dhettel
12-25-2003, 10:16 PM
Sitting here at Christmas and thinking....
What we lost when HP bought Compaq.
IMHO Compaq was the first company to really run with the PocketPC, platform. Compaq created the iPAQ, and by so doing ensured the success of the PocketPC software. The iPAQ had a mystique, something the other PocketPC lacked. The iPAQ had Flash ROMs and it could and was upgraded, often. That gave it extra value, extra worth. It was something you where going to keep. It was worth the time it took, to get to know it, how it would work for you. How you could best use it. The 3600s where special in many ways. If you didn't like Microsoft's Windows CE you could put Linux on it. And if you didn't like Linux you could come back to Windows CE. Compaq would even restore your iPAQ if you turned it into a brick trying to put Linux on it. Compaq believed in the iPAQ. They where proud of it. There was the Parrot page. The 3600 was upgradeable and it didn't take long to figure out it would be around for a while.
Now look at what HP has given us. Your iPAQ today will be replaced with a newer, improved model in six to eight months. When the first of a series is released, expect to have problems with it. Hmm no need to take the time to learn how your iPAQ works, you will not be using it anyway in 8 months to a year.
Hp gave us SD slots, and we where told about all the wonderful cards that would work in SD slots. But SD slots in 3800s where not SDI/O slots, we learned a new word SDI/O. HP gave us 3900s to fix the limitations of the 3800s. 3900s had SDIO slots! But wait the 3900s needed a ROM upgrade to work! We got SD Memory cards that failed, and kept on failing. Yep some worked, but lots of them didn't. I still see and hear of SD memory cards that fail. Whose fault is it? Remember hearing about 1 GB cards, 2 GB cards before the end of the year? Even 10 and 20 GB cards? Where are they? Just around the corner, sure to be released next month. One day they will arrive. Just think hard drive capacity on a little card? Will the card continue to work tho? Can I count on it to last a month, six months, a year?
I never had a problem with flash memory until my 3870 and SD cards, I still have my first PCMCIA flash card, and it works to! My first handful of SD cards are all in the trash somewhere. They have all failed. Just think how much more data we will be able to store on 1 GB SD cards. How much more we stand to lose if that 20 GB SD card finds its way into your iPAQ.
Do you think by then we will be able to store programs like Journal Bar, and Battery Bar, IP Dashboard on the SD card, and have them run? Be able to run the newest driver for the Wi-Fi card from the Storage card, and have it work?
Remember when cards where coming out with IR emitters to control your home entertainment system? We where seeing CF cards and devices you could plug into the headphone jack. Then Hp gave us Nevo. And all the others kind of fell by the wayside. Nevo was great, if you used it. If you didn't, Nevo took up little space, and didn't cause problems. Then Hp killed Nevo.
What has Hp given you? An iPAQ with a life of 6 to 8 months? Then it becomes obsolete, a throw away? SD cards that last a month, 6 months, a year, even 2 maybe 3 years? SDIO cards that may work, or may not, where half of the card sticks out of the top of your iPAQ. Where the body is as thin as a match stick, just waiting to snap? Where SDIO cards if you can find them, are more expensive than CF cards.
Yes all this stuff is new. But should we run madly to embrace it, just because it is new? Is newness reason enough? Does it meet a real need of ours? Or is it just a way to get us to spend? Does it help you be more productive, that in the 5 to 6 months that it takes to learn and understand your device, to know it's little quirks, the device becomes obsolete?
Some things are great steps forward, replaceable batteries for example. But do I really need a replaceable battery, if my device will be obsolete in six or eight months? America has become a throw-away society. I can't help but think when you look at society that way, it lessen the value of everything. Corporate greed is wrong, and it is dangerous. Because corporations have the money and the skill to teach us all to be greedy too. Isn't that the values they teach, what was good enough yesterday is no longer good enough? That you deserve better? That you need better?
I see lots of things that could be improved, how about the first PocketPC with a GB or more of internal memory? If we can put a GB of memory, and interface electronics on a postage stamp size card, do you really thing it wouldn't fit in your PocketPC? Why isn't it there? Why is the main memory limited to 32 MB, or even 64 MB? If you have one of the newest you may be lucky and have as much as 128 MB, but to much of that needs to be use to store programs, that can't be stored on the Storage Card. Would that be something you wouldn't want? Or the first PocketPC with a Storage Card that you could actually use as one would use a hard drive in a PC? Where programs store on it could be run on the today screen, or short cuts on the start menu would keep their icons, after a soft reset.
