Pocketop Now Charging For Drivers?

[Janak Parekh]

<a href="http://www.pocketop.net">Pocketop</a> is the maker of a relatively popular wireless keyboard. Their driver has also been a popular way to get landscape use of Pocket PC 2002, even for users that didn't have a Pocketop keyboard. However, they recently changed their <a href="http://www.ultimatekeyboard.com/drivers.htm">driver download page</a> to a request form. There's a small link at the bottom, though, and if you <a href="http://www.ultimatekeyboard.com/process.htm">click on it</a> they freely admit that...<br /><br />"Until now, we have supplied drivers free, which means that whenever an owner of a Pocketop keyboard has upgraded to a new hand-held device, he or she has been able to continue to use the keyboard without incurring further expense. It has also come to our attention that users of portable keyboards purchased from our competitors download and use our free drivers because of their enhanced functionality and compatibility.<br /><br />For these reasons, we have introduced a registration and payment policy for drivers. Purchasers of our keyboards must register with us and pay US$10 to $20 for each driver. We believe this is a modest price compared with our costs, and will help us get new drivers out in a timely fashion to meet your needs and the increased number of new devices entering the market."<br /><br />I understand their desire not to have people profit unfairly over their product, but I'm torn about legitimate owners of Pocketop keyboards -- if, say, I were to buy a Pocketop keyboard today and it had an old CD without WM2003 drivers, if I lost the CD, or if the next version of Pocket PC were to come out and my CD wouldn't work, I'd be up the creek. In fact, PPCT reader Mike Welch bought a OEMed version of the keyboard, only to find it had old drivers that are incompatible, necessitating a further purchase. :evil: Verifying the legitimacy of customers is one thing, but this is at another level. What do you think?

[jb]

True idiots!!!!!

That's allright, let people buy their keyboards and then come to find out that the have to pay additionally for the drivers. I can see an awful lot of keyboards being returned.

Greed never ends. Incredible!!!!

[szamot]

One more name to add to my list of people-never-to-buy-from. This is trully a bad PR move.

[Duncan]

Pathetic. I have no issue with them using some form of registration to ensure only owners of their keyboards get the drivers - but costs of developing drivers should be absorbed into the cost of the keyboards themselves.

I love this bit:We have now developed in excess of 100 drivers that enable our keyboard to be used with hundreds of different PDA/Pocket PC/and cellphone devices. This trend is escalating with the need to provide drivers for devices using the Symbian operating system. The cost to develop drivers is very high.Do I understand correctly? They are complaining that they are getting to sell their keyboards to users of hundreds of devices? Would that I should be cursed with such bad luck in life!!!

I suspect people will soon vote with their feet and look to competitors (such as the excellent IR Stowaway) instead.

Can anyone name another company, in any field, that charges for new drivers...?

[corphack]

I smell approaching warez.

[Sven Johannsen]

Gee, lets see, we can enjoy the excellent publicity we get from the fact that our drivers work so well that everyone knows about us, or we can alienate people that have actualy bought our products. Gee what should we do :?:

[rmasinag]

Bah! I was going to buy a KB for them if a BT doesnt come out. But to pay for drivers for being an owner of their KB? :evil:

They must think ppl are stupid or that desparate to use their products! :devilboy:

[mountainfrog]

This is a dumb move for them. They are not the only company making PDA keyboards. Stowaway is a fine competitor as well as the soon to be released (hopefully) Virtual keyboard from iBiz. I would think that they would be making decisions that would bring in customers, not alienate them. It may very well be their downfall if they stick to this policy.

[BTS]

I received a Belkin wireless keyboard for Christmas. It works well and when I didn't have the proper drivers on the CD I simply went to the website (on Christmas Day) and downloaded the proper one. No fuss, no mess.

In talking with my wife she paid $69.99 with a $30 rebate (CDN dollars). Now, considering the last time I saw a Pocket Top in the store it was $99 I would tell anyone to bypass the Pocket Top and get a Belkin.

[qgman]

It depends how this is implimented; if they drop the price of their keyboard by whatever amount they decide to charge for the driver (or for that matter, if they included a coupon for a free driver download with the keyboard) it wouldn't be that bad.

Still, one would think that they would just have a system wherein you could type your keyboard's serial number into a web form any bypass the payment section...

[Jacob]

Still, one would think that they would just have a system wherein you could type your keyboard's serial number into a web form any bypass the payment section...

I was thinking the same thing. This would be okay if they allowed registered users of their drivers to download for free and charged a fee for those who don't have their keyboards.

This would definitely be a reason for me to avoid this company.

