with you here. I paid them too much money over the past 2 years not to expect to be treated like a repeat customer. I SHOULD be able to be treated well... I shouldn't have to shoulder "common sense." My money is just as green as everyone elses...

Repeat customers make more money.

Yes they do; but if HP keeps this up they may not have too many more... I don't mind waiting at all. I just wanted them to tell me how long I needed to wait. I also expected them to live up to their committment and correctly finish the job they started and at least set up all links to all of the pages they need to have. If they aren't ready to start taking orders, their order page should say so.

Everyone is very quick to tell me to cool my jets. Trust me. They're cool. I am just really disappointed that HP created an expectation and then completely ignored the responsibility to fulfill it.

Christopher Spera

[Chris Spera]

Is HP going to offer the upgrade to 3700 users? It should have the appropriate allocation for memory and I'm fine buying it for 29.95...but I haven't seen it mentioned if it would even be available.

My understanding is that the 3700 is not supported. In other words, my understanding is that they will NOT be offering an upgrade to WM2003 for the iPAQ 3700.


Kind Regards,


Christopher Spera

[Gremmie]

HP is too blame for much of this frustration and I think we (consumers) should shoulder some common sense as well. We should have enough experience not to expect more from a company like HP.


I agree. Half of market economics is the consumer decision. The thing is that the product is wanted enough where they have to put up with this because they really really want the product, and if you really want it you can't do much more than wait and complain. For those who don't care for HP much more than anything else it's a case of fool me once sham on you, fool me again shame on me.

That being said, I don't think anyone waiting for this upgrade is a victim of their own foolary, HP makes a good enough product where people here just are going to have to put up with it.

[ctmagnus]

My money is just as green as everyone elses...

Greener than mine. I found $5 today and it was blue!

(although the twenty I've been packing around in my wallet for ~ six months is pretty green)

:nonono:

[pschultz]

I don't mind waiting at all. I just wanted them to tell me how long I needed to wait.
I understand that you are upset over HP not telling you exactly when the upgrade will be available, but you need to realize that sometimes problems come up at the last minute. Not to pick on Jason, but look at both his iPAQ h2215 review and the subscriber services. Both took longer than expected. We forgave Jason, so why can't we forgive HP. Maybe they had a problem with the upgrade and couldn't meet their deadline. I don't think that they should have to tell us everytime something comes up, and they can't meet their deadline.

[Andy Sjostrom]

Part of the problem is that HP is relying on other manufacturers to deliver bits and hardware to test. Microsoft, Symbol, a number of third party apps, different access points from different manufacturers, etc makes this something of an in-exact science. The reality is that HP cannot necessarily publish hard and fast dates because HP does not control all of the timelines and we know that we expect higher quality from HP than from many other players.

Frankly, I can't see how HP could communicate every shift and change in engineering and manufacturing because it would most likely mean we would need get emails from HP a number of times a day. The issues change dates and deliverables in real time.

Sign up for HP's Product Change Management (PCM) which is free to Thoughts readers and get 30 to 60 days notice for every major product change HP comes out with. And cool down.

[SassKwatch]

but you need to realize that sometimes problems come up at the last minute.
I automatically add X amount of time to any 'release date' announcements from *EVERY* I.S. project. The larger the project, the more time I add to expect a realistic release date.

And I *NEVER* give a hard and fast date to anyone but my boss for any projects in which I'm involved. And even when discussing with the boss, I'll frequently throw in some caveats.

There are too many people, different departments within the same company, and outside organizations involved in almost all enterprise I.S. projects to do/expect otherwise. Each of those entities has it's own workload/timetable to manage. And if the testing or development process breaks down at any one of those entity levels, it throws the whole project off and *everyone* has to reschedule their part of the process.

It's extremely frustrating to be involved in at times.....as much to those trying to complete the project as it is to the customers awaiting the product.

[jimski]

With what I have read regarding software incompatibility and after two ROM undates on my 5450 in the past three months, I don't really care how long it takes HP to release their PPC2003 upgrade.

I am all for cutting edge (I pre-ordered my 5450), but it has been a rough 6 months, with Active Stink crashes, long wait for spare batteries followed by a few hard resets (thank you battery update) and of course, the above mentioned ROM updates (I have more than 30 third party apps loaded on my device).

I have seen nothing with PPC2003 or the 55XX that would compel me to jump into either of these. I think I will try to enjoy by 5450 for a few months and if things seem to be stable by maybe December, then it will be time to upgrade my device. Let somebody else worry about upgrading my old 5450.