Was the Pocket PC 2002 upgrade worth it?

[Jason Dunn]

Speaking strictly of software (new hardware aside) was the Pocket PC 2002 OS update worth it for you? I've seen a surprising amount of people saying they'd like to go back to the previous version with their iPAQ. Are you one of those people? Post your reasons and cast your vote!

[monkeyboy1010]

I upgraded and then I went back, the lack of a good alarm was the deciding factor. I work in a sound studio and the alarm will generally punch through anything...so I don't miss meetings.

mb1010

[Robert Levy]

Umm... you forgot to add an option for "No" in this poll

[James]

I'm using it despite the flaws - mainly because I gave my 3650 to my brother-in-law, and have a 3870 now. The things I hate seem to balance with the things I don't so far.

[Jason Dunn]

Umm... you forgot to add an option for "No" in this poll


DAMN! I had one...

[kevin]

After months of false promises last year, Compaq finally delivered this much-awaited UpGrade to its Australian customers.
In many ways, the effort required to get the UpGrade actually increased the expectation of its usefullness.
However, despite the promise of a "small footprint", I have lost valuable RAM and have had to make some tough decisions about which Applications would be installed now that space on my iPaq was now limited.
Efficient use of resources through 2002's "clever" solution for the absence of "Close Application" functionality, has not been delivered. Despite there being a number of "Running Programs" that I no longer require, the system does not manage resources well. Rather than handing me the required resources for an new task, the system simply returns a "Insufficient Resources" message.
2002 might be prettier but this wasn't what I was prepared to pay for.

[IpaqMan2]

the upgrade is nice.... but not worth really calling it an upgrade. It took important functionality away from what PPC 2000 already had and what it added was little else that could of realistcly of been added by third party software to PPC 200.

PPC2002 should of been called a PLUS version, much like they had for the desktop OSes.

I consider this as another poor attempt by MS to not really give the market what they wanted.

[tonymus]

The biggest problem with it is the popping sounds that both my upgraded iPaq, and my wife's Jornada 567 made. The iPaq was especially noisy when the speaker was supposed to be silent. The only way to fix this on the iPaq was to download a patch off of the developers site.

Is it so hard to make a PDA that is quiet when you turn the sound off?

[James]

PPC2002 should of been called a PLUS version, much like they had for the desktop OSes.


It always amazes me that the PLUS versions either end up being some combination of
things no one would have bought if they'd really thought about it, but it's got PLUS! on it, so it must be better
things that should have been included in the original product to start with
things that make you think about those infomericials "But wait! There's more!"

[jweitzman]

The main reason I upgraded was to get subfolder in the Inbox, but since the upgrade I've had terrible synch problems. Seemingly at random, ActiveSynch tries to synch thousands of e-mail messages. Very strange.

Between that and the lack of a real wireless push e-mail solution (a la Blackberry or i705) I'm seriously considering a switch.

JW

[Rob Alexander]

:? I'm tired of losing important features every time I get a new and improved version of the PPC OS (counting the move from palm-sized to PPC here too). Sure there are some good new features in PPC2002, and I'm glad to have them, but between the lost features and the bugs, the overall experience is less useful to me than was PPC2000. I mean think about it. Sure it's prettier and you can have themes on your today screen and all, but what's that really worth in getting my work done? I'm sure some people find messenger, terminal server and such useful, but I never use those (and at 9,600 GSM modem speeds, likely never will). Synching more email folders is nice and the spell check is occasionally useful, but stack those up against losing repeating alarms, the cities database and non-crackly sound and I really don't think I came out ahead. I would seriously consider moving back to the old version, but I let a colleague buy my iPaq 3660 and replaced it with a native PPC2002 iPaq 3760 (same hardware, but with the new OS), so I'll live with this and hope that some day the PPC team will start listening to their actual users. (Hey, I can dream, can't I?)