[MPSmith]

I just sent a message to them via their website and I hope others do the same. This is just silly. :roll:

[dazz]

This reminds me of when Intuit implemented their new licensing arrangement. COMPLETELY backfired and they lost TONS of money. They then tried to back pedal like crazy...

http://pcworld.shopping.yahoo.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,110745,00.asp

...but I don't think they have recovered the lost revenue.

Pocketop....CANDYGRAM!!

DAZZ

[cptpoland]

I have this keyboard. Got it last Christmas. It was great to use and worked very well, untill I changed my PDA. Well the drivers did not work with ipaq 2215, so I emailed the company and they said that the drivers should be available sometime last september. Unfortunatelly I wasn't able to follow up, and completly forgot about this untill this article.

Now great.... I have a totally useless keyboard. I'm not about to pay 9.95 for the drivers for ipaq. :evil:

I'll rather wait now for the BT keyboard that's rumored to come out.
Good going to really piss people off... and to have the nerve to start their letter with "Dear Valued Customer"..... valued ..... right.
Makes me really "proud" to be Canadian. :oops:

[JustinGTP]

This is ridiculous!

I have never once seen a company charge for drivers, thats so crazy. I don't think even Microsoft would do that just because other people may use them.

I would NEVER EVER buy a Pocketop keyboard now that they charge for drivers, Ill stick with fair and ungreedy companies thanks!

-Justin.

[thanos255]

On a different note...has anyone come out with a Bluetooth keyboard yet that would work with the Ipaq's? etc?

Thanks
Thanos

[Gerard]

I have had the PockeTop drivers installed in my iPAQ 3835 for about 6 months or more. I don't have a PockeTop keyboard. I did consider one, briefly, but then I saw how small they were... and much later, last month, I got to try one another local owns, and just, like, WHOA that's a tiny keyboard! Apparently it's okay for some people; this guy is no smaller than I am, but somehow he's able to type on it. I just can't tolerate anything smaller than the Stowaway's layout, and far prefer having the full complement of keys and rows. So for now I'll keep using my old Stowaway. When I get an e800, I'll grab a $99 (Canadian) Stowaway Ir model, with much the same layout and some added features that look really cool.

I did some early beta testing for JimmySoftware on their Landscape program. Used to be a decent program, 'til they cluttered it up and made it slow the device to a crawl. I've tried DotPocket too, and it was even scarier. Tried a few versions of NVD, but it seems to be a program you either love or hate, and it makes my blood boil. So, I use the PockeTop version of the Nydidot driver subset. That's what it is, anyway, right? I mean, my \Windows folder got a few NVD DLLs when I installed the PockeTop program....

So who's developing this? Seems more likely that the fee now instituted is due to demands from Nydidot for redistribution of their drivers. Harder to question PockeTop's decision in that light, isn't it? I mean, Nydidot Virtual Display is virtually useless in any but simple rotation use, being slow and buggy in almost every other respect. Even for simple rotation with soft reset, the PockeTop version is superior in my use. There is simply zero performance hit.

So, like the Deez and WPdaPet fixes for the Toshiba e8xx, the first of which now costs $10 (USD), it seems to me that if one wants screen rotation then one ought perhaps to consider paying a few dollars. I don't much like the impression I get from the PockeTop people's manner of justifying this, and if my guess on the real cause is correct, I'd like to see that spelled out as such. If I'm wrong, well, sorry. Still, for the rare time (perhaps for a few minutes or a half-hour every couple of weeks) when I want landscape view, the old, free PockeTop drivers have a place in this iPAQ.

[Janak Parekh]

On a different note...has anyone come out with a Bluetooth keyboard yet that would work with the Ipaq's? etc?
A Bluetooth Stowaway is supposed to come out this summer...

So who's developing this? Seems more likely that the fee now instituted is due to demands from Nydidot for redistribution of their drivers. Harder to question PockeTop's decision in that light, isn't it?
I don't understand you. If you're saying they're much better than NVD, then how have they licensed their technology? And even if it was, that's a cost that should be absorbed as part of the cost of the hardware -- as many say, verify the owner or charge them.

--janak

[Gerard]

I didn't think my comments were that obscure... were they? Here's the main batch of files the PockeTop installation dumped into my \Windows folder:

http://www.luthier.ca/other/forum/pocketop-nvd_files.gif

It's fairly obvious from the names, especially when comparing to the names of Nydidot's own version release files, that they have similar origins. No conjecture here, just a fact of relationship, which has been acknowledged publicly (somewhere, but I forget the forum) by PockeTop folks. They licensed a subset of the NVD program files to help run their software on various devices, especially in landscape view for those devices with the IrDA port on one side or the other. No secrets here, not really.