Yes Hp has given us built-in Wi-Fi, but where is the storage space, to effectively use that Wi-Fi ability? 802.11b is old now, but most PocketPC I have seen don't even operate at true 802.11b speeds, there is a bottle neck, that limits the ability to move that data within the PocketPC at anything near true 802.11 b speeds. Does one really need an 802.11 g connection to move 32 MB of data? Or even an 802.11 b connection. If we are going to have the ability to connect at these speeds, shouldn't it be because we can use them effectively? We have 802.11 b that is like ten times faster than most DSL connections, but loading a web page even with DSL is slow.
Then there is Bluetooth. Plugging in the phone cord is rather simple, even my 3 year old knows how to plug in and unplug the phone. Bluetooth the cable replacement. Wasn't the idea suppose to be cable replacement? Did you really think you would spends hours in trying to figure out how you would go about plugging in that phone cable? Or the Bluetooth phone cable? Or the Bluetooth GPS cable? Maps that can't be loaded on SD memory cards, because you lose the connection when you try to read the map data from the SD memory card. Requiring you to reset your device. But don't worry, the next one will be better. Do more. Display more. Like the Toshiba e800, a beautiful VGA screen, but the only thing you can use in VGA, is one program out of the box? As if that was not sad enough, they went and made it hard, to add your own. Did you buy an e800 and pay Toshiba to work against you too? That ROM created to disable the Start Menu in VGA mode. Think that was a bug? Think the programmer created that for free for Toshiba?
Of course your next PocketPC will not be perfect, it will have new flaws, that will never be truly fix. But that's OK there will be an improved model in 5 months, that will do more, and also less.....
Isn't that what Hp has taught us to expect? That Toshiba has taught us to expect? Can anyone say e740, or 3870? Did Toshiba look at Hp and how Hp treated it's 3800 owners, and learn from that? Is that why we have the upgradeable e740 with no upgrade? Is that why the Compaq Bluetooth Jacket is supported so well in Windows Mobile 2003? Why owners of 3900s who paid for an upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003, have the newest Bluetooth Software in ROM? Is that perhaps why after paying to upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003, with our devices limited to 64 MB of memory, if we are lucky we have RAM updates the eat into that limited 64 MB of memory for Bluetooth updates, for Wi-Fi driver updates, for Reader updates, for Microsoft MSN Messenger updates? Anyone recall how Compaq did updates? Anyone see where the real expectations are headed?
David Hettel
What we lost when HP bought Compaq.
IMHO Compaq was the first company to really run with the PocketPC, platform. Compaq created the iPAQ, and by so doing ensured the success of the PocketPC software. The iPAQ had a mystique, something the other PocketPC lacked. The iPAQ had Flash ROMs and it could and was upgraded, often. That gave it extra value, extra worth. It was something you where going to keep. It was worth the time it took, to get to know it, how it would work for you. How you could best use it. The 3600s where special in many ways. If you didn't like Microsoft's Windows CE you could put Linux on it. And if you didn't like Linux you could come back to Windows CE. Compaq would even restore your iPAQ if you turned it into a brick trying to put Linux on it. Compaq believed in the iPAQ. They where proud of it. There was the Parrot page. The 3600 was upgradeable and it didn't take long to figure out it would be around for a while.
Now look at what HP has given us. Your iPAQ today will be replaced with a newer, improved model in six to eight months. When the first of a series is released, expect to have problems with it. Hmm no need to take the time to learn how your iPAQ works, you will not be using it anyway in 8 months to a year.
Hp gave us SD slots, and we where told about all the wonderful cards that would work in SD slots. But SD slots in 3800s where not SDI/O slots, we learned a new word SDI/O. HP gave us 3900s to fix the limitations of the 3800s. 3900s had SDIO slots! But wait the 3900s needed a ROM upgrade to work! We got SD Memory cards that failed, and kept on failing. Yep some worked, but lots of them didn't. I still see and hear of SD memory cards that fail. Whose fault is it? Remember hearing about 1 GB cards, 2 GB cards before the end of the year? Even 10 and 20 GB cards? Where are they? Just around the corner, sure to be released next month. One day they will arrive. Just think hard drive capacity on a little card? Will the card continue to work tho? Can I count on it to last a month, six months, a year?
I never had a problem with flash memory until my 3870 and SD cards, I still have my first PCMCIA flash card, and it works to! My first handful of SD cards are all in the trash somewhere. They have all failed. Just think how much more data we will be able to store on 1 GB SD cards. How much more we stand to lose if that 20 GB SD card finds its way into your iPAQ.
Do you think by then we will be able to store programs like Journal Bar, and Battery Bar, IP Dashboard on the SD card, and have them run? Be able to run the newest driver for the Wi-Fi card from the Storage card, and have it work?