[Sven Johannsen]

I got a 568 to replace my 545 and love the styling, the speed, the ability to add an MMC memory capable battery without much bulk, seeing the screen in the daytime, and haveing twice the RAM I used to. Only things I don't like is that they removed the action button from the side (still have up-down rocker, just no action) and the took the stylus out from under the cover. They could have kept the new OS though.

I'm with Rob. The really new apps, Terminal Server and Messenger are only worthwhile given a mobile connectivity solution, and a need. Those should have been standalone apps to be purchased if desired. I don't buy e-books, but I still think it is BS to have to write a new OS to be able to handle DRM5. The new media player? Nice, but again, doesn't do much available standalone apps did.

The Connection Mangler is a huge step backwards. I used to be able to seamlessly move from NT/serial to XP/USB without a hitch. I have to prompt the system every time now. It seem MS believes there are only two environments, a Business Network and a home with an ISP. I have a home with a network and an ISP.

The lost alarms are an irritant to most everyone.

Things that were complained about in the first iteration weren't addressed. We don't have a close button. We still have counter intuitive appointment handling when changing timezones. We still can' sync subfolders in contacts, etc. We are still limited to syncing two devices (Guess no-one at MS has a PC at home and at work and a laptop. Probably the PocketPC folks just have a desktop and a dozen PPCs, cuz that's supported)

Even the Today Screen background is only marginally effective. You have to be very conservative in your graphics or you can't read the info. That's the point of that screen isn't it?

All-in-all, OS wise, I lost ground.

[Barbay1]

Looking back, I wish there had been more info about the OS and user interface. I had assumed "no info = no change" ... big mistake! Some of the things I lost that bugged me the most were in the user interface, and sent me off trying to find replacements.

The things I lost (and missed the most) caught me by surprise. I expected a _little_ user interface change, but I didn't expect to lose the QStart functionality completely, and the Dashboard & StarTap versions in the CDROM were handicapped -- too slow. Thanks to the bulletin boards, and mainly due to unsuccessful hunting for a good QStart replacement, I finally got a registered copy of Dashboard -- which works fine. I think that's the version that should have been in the CDROM. Or maybe Compaq could provide a version of QStart, etc. for download.

iTask, though prettier, didn't add that much more functionality than QUtilities. I think including a today plug-in like "Uptime" (with battery info) would have been better.

Another thing that surprised me was that I couldn't stand the new Alarm1 sound. And I couldn't get the old one back without restoring the old ROM. So I had to ask someone with Windows CE 3.0 for a copy. Wish there was more warning that the alarm sound(s) were going to be different (-- I would have saved a copy), or that a link was provided to download old alarm sounds from somewhere (say if you didn't like the new one(s)).

Some of the software that used to be in ROM now has to be installed from CD. But I'm not sure I got much out of the supposedly bigger ROM -- except (to be fair) -- I did appreciate having Peacemaker and being able to beam to Palms.
It probably is a good decision not to put the media players in ROM (they change so much), but it would have been nice if Transcriber could stay in ROM.

The new OS caused me worry -- because I wasn't sure whether all my old software would be compatible. Most of my software turned out to be compatible (even some un-advertised ones). But there ought to be a better way than installing just to find out whether some software was going to work, and wondering whether it was going to fail later on.

All in all, I'm ok happy with the new arrangements (but it was painful).
:wink:

[TBone]

I don't see it as lost ground at all. The OBEX IR support is great, finally a decent implementation (one based on a standard). The new networking is a pain, but the support for network shares is amazingly cool. I like the new bubble alerts, and I'd have killed to have the graffiti clone back in PPC 2000. All in all, I've been really happy with things. It was well worth the upgrade, especially at the price (I traded a CF sleeve I didn't use for it).

[heliod]

I think that the biggest loss was on the alarms. Microsoft needs to fix and give us back the lost functionality.

However we gained in connectivity, and in other fields two. We received a system that is more stable (I've hardly done one soft reset since I upgraded), and some other goodies.