So what I'm saying is that if they want to re-sell the drivers, for whatever reason, there is likely an ongoing cost to them which at least partially justifies this new model. They are not the primary developer of the landscape software. If they pay Nydidot a fee per unit sold, for instance, then I can imagine Nydidot getting pretty pissed off when they find out that huge numbers of users are grabbing the freeware version of their licensed driver kit, for use that has little or even nothing to do with the sale of PockeTop keyboards.

If, say, 100,000 people buy a PockeTop. And for the sake of argument, let's imagine that PockeTop and Nydidot have agreed to a 50¢ per keyboard sold licensing deal. That's $50,000 for Nydidot, and of course a chunk for PockeTop to cover their own side of the software development (after all, it's more than just landscape rotation software), plus manufacturing, distribution, advertising, whatever.

Now, let's say another 500,000 non-PockeTop users also grab the software for use of just the landscape software, or for use with other IrDA keyboards, or for both. That's no skin off the nose of PockeTop, not directly, though obviously a portion of those people failed to buy PockeTop keyboards because they bought a competing brand. Okay, so that hurts a bit, but theirs is a decent enough product, it's doing well, and profits are adequate. BUT, Nydidot is watching their flagship product, Nydidot Virtual Display, languish in sales as a direct result of so many people having discovered that there's a simple and fast, trimmed-down version of their software, available free from the PockeTop site! That's gotta hurt a lot, to a company who isn't really selling a whole lot else. I mean, they're a software company, there is no keyboard nor other hardware to fall back on. Nydidot becomes angry with the deal, not having forseen this development.

So, in my guess above, I'm thinking Nydidot and PockeTop had a few emails, a few phone calls, perhaps even some yelling, and a deal was re-worked to give Nydidot some extra cash for every time the drivers are used by any individual. Sure, downloads of the PockeTop drivers fall off dramatically. And sure, even sales of the keyboard might suffer a little, especially in the short term. But perhaps they did some figuring and some guessing and decided that overall this is the workable model. Both PockeTop and Nydidot are now, as per my wild fantasy scenario, in bed together selling a 'NVD-lite' version in the form of the PockeTop drivers. Everyone's happy, except some interim users who happen to see both sides of the deal. Give it a few months, it all blows over, and everything's back to normal as though PockeTop had always sold this 'PockeTop' landscape viewer app for whatever the price is. Does this not make sense?

If I am wrong, well, sue me. I'm just thinking out loud is all, nothing meant to ruffle any feathers. I saw that everyone in the thread seemed to be all hot to jump up and down on PockeTop keyboards for this move, and it didn't seem quite right to me. I agree, of course, that free is better! As I said already, I am happy to have the free version! It works great, and I'll always keep a copy so long as I have this iPAQ 3835 on which they program is applicable. But would I demand a free upgrade should I buy a newer device? No, of course not. Last year I felt very lucky that I got the free version. I still feel lucky, as it performs much better (perfectly, in fact, with zero performance hit) than the paid, bloated, buggy rendition Nydidot sells directly. Is that so complicated?

[hoyboy9]

I've owned a Pocketop ever since they came out way back when. I've been emailing the company for months for ANY info about the drivers for the 4100 series iPAQ, to no avail. And now I have to pay for drivers? This is rediculous. Shouldn't the serial number of the Pocketop they require we send in for a driver be sufficient?

[Paragon]

Absolute Bovine Scathology I paid top dolloar for the PocketTop keyboard after one of their reps did a presentation for our users group and sold me on the fact that this would be the last keyboard I would ever need to buy because it would work on any future PPCs. I guess he forgot to mention that they were going to start charging for drivers in the future.

I bought and XDA and waited 6 months for the drivers. I can't even get them to reply to emails, answer their phone or even return phone calls about getting a driver for my latest Pocket PC. This is a classic example of what NOT to do to you customers.

Stupid....stupid....stupid....how stupid can one company be?

I was going to post on this elsewhere but put it on a back burner for whatever reason. This has rekindled the flame. I hate it when companies screw their existing customers to line their own pocket!!

Dave

[Gerard]

Bovine excrement indeed, I agree, inasmuch as actual PockeTop owners should of course be granted free access to drivers in perpetuity (unless they come up with a version which magically transforms one's thoughts into typed words; that'd be worth paying for!). All I meant is that for all the rest, those who don't own a PockeTop keyboard, I don't see a problem with charging a reasonable amount for a good landscape/rotation software. Yes, it'd be impossible to tell if a driver user might eventually buy a keyboard, and thus over-pay for the thing. But that'd be an acceptable overlap, imo, compared to this across the board gouging for the drivers.