Remember when cards where coming out with IR emitters to control your home entertainment system? We where seeing CF cards and devices you could plug into the headphone jack. Then Hp gave us Nevo. And all the others kind of fell by the wayside. Nevo was great, if you used it. If you didn't, Nevo took up little space, and didn't cause problems. Then Hp killed Nevo.
What has Hp given you? An iPAQ with a life of 6 to 8 months? Then it becomes obsolete, a throw away? SD cards that last a month, 6 months, a year, even 2 maybe 3 years? SDIO cards that may work, or may not, where half of the card sticks out of the top of your iPAQ. Where the body is as thin as a match stick, just waiting to snap? Where SDIO cards if you can find them, are more expensive than CF cards.
Yes all this stuff is new. But should we run madly to embrace it, just because it is new? Is newness reason enough? Does it meet a real need of ours? Or is it just a way to get us to spend? Does it help you be more productive, that in the 5 to 6 months that it takes to learn and understand your device, to know it's little quirks, the device becomes obsolete?
Some things are great steps forward, replaceable batteries for example. But do I really need a replaceable battery, if my device will be obsolete in six or eight months? America has become a throw-away society. I can't help but think when you look at society that way, it lessen the value of everything. Corporate greed is wrong, and it is dangerous. Because corporations have the money and the skill to teach us all to be greedy too. Isn't that the values they teach, what was good enough yesterday is no longer good enough? That you deserve better? That you need better?
I see lots of things that could be improved, how about the first PocketPC with a GB or more of internal memory? If we can put a GB of memory, and interface electronics on a postage stamp size card, do you really thing it wouldn't fit in your PocketPC? Why isn't it there? Why is the main memory limited to 32 MB, or even 64 MB? If you have one of the newest you may be lucky and have as much as 128 MB, but to much of that needs to be use to store programs, that can't be stored on the Storage Card. Would that be something you wouldn't want? Or the first PocketPC with a Storage Card that you could actually use as one would use a hard drive in a PC? Where programs store on it could be run on the today screen, or short cuts on the start menu would keep their icons, after a soft reset.
Yes Hp has given us built-in Wi-Fi, but where is the storage space, to effectively use that Wi-Fi ability? 802.11b is old now, but most PocketPC I have seen don't even operate at true 802.11b speeds, there is a bottle neck, that limits the ability to move that data within the PocketPC at anything near true 802.11 b speeds. Does one really need an 802.11 g connection to move 32 MB of data? Or even an 802.11 b connection. If we are going to have the ability to connect at these speeds, shouldn't it be because we can use them effectively? We have 802.11 b that is like ten times faster than most DSL connections, but loading a web page even with DSL is slow.
Then there is Bluetooth. Plugging in the phone cord is rather simple, even my 3 year old knows how to plug in and unplug the phone. Bluetooth the cable replacement. Wasn't the idea suppose to be cable replacement? Did you really think you would spends hours in trying to figure out how you would go about plugging in that phone cable? Or the Bluetooth phone cable? Or the Bluetooth GPS cable? Maps that can't be loaded on SD memory cards, because you lose the connection when you try to read the map data from the SD memory card. Requiring you to reset your device. But don't worry, the next one will be better. Do more. Display more. Like the Toshiba e800, a beautiful VGA screen, but the only thing you can use in VGA, is one program out of the box? As if that was not sad enough, they went and made it hard, to add your own. Did you buy an e800 and pay Toshiba to work against you too? That ROM created to disable the Start Menu in VGA mode. Think that was a bug? Think the programmer created that for free for Toshiba?
Of course your next PocketPC will not be perfect, it will have new flaws, that will never be truly fix. But that's OK there will be an improved model in 5 months, that will do more, and also less.....
Isn't that what Hp has taught us to expect? That Toshiba has taught us to expect? Can anyone say e740, or 3870? Did Toshiba look at Hp and how Hp treated it's 3800 owners, and learn from that? Is that why we have the upgradeable e740 with no upgrade? Is that why the Compaq Bluetooth Jacket is supported so well in Windows Mobile 2003? Why owners of 3900s who paid for an upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003, have the newest Bluetooth Software in ROM? Is that perhaps why after paying to upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003, with our devices limited to 64 MB of memory, if we are lucky we have RAM updates the eat into that limited 64 MB of memory for Bluetooth updates, for Wi-Fi driver updates, for Reader updates, for Microsoft MSN Messenger updates? Anyone recall how Compaq did updates? Anyone see where the real expectations are headed?
David Hettel