Regarding Compaq specific software, the IStart has been changed, and it's a pitty, but this is Compaq's decision to improve. If we don't like it, we should tell Compaq that.

What really did bother me: the long time to supply the update, and the fact that many users in countries like Israel will never be able to see it, since it will never be brought by Compaq to here, and whoever missed the ordering time in the Dutch site has missed it forever. For my luck I haven't been one of those.

[Andrew Duffy]

I upgraded because I didn't want to miss the date beyond which I couldn't buy the upgrade. The feature I wanted most of all was proper handling of the back button in Internet Explorer. However, this is unusable as the browser is so slow it takes as long for it to load the page and scroll to the previous location as it did before to load the page and manually scroll. The new look is nice, but not worth the amount I paid including VAT and delivery. If the upgrade had been downloadable for about $15 it might have been more worthwhile. Now, with next-to-useless alarms, a clicky speaker, unreliable synchronisation and clunky connectivity, I can't compare my iPAQ to a CLIE and say, "but look at this..." so much anymore. Is it still a Pocket PC if I put Linux on it?

[hshortt]

Well, I like it!

I consider it to work the way I expect, with a performance level that I am reasonably happy with and it has all the features I expect and want.

No problems, bring on the next gen.

[mvoosten]

The Alarms are a real pain.
futhermore I'm expereiencing lately that the Clock time of my Ipaq is getting behind when it's switched off. So it may happen that when I don't use the Ipaq for a couple of hours the time is set back a couple of hours and minutes.
This in combination with the alarms make the PPC2002 useless to me for daily use :x

[Pony99CA]

For the most part, I like the new OS. I do wish that they had let us know about a few changes, namely:

* iTask would only allow 30 links. I make up for this by using the Programs folder with subfolders and creating links, but that's not as nice as QStart.

* The city database would be removed. Whose bonehead decision was this? It broke my copy of PocketWatch, and I had to wait to get a version that allowed me to put my home town in.

* The Menu settings applet would only allow 9 entries. Why bother when it's easy enough to paste links directly into the Start Menu folder?

* The alarms would change. I don't like any of the new alarms -- they're all too quiet. I finally found a nice Gong alarm that I like even better than my old alarm, but if some people found the alarms too loud, why not allow sound schemes, like Windows CE 2.0 did, and have a Quiet scheme? (In fact, Windows CE 2.0 had a lot of features that I miss in Pocket PC 2002, but that's another topic.)

I also wish they had added some of the Power Tools into the OS, like the Internet Explorer Tools and Power Contacts. Those have been out for quite a while. Is the only reason they aren't in the OS because they aren't internationalized? They shouldn't be *that* hard to add.

In addition, AOL Instant Messenger no longer works the same when viewing a News link, which is a pain, because I have to keep reloading the news list after I finish a section.

Steve

[[Cruzer]]

I like it, but like everyone else I really wouldn't call this an upgrade but an update. I like it since most of all the update is usefull for corporate users and administrators. I can easliy access my network data. Easily sync my Exchange data. And now with WiFi, I have a more central location "my server" for my data. With the help of Netrunner of course.
Now on just peronal use there really isn't much of an upgrade. I bet if the upgrade came with spell checker people would be much happier since I would say most people use email and docs on there ppc. I know your probably gong to say just get the new devices. Sure if you have the money.

Well just my thoughts.

RC

[Timothy Rapson]

I got the upgrad since it was free.

It was promiced for last November. I had given up on it when it arrived in February. I stuck it up in the box with the original receept and service contract.

I have not installeded it. All I read here makes me glad I didn't.

I agree with most all of the concerns posted above by others who looked at the upgrade.

The number 1 thing I wanted was a spell chekcer for Word. Now, I will never get one. MS has included a Word Processor so no one else will ever do one. I am only thankful I only spent $60 on my Mono Ipaq. I love to hate the thing.