PockeTop, Nydidot, whoever the developer be, they are getting paid by sales of the keyboards. A serial number or some other registration method should be instituted by PockeTop, that legitimate keyboard owners can be given free access to the software. Has anyone who owns a keyboard actually emailed them with such a proposal? Of course, I'll bet PockeTop is going to be reading threads like this pretty thoroughly, so perhaps an email isn't needed... still, it's only fair to propose a better solution before jumping all over them, right?

[cptpoland]

Gerard I have one problem with your theory. This I found on Pocketop website regarding installation instrustions for PPC2003:

*** Note, do not use bundled rotational software with PC2003 Drivers***

So the rotational software does not work with PC2003 drivers..... so why should I be paying them for it??

CP

[Gerard]

I wasn't aware that they didn't yet support WM 2003, sorry. This is surprising, a little, since Nydidot is in advanced beta with drivers for the e800 Toshiba... but perhaps there's a delay between progress with NVD and PockeTop integration of such advances? Whatever the case, you have a good point, for now. Once the rotational drivers are made compatible with WM 2003, which I rather suspect will come to pass, my argument applies. They have always listed on a chart just what is and is not supported, so there should be no problem seeing compatibility before buying.

[Techtoys]

My wife bought me a Pocketop keyboard for Christmas - she isn't working and had to really scrimpt and save to buy it. THere were no iPaq 5450 drivers on the CD, so I registered to get tehm.

I'm still waiting :devilboy: . This company is simply the worst one I have ever dealt with, bar none.

Now they want to charge for the drivers? Well, if they actually responded to e-mails then they might get some cash from some people, but they don't even bother to reply. If anybody is considering buying a pocketop product then please do not. They deserve to go bankrupt.

[Duncan]

Gerard,

Two thoughts:

1) Even if Pocketop are having to pay Nyditot for each instance of driver download etc. - that just makes things worse as that makes them into liars for mis-stating the facts in their 'letter' to customers.

2) All they need to do is set up a free driver download system for their customers - and then make an arrangement with Nyditot to sell a badged version of the basic screen rotation program as a separate thing. No skin of Nyditot's nose as by definition they get more customers/income this way (there will always be those who don't want the full Nyditot program feature set - and those who do...).

Frankly this story needs to be spread far and wide and Pocketop need to be made to suffer until they come to their senses, apologise and put things right. A warning needs to go out to any other company dumb enough to be thinking along these lines...

[pablake]

If you install Nydidot over the pocketop driver you end up with a registered version of Nydidot (registered to OEM: Pocketop Computer Corporation) so clearly there is a hole that Pocketop needs to fill. I'm sure the guys behind Nydidot can't be happy either. However, to charge users for the drivers seems a very poor solution. Surely Pocketop needs to introduce some kind of registration system? For what its worth I sold my Pocketop keyboard and am very happy with my Stowaway XT.... IMHO a superior keyboard all around.

[Techtoys]

Does anyone know if the Sale of Goods act here in the UK would mean that they will have to supply a free driver or accept the keyboard back? Just a thought, but goods must be sold fit for the purpuse for which they have been purchased (provided they are purchased for their intended use). Clearly the pocketop keyboard is not - you cannot use it without the drivers, and if it is not stated at the time of sale that additional components need to be bought, then they are in breach of contract.

I will see if I can get the drivers for my keyboard, which cost £92 (none of the benefits of the USA here!) on this basis.

Andy

[Yorch]

I guess this gives me the right of posting the drivers that I got before they started charging for it. Since they where free at the time, they can't do anything about it. And they work pretty well. I guess I will become pretty popular! and I'm sure that will piss them off! :twisted:

[Brad Adrian]

Isn't there a simple solution here? Can they just require registration of the keyboard using a unique ID number? Then, only those who have purchased the keyboard from them can get the drivers.

Or, am I missing some bigger reason for them charging?

[ventivent]

This is hilarious. I owned a "Micro Innovations" variant of the Pocketop keyboard back when I had an Axim X5. I never really liked it, because the keys were too small and it wasn't comfortable to type on. Nevertheless, I kept it, and wanted to use it when I switched to an Ipaq 1945 running WM2003. At that time, Pocketop was developing some kind of IR transmitter, that you could buy for $20 to attach to your PocketPC device to circumvent the whole landscape issue. I e-mailed them about new drivers, and they were incredibly rude to me. See brighthand thread:

http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?s=9bd0b19c2769648837cc530364d09b19&threadid=90778

I've long since ditched the keyboard, and switched to the IPAQ Foldable for my 4155 - it works great. Pocketop basically charging for the drivers because Nyditot is charging Pocketop to license the software.

