View Full Version : We all want Walt on our Pocket PC
Jason Dunn
08-03-2002, 01:33 AM
<a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/walt_treo.tsk">http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/walt_treo.tsk</a><br /><br />In honour of Walt's oh-so-positive "review" of the Treo, uh, I mean the T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition, someone has put together a Today screen theme that sums up the entire article in a few pithy words. Look:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/walt_treo.gif" /><br /><br />I should be getting an XDA-ish device (the non-branded hardware from HTC) next week, and I'll put it through its paces and report back. I have more of a response on this issue, but I'll save that for Monday.
Ed Hansberry
08-03-2002, 02:58 AM
Definitely a new hotness in Today Skins.
Mobile Bob
08-03-2002, 04:05 AM
Walt must be full of beans. I am very pleased with this thing now that my GPRS connection has been configured properly. Solid construction, more than adequate screen (even at 4096 colors), great battery life, etc. And I really like the speakerphone feature; that will get used fairly often.
Back to the GPRS connection. It had appeared to be set up right out of the box, but I just couldn't connect. I was shopping at a mall in a nearby city when I came upon a Voicestream booth. A wireless specialist there spent some time trying to resolve my GPRS problem, and to him, it appeared to be set up correctly just the way I received it; yet it would not connect. He was supposed to get back with me, but before he did, I called Voicestream's Customer Care. I talked to another wireless specialist who walked me through setting up a new connection profile that was entirely different from what had been set up on the device before they shipped it to me. The new connection works flawlessly. Very cool to be able to do this away from my WiFi setup at home and at school.
The only negatives so far are that the phone seems to require a strong signal (one dropped call so far), and this morning I had to soft reset the Pocket PC to get it to wake up/turn on (the Pocket PC was off, but the phone was on because the green light was flashing indicating that it was receiving a signal). Also, I complained to the guy at the mall that Voicestream's web site did not mention the $50 rebate (nor did I receive one in my box) that was being offered at the stores, and he set me up with one :) .
marconelly
08-03-2002, 04:40 AM
uhhh... let's not be pathetic.
pocket pc is fine and all, but some people here are confusing it with a religion, it seems.
seinman
08-03-2002, 06:11 AM
uhhh... let's not be pathetic.
pocket pc is fine and all, but some people here are confusing it with a religion, it seems.
if you think this is bad, you haven't hung out on palminfocenter much...
Dave Conger
08-03-2002, 06:59 AM
And if you have a Zaurus, he hates that too.
innersky
08-03-2002, 11:16 AM
he doesn' seems to be the only one who dislikes it.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2876220,00.html
:lol: That just cracks me up, lol ! Poor Walt... :lol:
All he needs now is to have a cracked eyeglass on one side, and a black eye on the other, with an old top hat or other old hat on top of his head, with some hay sticking out of it hobo style, lol... I mean, image is important and all...
Jason Dunn
08-03-2002, 06:51 PM
pocket pc is fine and all, but some people here are confusing it with a religion, it seems.
Nah, just havin' some fun. YOU seem to be taking it too seriously. :lol:
uhhh... let's not be pathetic. pocket pc is fine and all, but some people here are confusing it with a religion, it seems.
religion is usually the cause of most wars, the stakes are always to high, so much tension, without going into a rant--what we have here is pure and simple fun.
when you can't have fun, provide parody, poke fun of each other, then i'd say it's more like a religion. right now we've got lots of smart, funny people that like technology. i can't think of a cooler community.
can i get an amen'!
cheers,
pt
yvilla
08-03-2002, 09:42 PM
can i get an amen'!
cheers,
pt
I'll amen that :!:
he doesn' seems to be the only one who dislikes it.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2876220,00.html
Well, for sure here's quite right on a few counts; he's not receiving the device blindly saying yes it's great and all. He's put it to the test and found a few flaws and I completely agree with him on most counts.
For example when he says:
"One thing any converged device should do is enable me to respond via any available medium to any inbound communication. For example, with this device, I should be able to respond to any entry in the call log using my choice of SMS, e-mail, or phone call. Also, I should be able to pick any of the contact's available phone numbers. However, all you can do with phone log is reply via SMS or phone (no e-mail) and the only phone number you can use is the one listed in the call log. Likewise, from the device's Pocket Outlook inbox, you cannot reply to an e-mail with anything but an e-mail. If the integration had been done right, I would be able to reply to an e-mail using SMS or phone as well."