I also have not installed it because I was worried what would not run, I wondered if I would be able to see icons that were designed to look 3D on color screens, no PPC 2002 model is made to be Monochrome. With only 16 meg on my 3135, I don't know if it would hold anything with this much larger OS running. Does anyone have a final figure of how much memory a full install leaves you on a 3135 compared to a full original install of PPC 2000? I guess it would be impossible to compare them exactly as the features and programs are different.

So, the CD is up there on the shelf if I ever sell the Ipaq. I would definitely go for it if it included just the spell checker, but alas.......

[thebrix]

What worries me about PPC2002 is that the number of arbitrary decisions about what can and can't be done have increased without any ability to reverse or finesse them. The two obvious examples which I turn up nearly every day:

- alarm changes

- maximum 9 items in the Start Menu

- the X button

In the case of the first two, why was the better PPC2000 functionality replaced? (rhetorical question!)

In the main PPC2002 is better (far superior memory management for one - no more soft resets after a number of applications are opened and closed and the memory not released by PPC2000) but there are also significant demerits.

[peterawest]

I'm very happy with the upgrade. The only problem I ran into was limited memory because I loaded up the new MS Reader and Media Player.

However, I'd planned to upgrade the RAM so I knew that wouldn't be a problem. I just got my 3630 back from Times2Tech so now I have 128MB of RAM.

As for the OS, I find the Inbox especially runs much faster, and I like that.

[leximaea]

I purchased the upgrade from Compaq and never got around to installing it...and am glad I didn't. I have a laptop (ME) at home, a Win95 laptop at work (with Groupwise no less!). And, because I'm in IT, another "non-standard" Win2000 desktop (thank god they at least gave me admin rights!) at work. Talk about juggling OS systems! And yes, I use them all!
While excited about the eye-candy that 2002 offers, it seems like you don't gain a whole lot...and eat up a lot of extra ram by installing thre rest of the programs. I hate the Compaq sleeve, and the 32 Mg CF card seems to drain the battery really fast, so that option is out (until I get another Franklin Fix). Messenger I can live without, but I do use the connection manager quite a bit. I do get a bit jealous when I see screen shots of the new OS, and it almosts temps me to upgrade. And then I wisely put the unopened Compaq CD back in the box because my Alarm tells me I've got to get a move on or I will be late.

[oldan]

I thought it was a valuable upgrade... the one big reason I wanted it was that my company moved away from the direct dialup (which needed a dialup script, absent in Pocket PC 2000) to a VPN connection.

Unfortunately, the PPTP server we use, doesn't work with the Pocket Pc implementation of PPTP! Oh, well.

I notice that one other thing I wanted were also missing, an E-mail signature feature.

But I did notice that two or three things I did want are there:
1) the ability to click Services/Active Sync and go directly to my A/S mail.
2) the ability to sync folders
3) the ability to download files in P.I.E.
4) the ability to connect to and use files on my LAN servers

So, by and large, I'm happy I turned in my HP 548 for an iPaq, and I'll be happier when the PPTP works!

Oldan

[BoiseNative]

I upgraded my iPAQ 3135 to PPC2002 two weeks ago today. Here are my impressions (the good, the bad, and the ugly)…

THE GOOD (stuff I really like)

* Infrared sending & receiving is great! Gone are the days of navigating to "Infrared Receive" so someone can beam something to you, and gone is Peacemaker when you want share files with your Palm buddies.

* Syncing with email subfolders.

* Buttons on the Calendar toolbar that allow quickly switching between Agenda, Day, Week, Month, and Year views.

* Ability to view contacts by company and to view contacts by "No Categories"

* Skinable “Today” screen. Even in B/W, this is nice.

* File Explorer “remembers” the last directory you were viewing. Buttons on the file explorer toolbar allow you to quickly switch between RAM, storage card, or network directories. There’s also a “most recently used” listing for the last four directories you recently navigated.