What a joke.

V

[Paragon]

Isn't there a simple solution here? Can they just require registration of the keyboard using a unique ID number? Then, only those who have purchased the keyboard from them can get the drivers.

Or, am I missing some bigger reason for them charging?

You are absolutely right Brad, that would be the obvious solution to the problem. Unfortunately PocketTop aren't looking at solving the problem. They are looking at using it as an excuse for raising funds on the backs of those who supported them by buying their product in the past, and advising other to do so as well....sorry to every individual I talked into buying this product.

Dave

[ux4484]

It's a cold shot, that could possibly be reversed by this thread alone.

While I'd like landscape mode, I really only want it for reading, and my work around for that is µBook. I'd read that folks were downloading the driver for landscape mode, I never tried it...but if I owned a rebadged or used pocketop (I agree, they're too small and too many double keys on it for me) I'd be pretty steamed.

Brad has a good solution for rebadged/secondary owners.

[Kathy_Harris]

On January 9th, I registered to receive the updated drivers. Their website didn't seem to work so I actually cut and paste the filled out form and EMAILED the registration to them. I've never heard one word from them. I had to upgrade as my PPC upgraded after a breakage and warranty from CompUSA.

It never claimed to want $10 that day.

It asked for serial number, store purchased from, date of purchase, order number, name, address, phone, email, etc. See form at:

http://www.ultimatekeyboard.com/drivers.htm

[Yorch]

But, the whole thing kind of sound spudid, don't OEMs pay a fee to developers to brand their products?. If they did a bad deal with MicroInnovations or any other OEM, why the customer has to pay for this?

[PPCRules]

I agree. Bad move.

There's probably something to the Nydidot thing, but coupled with the poor customer response people are reporting, I smell that they are very desperate and on the brink of collapse. What's one to do if you are in that position? You gotta try something. This is their second-to-last act of desperation.

So being angry and wanting to send a message are not the best reasons for not buying another product from them. Rather, don't buy from them because they themselves are signaling that they are near the end and you don't want to have the product of a company that won't be around, especially since ongoing support on this type of product is so important.

From their letter, which is sure to go down in blunder infamousy:
(someone ought to paste the whole thing into this thread so we have a copy of what we've been talking about after they retract it, their final act of desperation)
Until now, we have supplied drivers free, which means that whenever an owner of a Pocketop keyboard has upgraded to a new hand-held device, he or she has been able to continue to use the keyboard without incurring further expense.
Oh, so this is now something terrible? That is exactly how the device was promoted to me when I purchased it!
In reality, I have not even "upgraded to a new device", just put WM2003 on the device for which I original bought the keyboard (and, unfortunately, I had not yet downloaded the driver for the OS upgrade, even without the screen rotation capability).

... there is a huge and growing variety of hand-held devices. We have now developed in excess of 100 drivers ...
Looks like somebody needs to take a class in maintaining focus within a business, if they are going after models that do not pay for themselves.

This trend is escalating with the need to provide drivers for devices using the Symbian operating system. The cost to develop drivers is very high.
Oh, so extract money from PocketPC and PalmOS customers to pay for the Symbian development? Maybe PalmOS users aren't any smarter than that.

... We believe this is a modest price compared with our costs, ...
And the next time we go to Best Buy, we can expect to have a parking fee and a lights and bathroom surcharge added to our purchase price. We can no longer assume businesses will have a business model that can pay for any extra services.

[Gary Garland, Esq.]

I'm very disappointed with the company. The hardware is fine, but the response (or lack of) is horrendous. They sent me a reviewer's keyboard for a piece i'm writing for Pocket PC Magazine. About 2 weeks ago, (maybe more???) I registered on their website for the updated drivers. No response despite the message that it would take 48 hours. So I did it again. and about 2 more times. There had never been any word about hitting up owners for $10.
Anyway, in addition to the website request, i also wrote to the e-mails i had for pocketop, including their pr department and their sales department, and i told them (truthfully) that this was holding up my Pocket PC Magazine review. ABSOLUTELY NO REPONSE. Finally, last week, out of frustration, I sent another e-mail and cc'd my editor at Pocket PC Magazine and stated this would be my last attempt to get these drivers, and that i'd have to submit my piece at the end of the week, with or without drivers. Still no response.
Now, I have to amend my piece to discuss the driver issue. I don't know if it will get edited out, but even though I rated the hardware highly, I can't condone the complete lack of response of the company. For those reasons alone, I'd steer people elsewhere, probably in the direction of the stowaway wireless (though that has problems as well - at leas the company is responsive!)
I think I smell someone setting up a website...and who knows, maybe a class action lawsuit?????
Bad pocketop, bad bad bad!!!!!

