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View Full Version : I GIVE UP!!! Goodbye PDA, I gave it a good try and failed...


surfaday
10-06-2004, 09:39 AM
Early Palm>>>Handspring Deluxe>>>iPaq 3655>>>Toshiba e755.

You can see where I went wrong - I should have never tried that iPaq - beautiful color display, expandable memory, runs movies, shows photos. How very very cool compared to my old, slow, monochrome Handspring Deluxe. Ok, so it cost, what was it? $600 or so? Honestly, I forget.

The reality: iPaq 3655: slow. Locked up all the time. Necessary to soft reset, (warm boot, anyone?), frequently. Not enough memory. Frequented the various forums for advice. (Where have you gone, Dale Coffing?!?)

New year, new upgrade. More memory, faster processor, new os.

Toshiba e755: Wow. Now with wifi that worked intermittantly at best, (see hard reset), featured a new and vastly un-improved operating system... Still locking up and soft reset required often. Not really that much faster even though it is 2x the processor speed. Cheaper too. Only $450, woo hoo!

In hindsight - it IS running windows after all. Not the most stable platform ever devised. What a piece of cr*p.

Today I TAP-ed my Toshiba at Compusa. Got sick of it. Poor battery life, and poor enough that in a few days it would lose 100% battery power and hard reset. Often locked up after turning it off, would not turn back on. Soft resets were needed many times per day. Probably every time I turned it on. Today I tried to turn it on and nothing happened. I placed it in the cradle and, (why was I not surprized), it was hard reset, and the freakin' battery WAS NOT dead! miracle of miracles. Everything gone again. Did I say it was a piece of cr*p?

Note: I took the opportunity the hard resets gave me to try loading less programs and trying to keep it clean, no iffy software with bugs, just the plain-jane rom-resident software. No difference in the stellar performance. And I did spend my fair share of time talking with tech support both for the iPaq and the Toshiba. With the palms? Tech support not needed.

As I said, today I took it straight to Compusa and got a store credit for my replacement plan, called TAP. I got $341 and change. I felt lucky. I virtually had stopped using my pda, got back to paper for my calendar, and now store phone numbers in my cell phone, lets not even talk about wifi, I had switched that off and never even used it. Oh, and games? I use my Gamboy Advance SP. Lost money? Yes, but what price toys, (yeah, right). Oh well - got cash for a piece of cr*p that I had stopped using anyway.

Never again.

Now. What to do with $341 in store credit? Can you say X-box? Maybe $341 worth of dvds?

Walt

Kowalski
10-06-2004, 10:06 AM
Still locking up and soft reset required often
it is obvious that you are not lucky about your devices. i will say only one thing: i am using my device for a year and i had to soft reset my device not more than once a mounth because of lock ups!

surfaday
10-06-2004, 10:15 AM
Yes, I suppose my experience is not typical, the devices are very popular, but thanks for letting me vent.

Walt

PetiteFlower
10-06-2004, 07:35 PM
I've heard about a lot of problems with the e755, though not as much as the e750. But most of the newer devices at least *seem* more stable.

But, if you weren't using it, then it wasn't doing you any good to have one. Nothing wrong with that :)

The PocketTV Team
10-07-2004, 10:54 PM
The Toshiba e740 and e750 series are probably the worse Pocket PC's I've seen (in terms of design, hardware, manufacturing quality and system/drivers stability), so you picked the wrong horse!

Shaun Stuart
10-07-2004, 11:53 PM
The Toshiba e740 and e750 series are probably the worse Pocket PC's I've seen (in terms of design, hardware, manufacturing quality and system/drivers stability), so you picked the wrong horse!

I would agree with this - looks like you have been unlucky with your choices.

I would add that the original Ipaqs although very good at the time dont compare with todays devices. I have gone through several pocket pc's; HP545, Ipaq 3600, 3700, Toshiba E740, Ipaq 2215 and now Toshiba E800 and XDA2. I would say that with the exception of the E740 (which was a mistake for me too) each time I changed, the devices improved in stability, usability and importantly battery life.

As a side note In the last 3 years I have also tried a Sony T665, Nokia 9210, Orange SPV smartphone, SE P800, Motorola MPX200, Tapwave Zodiac 2, and a Nokia 7610. (Dont ask me how much this lot cost - Im to scared to add it up)

The XDA2 is the best device I have owned by far, while previous PDAs were expensive toys the XDA2 is a real tool that has now become indespensible and although I probably have to do a soft reset once a week that is a small price to pay.

I regularly use my XDA2 as; diary/personal organiser, telephone, emailer, mp3 player, Library (I have a lot of ebooks), dictionary, movie guide, TV/Video player (I use this a lot during lunch breaks), calculator, fitness record for the gym, notepad, games machine (Morphgear snes emulator is excellent and Astraware candycrunch has me addicted) and alarm clock. I also use IE and Avantgo daily and while the still camera is not great, the video capture is good enough to catch my kids playing at the times I dont have my minidv camera with me (most of the time).

As you can tell I am really happy with it - that is until the BENQ 50 is released hopefully this side of christmas.

SteveHoward999
10-07-2004, 11:54 PM
The Toshiba e740 and e750 series are probably the worse Pocket PC's I've seen (in terms of design, hardware, manufacturing quality and system/drivers stability), so you picked the wrong horse!


Maybe I am just lucky then. The only problems I have with mine seem to be self inflicted.

surfaday
10-08-2004, 04:37 PM
Yes, poor choices and unlucky indeed.

But in the spirit of big toys for big boys, I used my store gift card for 1) a Harmony 659 remote control. (If you have a home theater and you don't know what this is, you should find out, its very cool). and 2) a Nintendo Gamecube, one game, and a couple of accessroies.

(And for the record I did try to sell the card so I could get cash and pay bills or buy groceries, but could not find someone who wanted it. Ok, maybe I didn't try THAT hard....)

These two purchases used up 100% of my gift card plus a total of $5.13 from my pocket.

Now I'm thinking this was all a good thing. :)

Walt