* Internet Explorer’s back button returns you to the right place on the page you’re returning to.

* Desktop “pass-through” is pretty cool. If your desktop has a connection to the internet, your PPC can use that connection.

* Calculator has a foreign currency converter function. Might be handy for my upcoming trip to Canada.

---------

THE BAD (stuff that kinda bugs me)

* Say goodbye to your RAM! I upgraded my 3135 to 32MB of RAM last year, so I’m getting along okay with this upgrade, but I’m not sure how pure 3135 users with only 16MB of RAM will do. If you’ve been thinking about upping the amount of RAM in your 3135, now is the time to do it.

* Contacts are no longer backed up to flash memory. It was always reassuring to know that if there were some catastrophe while traveling, that no matter what…I’d be able to restore my contacts from the flash memory.

* No “Reverse Image” option. You color iPAQ guys are saying, “What?” For us monochrome guys, PPC2000 had a backlight option to reverse the image (dark background / light foreground). This improved the readability of some things when using the backlight.

* Annoying “Low Battery” warning at 40% of battery life.

* I installed the Dashboard application that came on my upgrade CD, but I found that it was too slow to use. I don’t know if there’s something odd about the settings or size of my calendar, contact, task, or inbox, but I couldn’t use this app. Also, the small icons on the Dashboard toolbar might look okay on a color iPAQ, but they were just little blobs on my B/W screen.

* The “X” button doesn’t really close a program. Come on MS! – How hard can it be?

* In lieu of the above, I got so used to using the “Q” button to kill a program in PPC2000, but now that has been moved to the “bent-arrow” button using Compaq’s iTask feature. I’m starting to really like iTask (you can kill all background tasks, all tasks, or just a single task), but it’ll take a while to retrain my brain neurons to push the right button. (yeah, yeah – I know you’re all saying “just remap the button idiot”)

* When using Transcriber for input in the Contacts program, the scroll bar doesn’t work right. You can’t grab the scroll bar and drag it up and down, and you can’t tap scroll bar area to move a page at a time. This has to be a bug, because scroll bars work fine with Transcriber in every other app I’ve tried.

* When beaming a contact between two PPC2002 units, if the contact only has a company name and no plain name, the sending unit acts like it sent, but the receiving unit doesn't get the contact.

* When beaming from a PPC2000 unit to a PPC2002 unit, the PPC2002 still requires you to manually launch Infrared Receive.

* When viewing a contact, you used to be able to tap the screen to begin editing the information. Now you must manually select edit from the toolbar.

* The new Microsoft Reader stores annotation files in main RAM, even if you’re reading a book from a storage card. Also, the reader doesn’t handle a 9MB book that I have. It starts off okay, but after navigating around the book for a while, the reader becomes incredibly slow. I noticed that the annotations file for this book grew to more than 200KB (even though I wasn’t annotating anything), so I deleted it. I could navigate around the book quickly again, but eventually the annotations file grew and things slowed down again. Also, I get an error message saying something like, “this book was activated for another user” when opening some of my Audible.com books. Yet Audible’s player doesn’t complain about opening any of them. I never had these problems with the PPC2000 Reader.

* The Power Contacts feature allowing you to create a task using a contact doesn’t exist (and installing PPC00 Power Contacts didn’t work in PPC02).


---------

THE UGLY (stuff I absolutely despise)

* ALARMS! The lack of repeating alarms for appointments. It’s inconsistent that the clock alarms repeat when they first go off, but not after a snooze. And why get rid of the old alarm sounds? How hard would it have been to just keep the PPC2000 sounds and add some new ones in PPC2002?! Microsoft is insane if they don’t come up with a downloadable patch!

* Speaker crackle after playing an alarm or notification sound. Doesn’t do this when I play the sounds from Explorer nor when setting up the alarm sound to use for a notification.

* Volume control is screwed up! I have the volume control set to the last notch before completely off, and it’s still too loud.

* It took more than 3 months to receive my upgrade CD.