[JustinGTP]

I would personally like to have Pocket PC Thoughts invite someone over from Pocketop to see what the Pocket PC Community has to say about this. Maybe someone should write them an email, it would certainly get our very clear point across :D

-Justin.

[dh]

I was wondering if the company was still in business. Their site went months with no updates and I registered for drivers twice with no response.
Although the keyboard is pretty clever, the lack of dedicated number keys makes it frustrating to use. I bet it's been six months since I used mine, I don't even know where it is.

I certainly would not have the slightest interest in paying for new drivers. Using a combination of Fitaly and Caligrapher works very well for me.

[Monty]

Well I feel that Gerard has a good point (Hi Gerard! :wink: ), and his argument about the Nydiot deal might be correct. It still stinks, but we should be able to live with the fact that you can still d/l the drivers from http://www.mi-products.com/ (Micro Innovations) anyway, for free. Look for the TKB700u under PDAs.

I might even downgrade my AX from WM2003 to PPC2002 to get free Landscape back....which might also help me get Bluetooth working too!

[nyditot]

Yeah well it gets even better. Pocketop is ILLEGALLY distributing Nyditot components in their drivers. We had an agreement with them but they failed to pay royalties and have been illegally distributing our software for some time. We have asked them to stop on numerous occasions but they are ignoring our calls. Now it appears they are attempting to profit even more from our hard work.

Pocketop is a Canadian company and, at this point, they essentially do not have any employees. All of the principals have left and their investors are maintaining a minimal presence to give the illusion of a real company.

Please do not support this disreputable company. If you are only interested in display rotation please write to us at [email protected]. We'll send you a 20% off discount code for the full version NVD. It's sort of an amnesty program. Note that Pocketop was NEVER licensed to distribute NVD components via the Internet. They were only authorized to include our software to the CD within the box with the actual keyboard.

Thanks for your support,

[Gerard]

Friggin' WHOA dude! I am both totally blown away by these revelations, and feeling a little bit vindicated regarding my earlier comments in this thread. I apologise for suggesting that it was pressure from Nydidot which forced this new charge for the drivers... seems they had no intention of ever paying you anyway.

I stand by my statements regarding the relative transparency and clean operation of the PockeTop-distributed version of the Nydidot rotation drivers, over the full Nydidot release version. It's night and day. Whenever I've tested your software, it does make me very angry very fast. It's just not intuitive, and even once I get the thing figured out, it drags everything down a bit and there are glitches which just make it un-fun to use. If you offered a small version, a Nydidot-lite for simple rotation to left- and right-landscape and the 180° flip (this without soft reset), and stripping out the unwanted PockeTop keyboard drivers, I'd probably consider buying it for half the full edition price. $10 seems very reasonable for that. I just don't want a bulky program in my system which doesn't perform as simply and perfectly as their version does.

I hope that you are able to receive some compensation from this Vancouver company, which is plainly behaving in a criminal manner. I'm embarrassed a little, being a native Vancouverite, but no big deal there. Tarnishes us a little more, but this city is becoming more and more like a US city every day (I've lived in a few, so that's not coming from thin air), and it's sad to see the cut-throat sort of attitude creeping into so many aspects of life here. Sue them if you can, though I guess that'd probably fail from the state of the company as you report it. Sounds more like 'take the money and run' over there. Have you got a street address for PockeTop? Maybe I could go over and have a peek, see what's actually there. PM or email me if you like.

[cptpoland]

Totally agree with Gerard. Although apparently the new Pocketop drivers for WM2003 do not support the rotation. So why bundle those DLLs with the driver is beyond me.

From what I heard there is a new version of Nyditot that supports WM2003. I would also be very interested in a simple rotation driver that goes from portrait to landscape and back again without soft reset. I definately would be willing to pay for that. Maybe someone at Nyditot will listen and release something like that. :lol:

CP

[Jonathon Watkins]

I have to agree about the simplicity of Nyditot - it's not. I did try it, but gave up after the hassle. A cheep, simple cut down version offering 180 from portrait to landscape and back again without soft reset would be great!

[Gerard]

Unfortunately, it seems Microsoft's newest PPC OS still has no way to support on-the-fly 90° screen rotation. It's a limitation of all versions of PPC so far. They promise that WM 2004 (or whatever they'll re-brand it by then) will support rotation natively, but nothing I've read so far indicates it is necessarily going to be available without a reset.