It looks like programmers didn't intensely put it to use; they just thought about what would be needed, programmed it and tested if what they did worked right. No deep thought was put into it and the article author's comments are pointing this out.
jdhill
08-03-2002, 10:57 PM
"One thing any converged device should do is enable me to respond via any available medium to any inbound communication. For example, with this device, I should be able to respond to any entry in the call log using my choice of SMS, e-mail, or phone call. Also, I should be able to pick any of the contact's available phone numbers. However, all you can do with phone log is reply via SMS or phone (no e-mail) and the only phone number you can use is the one listed in the call log. Likewise, from the device's Pocket Outlook inbox, you cannot reply to an e-mail with anything but an e-mail. If the integration had been done right, I would be able to reply to an e-mail using SMS or phone as well."
This and some of the other things mentioned in the review would be great new features. Let's remember, the Pocket PC Phone Edition is a version 1.0 product on the phone integration side. It's going to get better. Hopefully some of the features mentioned by this and other reviewers will make it into future releases.
Foo Fighter
08-03-2002, 11:13 PM
You guys are going way overboard. You are attacking Walt for his negative opinion, when in fact there seems to be a concensus among analaysts and reviewers that Microsoft didn't get it right on the first attempt. Which is typical of Microsoft.
Check out Anchordesk's Friday show: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2835517,00.html#
Rob Enderle doesn't like the PPC Phone either. Can you see a pattern here? Nobody seems to be gushing over this product. *Gasp*...could it be possible these people have a valid point? 8O
Stop acting as though the whole damn world is out to get Pocket PC. :roll:
CoffeeKid
08-03-2002, 11:37 PM
I agree with Foo Fighter.
There's still far too many things that the PPC gets wrong, and from what I've read of the first implementation of the PPC phone devices, there's plenty wrong on that as well.
Palm and its licensees get plenty of things wrong too, don't get me wrong. But the PPC has just as many sore points, if not more because of the PPC's platform attempt to "do more". I wish Microsoft would stop trying to anticipate what we want to do with the devices, and give us the core tools to do it ourselves. That would stimulate and foster growth in the PPC software market to no end as well, as people would do apps that use core services to customize the device.
Think about it, wouldn't it be great all around if you could go into the OS, with some serious tinkering, and manually set things like the battery level warning (I'd set mine to 20%), or key sounds for alarms, repeating alarms, or gasp, wether or not you wanted the X to minimize apps or close them outright?
And you know developers would then write programs to facilitate and ease the transition for these core services....
But I digress. Here's one HUGE problem I see with the PPC phone devices that hasn't been addressed yet:
No easy way to port that GPRS signal over to another device, like say my notebook computer.
Until a PPC phone device can do that, I'm not buyin'. And the PPC device would have to be essentially "off" (saving batteries) while still providing GPRS to the external device. And still be able to answer a call, like how my Motorola P280 can today.
Mark
denivan
08-04-2002, 01:18 AM
hmm, i thought this was pointed out clearly by now, but apparantly some of you missed it.
What these rants are about is : we hate reviewers that don't know their stuff. Like previously said, it's painfully obvious that some reviewers haven't gotten passed the manual and simply haven't turned the product on. Some points written in the urls posted earlier where simple lies, nothing more.
In this thread tho, some criticism is posted about ppc phone edition, which in fact is based on facts. Therefore this criticism has the right to exist and is totally correct.
Bottom Line :Criticism based on lies is terrible and isn't worthy to such a product and diserves to be ranted at.
Greetz
Ivan
marconelly
08-04-2002, 02:20 AM
Nah, just havin' some fun. YOU seem to be taking it too seriously.
Well, reading all those rebuttals of latest news articles, it seemed to me that Ed Hansberry was pretty serious and pissed off. Then came this today screen...
jdhill
08-04-2002, 02:46 AM
Nah, just havin' some fun. YOU seem to be taking it too seriously.
Well, reading all those rebuttals of latest news articles, it seemed to me that Ed Hansberry was pretty serious and pissed off. Then came this today screen...
Oh lighten up !!!
In general the tone around here is fairly light-hearted. There are occsional rants. But we don't always take things that seriously around here.
Well, reading all those rebuttals of latest news articles, it seemed to me that Ed Hansberry was pretty serious and pissed off. Then came this today screen...
think saturday night live meets techtv, but a web site, about pocket pcs. that's what we got going on here. no one is pissed, we're all having a great time.
cheers,
pt
Ed Hansberry
08-04-2002, 03:18 AM
You guys are going way overboard. You are attacking Walt
Checked your avatar lately Foo?
Jonathon Watkins
08-05-2002, 12:59 AM
What these rants are about is : we hate reviewers that don't know their stuff. Like previously said, it's painfully obvious that some reviewers haven't gotten passed the manual and simply haven't turned the product on.
I'l amen that. I found the today screen very funny though. It's lighthearted fun and should be treated as such.
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