Waiting times for UK

[FieldDoc]

Hi,
Ordered my Dell at midnight Saturday 15th March. Dell says it will be ready 27th March, is currently pre-production.

How long did other people have to wait to get theirs in the UK?

[robert_uk]

ordered last tuesday 11th march, at about midday.
projected arrival was friday the 21st.
arrived yesterday monday 17th.

[FieldDoc]

Thats cool. Did you ever have trouble tracking your order with orderwatch? I keep getting the following message:

We have located your order but we cannot advise a status, please email Dell Customer Care following the instructions below and we will be in contact with you.

How hard is it to track an order I ask you!

[robert_uk]

yes it did do that temporarily.
i think it went from pre production - is that status 2 ? - to 'we have located your order but cannot advise status' - and then straight to 5 in one day, being the day after i placed the order.

i think the status you are currently getting is just temporary, if it's the same as mine, it'll be status 5 tomorrow. after all, the axims are all ready on a shelf in some warehouse, they just have to put a sticker with your address on the box !

the order tracking with the courier company is excellent though. tells you every stage, raheen to limerick, limerick to coventry, coventry to nuneaton, nuneaton to southampton ...

btw, when you open it up, and connect the main battery, and insert the watch battery (the backup one) and then the instructions say "put on charge for at least 4 hours" - well put it this way, i wasn't waiting, and fired it up with the charger connected, and it said 80% charge already. so don't hang about waiting for 4 hours before you starting fiddling with it !

p.s. battery pack 2003 is excellent, i'd say don't bother with other freeware start menu enhancers. i'm trialling it at the moment, but will be buying when it expires.

[FieldDoc]

thanks for the advice rob - nice to know i don't have to wait ages to charge it...that always annoyed me about new mobile phones!

I have just received an email saying it shipped this morning!!! Do the courier company contact you separately from Dell?

[robert_uk]

hi, yes, they'll phone you to tell you which day it will be delivered, they just say between 8 am and 6 pm, can't be more specific.
i'd expect they'll say friday.

it's quite different from using a palm, i took the day off and spent most of it fiddling, installing apps, configuring, just working out how to use the thing. still can't figure out how to delete a document.

oh, and if you need extra memory, compact flash cards etc. try www.valueflash.co.uk - i bought a 256mb CF samsung card from them (and it arrived the next day too) for £49 ish. incl postage.

word of warning - be careful installing the watch battery on the back. you have to use the tip of the stylus to press in a plastic catch to release the battery cover. that's ok, then put in the battery, now the tricky part, getting the cover back on. i managed to misalign it somehow, and it was tricky to release it again without snapping it, which thankfully i managed.

[FieldDoc]

Appreciate the advice Rob! You were bang on - courier phoned today and its coming friday. I expect i'll spend all weekend playing with it!

Have you played any video on it? I'm eager to know what it's like as I am planning on using it for that purpose quite a bit (to brighten up dull train journeys!).

[robert_uk]

cool !

i've played one movie file to show people at work, the mtv lotr spoof it's .wmv compressed to 2477k. plays fine, very impressive, no skipping at all, just using media player. need to get a higher quality movie on there, may try in a minute.

the only problem is, and i don't know if this is particular to media player, but the axim assumes as u haven't done anything for so many minutes (mine's on 60 secs i think) it automatically dims the screen, not great if you're watching something. so best to increase that time limit if you're going to be watching movies often.

mp3's are ok, certainly listenable direct from the headphone socket, haven't tried anything other than 128kbps. i've seen mention of .ogg files and other formats on here, so may explore those at a later date.

there were tonnes of people ordering those £7 ipaq's on amazon, and laughing gleefully at their fortune. yeah, right, says me, like those orders are really going to be fulfilled. and they're not !