So, Nydidot is in the same position as everyone else as far as rotation is concerned. They do offer a preset rotation thing where you can choose a 320x320 resolution, then switch on the fly. However, this seriously impedes access to a number of controls. If you use any taskbar replacement, for instance, you're toast, as at least one end of the bar will be hidden and inaccessible. Button mapped stuff is critical here, like a start menu for instance. I didn't like this at all. Nearly useless in Pocket IE, where I was recently interested in seeing how it worked with the Nydidot integration with MultiIE, a PIE plugin. And in my email client, nPOPw, the most recent few emails wouldn't display in landscape. That's the two most used apps on my little box, so forget about it.

No, resetting is okay for me. It's all the bells and whistles that seem to be the problem with the main Nydidot app. Who really needs VGA or beyond resolution simulated on a tiny iPAQ screen? If it was on a Toshiba e800 that's different, but on a QVGA screen I've always found anything smaller than native resolution to be unreadable, impractical, and tending to make me tap the wrong icons just because of screen sensitivity inaccuracies (especially in the lower-centre of the screen, where I write a lot and the screen protector gets pretty destroyed). The 180° flip is nice for getting the sidelight of the iPAQ to not shine in one's bed-partner's eyes while reading... 90° is nice for the odd PIE session, though since I usually browse on a Stowaway keyboard, that's not so practical.

[cptpoland]

I'm curious then how does MobiPocket reader rotate the screen with out any resets. This is a great feature of MobiPocket, which I haven't seen anywhere else, except for some games. I think the rotation is possible.

CP

[ctmagnus]

This is a single app coded to support rotation. What the others are referring to is system-wide support for it.

[Gerard]

Yeah, like he said. :) µbook also supports both left and right landscape rotation within that great reader (also reads HTML or TXT or whatever from inside RAR or ZIP archives, saving one a lot of space by having a library squashed down. But that, and any game presenting in landscape (my most recent favourite being that Christmas 3D present delivery thing, that was cool), simply codes for that orientation within the program. The author has total control over how their program/game is displayed. I suspect that to have similar control over the device system-wide without soft resets for rotation would require a complete copy of the OS, with the addition of the rotation code... which is essentially what Microsoft is doing when they include support within the next OS version, I guess.

[Gerard]

JFMcGowan, a Brighthand member, did a bit of research via Google. He found a home phone number for Patrick Burke, president of the now-merged Cyberhand/PockeTop company. I called that number, as various email addresses had failed to glean a reply, and Patrick aswered the phone.

We spoke for about 25 minutes, and he went to great lengths to describe to me the entire situation as he sees it, his company's position on driver releases, hardware sales, online communication, all of it. A couple of things he said which I agreed to keep private. There are things going on beyond his immediate control which could become more troublesome should they come out publicly. But I will list the basics from his perspective, for what they're worth.

~ PockeTop's merging with Cyberhand has only just recently completed, though it was announced in early June of last year. There were some uneasy aspects to this joining, but they've been worked out.

~ It seems that Nydidot's component, the rotational drivers, will be dropped from the PPC releases of keyboard drivers. Patrick says he has been in recent communication with Nydidot regarding the compensation agreement formerly established with PockeTop, arrangements made before the merge with Cyberhand.

~ Efforts to communicate with the public regarding costs of driver development have been a source of frustration for the company. The pace of device development has been very difficult to match, with new devices coming out at a faster and faster rate. Specifically he mentioned the new Toshibas, the XDA II, and all the new models of Symbian cellphone which his company has been trying to keep up with. Development costs sound rather high for this software when he speaks about it. The company has settled on a plan of allowing one driver type included in the purchase of a new keyboard, within 30 days of purchase, and he feels that this is reasonable considering the 100+ devices the company is now seeking to support.

~ Emails for support and also just to attack the company's new policy are now numbering over 1000 per day, and the scale is rather overwhelming to this smalll firm. He says that they have been trying to get answers to about 200 people per day, and will continue to improve communications with customers. Server stability problems may have led to some bounced email recently, and they have now shifted to a new server. Changing again to a yet more reliable server could happen in the near future.

~ The 1-800 number had to be discontinued, due to the flood of abusive calls they received recently. With very limited staffing resources, and efforts to engage with each caller in a polite and thorough manner, meant that staff were overwhelmed with just staying on the phone and taking abuse. Patrick is seeing what many have seen in various aspects of this new communications age; anger is often out of control, and people often want service, now, free.

