Ordered Dell Axim over iPAQ 1910

[TJ]

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice from a number of you, e.g. Hansberry and Kati42. As my old Visor Deluxe's screen is dying, I was planning on switching to a PPC, and was leaning towards the 1910, if not the Sony NX70. The last couple of days, along with another set of posts, I decided that, while the 1910 would work fine, I didn't want to take a chance and get "left behind" when a new OS comes out. Figuring the Axim was much likely to be "upgradable", I ordered it the other day. Again, my thanks.

TJ

[Kati Compton]

No problem. I hope it works out. Not just for your sake, but now I feel responsible.... ;)

[TJ]

Actually, you were pretty objective Kati42 (though the memory stick remark was quite succinct, a bit humorous, and and put the Sony into perspective!). It still may take a little while to get here, but looking forward to it!

[Kati Compton]

Actually, you were pretty objective Kati42 (though the memory stick remark was quite succinct, a bit humorous, and and put the Sony into perspective!). It still may take a little while to get here, but looking forward to it!

I try, but I admit I am biased against Sony. I got a Vaio laptop for Christmas from my husband. The model came with either 98 or 2K, and since I had just gotten a full academic (legit) version of 2K, my husband ordered the 98. Well, it was very difficult to get 2K installed. I eventually got some drivers off of Sony UK's site, but Sony US was completely uncooperative in every way and I had an extremely unsatisfying support call trying to make this happen. So that soured me quite a bit, although I understand it's common practice actually to not allow OS upgrades on laptops. (Which also means that you lose any bundled software btw).

It also points to the difference between owning a single copy of a program and licensing it, as the bundled programs can only be reinstalled from a recovery disk onto the original computer with the original OS, and failed when I tried to reinstall onto the same laptop but with Win2K. But I digress.

This extends beyond my laptop experience, however, as I really resent the "does not play well with others" mentality that Sony seems to have. All of their products work together great - provided you buy only Sony. So if you're loyal to the brand you get to do all the things you should, but otherwise it's a pain. And like others have stated, it's not like the technology was actually significantly BETTER in any way. It seems to me it was created with the sole purpose of forcing the consumer to do something, which I don't like. As a consumer I want to buy the best digital camera for my needs, the best PDA for my needs, and the best laptop for my needs.

If those happen to all be the same brand, great - they're doing a good job. If not, then that's my perogative. Since Sony's products will not work well with other brands, then I have to eliminate it as a contender, as I figure that SOME other brand will be better for me in SOMETHING than Sony. And I want my gear to work together. So I will not be buying a Sony laptop next time around (probably fall). I do not have a Sony desktop now. I have a Canon digital camera, and I have a Dell Axim instead. In areas where compatibility is less of an issue, I'm more willing to consider their products.

Sorry this was such a long response, and off-topic at that. There goes the "succinct" bit... ;)

[Pony99CA]

This extends beyond my laptop experience, however, as I really resent the "does not play well with others" mentality that Sony seems to have.

I loved a news article I read where some Sony executive called on people to help create industry standards (at CES, I think). Just a day or two earlier, I read a news article about Memory Stick Pro. Yeah, I guess CompactFlash or SD aren't "standard" enough for Sony. :roll:

That said, I love my 32" Wega XBR, which plays fine with my Mitsubishi S-VHS-E VCR, my Panasonic ShowStopper (aka Replay) and my Toshiba DVD player. :-)

Steve

[Janak Parekh]

The model came with either 98 or 2K, and since I had just gotten a full academic (legit) version of 2K, my husband ordered the 98. Well, it was very difficult to get 2K installed.
I own a Sony SR17K, and bought the "K" deliberately because of that. Sony views laptops very much as closed-box consumer items -- they have OS-tailored ROM's, and customized drivers, and absolutely do not support any OS other than the one they installed. I got XP installed without too much trouble, but even though they "support" it they don't offer the PowerPanel stuff - I had to install it from the Win2000 bundle--and with a great deal of pain, may I add, because the CD's launcher didn't boot, so I had to navigate endless weirdly-named directories. My old laptop, a 505TX, was given to my sister, and there's no driver download for anything but 98/98SE. I got Win2k working on it, somehow that laptop runs everything, but no power management again!

Sony makes great laptops, but my next one will be a 12" Apple Powerbook anyway - can't resist the temptation of having a unit that can be UNIX, run Office, and sync with a Pocket PC. :D I own a Casio camera, and won't deal with broken 128MB-limited Memory Stick technology. My SR17K's Memory Stick slot has been used as a distraction for my fingers (try and flip door open, play with eject button), and that's it. ;)

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice from a number of you, e.g. Hansberry and Kati42. As my old Visor Deluxe's screen is dying, I was planning on switching to a PPC, and was leaning towards the 1910, if not the Sony NX70.
TJ, I think you'll find the size of the Axim to be perfectly fine then. It has nearly the exact same dimensions as the Visor.