* This “upgrade” CD cost $41 (including Compaq’s outrageous S&H fees). You’d think that you’d get some cool extra goodies on such a pricey CD, but no. Nearly all of the applications listed on the CD were hyperlinks to downloads from Microsoft’s website. I feel like I spent a lot of money just to get some hyperlinks!

[Kirk Stephens]

I think that Pocket PC 2002, was a rushed release. Microsoft didn't get 100% of the bugs ironed out. While there are still some flaws, I found the upgrade to be worthwhile. The skinning function, tap-and-hold, and in general the GUI gave my iPAQ a new flavor. However, PPC 2002 is a memory hog. Had I not had 64MB on my iPAQ, the OS would have run very very slow.

[philfp]

Internet Explorer’s back button returns you to the right place on the page you’re returning to.


As much as I've been irritated by numerous little things since the upgrade, the above IE change has just been worth the price of upgrading. How did I manage before?

[kattoon]

I do like the new PPC 2002 software except I absolutely HATE the alarm!!! I used to use my iPAQ as a travel alarm clock when I would go out of town. It worked great! Microsoft took away the ability to have the alarm repeat until you hit the snooze button. That is one thing I have always hated about Microsoft, add great features, but take away some of the most used features from a previous release.

I hope Microsoft puts out a patch for this. In the meantime, does anyone know of any other great alarm programs for the PPC?

Thanks

A Sleepy PPC2002 user!
:?

[jlp]

I'd have killed to have the graffiti clone back in PPC 2000.

It's always been there my friend!!!

But it wasn't offered as a SIP (keyboard) choice but as a special setup in the Jot (character recognizer) options. Therefore it was practically unknown and quite difficult/long to get to. If you have access to a PPC 2k device check this:
a) press the up arrow right to the SIP (keyboard) icon and choose Options
b) Input method should be Character Recognizer, then press the Options button
c) Choose Uppercase mode and finish by clicking OK, then OK again.

And voilà you have the Graffiti clone in your PPC 2k :)!!!


For all those folks here who miss the repeating alarms, just try SuperAlert that gives them back to you, with the added benefit of sounding them in ascending volume and you can launch a program/file when the alarm goes off.


I personally still use my Casio E-125 (PPC 2k). I've bought the PPC 2k2 Casio E-200 in January, but had a few problems, most of which where due to the PPC 2k2 OS, and that have been described here. So all in all I decided to go back to PPC 2k and keep my old, solid and trusty E-125.

All in all, looking at the poll figures it happens that 9 out of 10 people either despise or have lukewarm feelings about the PocketPC 2002 upgrade, a rather unacceptable result we should say :evil:.

Jason and all other MVP, be sure to convey this poll results to the relevant people.

[eric linsley]

over al i think the things i like about 2002 is thmes but i was REALLY disapointed that it ahd no spell checker
as well as hte constatn popin gnoise that has thankfully been fixed

will i go back.
nah

will i hunt down the microsft guys that made it

YES :twisted:
and ill put whosever head on a plate that removed the spellchecker


:twisted:
:twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[kattoon]

:evil:

I'm so sick of Microsoft putting out crappy upgrades just to make more money. I really didn't want to go to PocketPC2002, but since I upgraded my iPAQ to the 3835, I had no choice.

I didn't experience the popping with my previous 3600 series, but now, with my 3835, it pops constantly. Everytime I turn it on, or everytime I synch it, pop! Its extrememly annoying. And the fixes I find are for the earlier versions. I haven't found one for the 3800 series yet.

I also miss my alarm. I travel and used to use my ipaq as a travel alarm. It was great. Now I can't because I can't have the alarm repeat. And i'm sorry, but the new alarm doesn't even give me a good warning of an upcoming meeting. With one little "ding"...if i'm really busy, i miss it.

I've written to Microsoft and I hope this will be changed in the next money making scheme they call an "upgrade".