--janak

[theonegod]

Actually Kat I used to work for Sony repair and refurbish on the laptops and I can tell ya why providing you with a upgrade on your laptop is hard for them. Their software is setup all in the restore CDs and they dont really have much in the way of upgrade CDs. So they would have to send you essentially a 2k system recovery CD. The problem is that the system recovery CDs are coded to work only with certain bios revision and they intensionally code the xp and 2k machines differently. Thus you would actually have to flash the bios and input the correct code then use the cd just to install 2k. Yeah, they make things difficult. Drivers would be fine and dandy but their support department doesnt even have a organized software library. It is just a matter of which techs have stashed a good enough collection of CDs in their desks usually from customer repairs.

And yes i did customer repairs and refurbish jobs on their laptop, desktop and pda line. All 3.

[Kati Compton]

Actually Kat I used to work for Sony repair and refurbish on the laptops and I can tell ya why providing you with a upgrade on your laptop is hard for them. Their software is setup all in the restore CDs and they dont really have much in the way of upgrade CDs. So they would have to send you essentially a 2k system recovery CD. The problem is that the system recovery CDs are coded to work only with certain bios revision and they intensionally code the xp and 2k machines differently. Thus you would actually have to flash the bios and input the correct code then use the cd just to install 2k. Yeah, they make things difficult. Drivers would be fine and dandy but their support department doesnt even have a organized software library. It is just a matter of which techs have stashed a good enough collection of CDs in their desks usually from customer repairs.


I knew that if I had to do system recovery, it would send me back to Win98. As long as I could then reinstall Win2K, I was fine with that. And no you don't have to flash the bios to install Win2K at all, though. From what you're saying, only for the recovery disk. All I wanted from them was the drivers. But the tech support people said that there were no drivers for Win2K on an SR-17 laptop, which was incorrect, given that I found most of them on the Sony-UK site.

In short - I wasn't expecting them to give me a full upgrade. While I was upset about losing the applications, I would have dealt with that if they had just helped me get the drivers that I knew must exist.

The attitude of the CS reps was also just plain dense, rude, and indignant that I would want to install a different OS (?) on a laptop. "Well, why didn't you buy the 17K then?" "Because it's more expensive and I already had an unopened Win2K box sitting here on my desk" "You should have bought the 17K then." Argh!

[cdcooker]

I completely agree with each one of the posters here. I am also feeling more and more skeptical about purchasing Sony products in the future. Their business ideology and ambition is even worser than those Microsoft bashers think of Microsoft. They want all the consumer electronics exist in a Sony eco-system. For me, this is the last thing I would like to see it happens. As long as we are educated, we won't let this happens. Yes, I must admit that their product design is first class. They know what an average customer wants. However, their business practice is very questionable. For example, they introduced the high end clie NX70v couple months ago only, and they announced the new NX90 last week at CES. Their product cycle is simply too fast to swallow. Same as their other clie models. I used to hope that how good it would be if Sony joined the PocketPC camp, instead of aging PalmOS platform. However, I am glad that they stick with PalmOS and never mess up with PocketPC. With the introduction of Dell Axim and iPAQ H1910, and the not-yet-release Samsung PocketPC Phone, I think the PocketPC landscape has never been brighter than now.

I am extremely upset with their recent introcution of Memory Stick Pro. It is not backward compatible to their old products. So why not choose an industry standard like SD or CF, instead of introduced another new stick that is expensive and doesn't have a wide acceptance.

[Pony99CA]

I am extremely upset with their recent introcution of Memory Stick Pro. It is not backward compatible to their old products. So why not choose an industry standard like SD or CF, instead of introduced another new stick that is expensive and doesn't have a wide acceptance.

As my previous post said, their bigwig's call to support standards does seem laughable. However, Memory Stick Pro will be backward compatible with some devices, I read. Sony will post a list of those devices, supposedly.

Steve

[cdcooker]

The new memory stick pro only work under a handful of products that Sony introduced in the past few months, including the F717 digital camera.

One thing I have to point out is that they claim the capacity of the new Memory Stick Pro can go up to 32GB. Wow, this is too good to be true. I remembered they claimed similarly when they introduced the original Memorsy stick, which will go up to 4GB or something. Well we all know this is not true and the capacity of the old stick topped at 128MB. They have a silly idea that introduce an bridge format that have a toggle switch on the old stick that allows higher capacity.

[Janak Parekh]

One thing I have to point out is that they claim the capacity of the new Memory Stick Pro can go up to 32GB. Wow, this is too good to be true.
I think they're only talking about memory addressability; we're not going to see this soon. However, I'm pretty sure that this time they went to great lengths to ensure, should the memory densities exist, that the form factor would handle that. Heads probably rolled with the existing Memory Stick debacle as it is. Not that I'm getting any Memory Stick solutions soon, mind you.

Steve, I believe only the F717 and the Clie NX series are backwards-compatible. Most of their older products need the weird 128MB-sized "banked" memory structure.

--janak