~ In reference to costs of support, drivers, etc., Patrick mentioned a margin of about $10 per unit sold. That's not a lot of money, and if it's accurate or even close it would seem to explain this move in charging for drivers. There is another rather pressing issue beyond the company's immediate control, one I am not at liberty to discuss, which has further harmed profitability in the marketplace.

~ The plan is to have PockeTop back on track and better than ever within 6 months - this figure came up repeatedly. They are trying to stabilise the whole effort, while also developing other products. An IrDA extender was one product mentioned. This would facilitate better stability of infrared connection to the keyboard in situations with less than ideal surfaces, or even excess motion; typing on a commuter train was mentioned as one application. This sounds like a company very much interested in staying in business to me.

My impressions of Patrick Burke were good. He seemed rather taken by surprise, a JFMcGowan suggested he might, and a little worried at having to justify his actions on the phone, to a stranger. But I found him a genuine-sounding man and from what I heard my confidence in the company has been largely restored. I am not a PockeTop customer, at least not yet. The keyboard is rather small for my tastes, considering my familiarity with the Stowaway for both Casio and iPAQ. But it does seem that PockeTop is here to stay if the market will support them.

Patrick confessed to a lack of in-house public relations expertise; something I find laudable. Too much PR makes my skin crawl. But he does wish to communicate with the public regarding their concerns, and hopes people will try to understand that in order to maintain a viable product and driver support, costs must be met. He cited PC driver scenarios for comparison; on average a hardware product for PC need only be supplied with drivers for Win95 to XP Pro, perhaps 5 versions of the drivers. Compared to the mobile device market, which presents an ever-changing array and a booming growth of new products, support for the few PC OS versions seems somewhat trivial. Of course, no one wants to pay more for a keyboard after buying it, but is this a problem of habit, or a genuine complaint? I don't know. It's a hard one to ponder. Other thoughts, anyone? I can't speak for Patrick Burke, and frankly don't desire to do so, but perhaps I can answer questions beyond what I've written here based on our conversation. He's promised to email me with any further updates, and expressed relief that I'd try to clarify his position in the forums.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Gerard, thanks for your detailed, thoughtful and balanced follow up on this topic. It is very helpful and does explain a lot - there are always two sides to a story. :)

If people know the full situation, then they can make a decision for themselves about what they want to about this.

[Gerard]

Thanks Jonathon. I've done a bit more thinking about all this, and have since received a full news brief from PockeTop, so I wrote a full thread-starter and have posted it in a half-dozen forums related to PPCs. If anyone wants to comment there, it's the same thread, but I've invited the CEO of Cyberhand/PockeTop to join in if he likes. This is the Thoughts location, along with the others:


http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=215291#215291

http://www.pocketnow.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=48705#post48705

http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=657527#post657527

http://www.ppcsg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=187616#187616

http://www.pocketpcpassion.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39613

http://discuss.cewindows.net/ubb/Forum7/HTML/003671.html

It'd be good if Nydidot got involved too, perhaps. A public housecleaning would be good for all concerned in my opinion, getting the air cleared and such.

[MikeInDallas]

Great comments there Gerard. I have only talked to Patrick via email, but we have sent emails back and forth at length. I have been working on a utility to help with the driver issue and may even do some driver development for them in the long term, I don't know. But you reflect precisely what I've experienced. Nobody WANTS to be the bad guy, so there's more going on there than is at first apparent. They are definitely trying to keep the company going, and still have a good supply of keyboards in stock.

PocketPC is a pretty unstable OS and things have changed internally with standard features, in this case, the infrared components. I don't know if MS is to blame for this or not, but it seems to me that something that is considered a standard component of a piece of hardware shouldn't change how it works with every OEM. That's not the case, but there's a lot of differences I'm finding from the folks I've talked to.

I didn't realize Patrick was getting so many emails...1000 a day is crazy. Any of us would be overwhelmed. Personally, I think if they just let folks know the truth they'd get sympathy and understanding from most of us geeks...especially since many of us have been layed off or terminated at least once in the last few years with all the dot com deflation going on.

Anyway, I just thought I'd confirm what Gerard is saying. I was ranting pretty bad about the whole thing and Patrick found some of my rants...but we discussed things and after I found out what was going on, I offered to do what I could to help.

Mike Welch
Dallas Texas area

[Gerard]

Well put Mike. Seems the furor over PockeTop drivers has died down a little. I haven't seen much flaming since this thread sort of faded. It'd be nice to know what's happening to get things back on track, but I suppose it'll all come out eventually.

[trevorj]

A friend of mine and I have gotten the drivers to work on a model where they previously refused to run or install.

I put it up on my website, so I can revise it later. The fix is simple hexediting, along with mike's irda port fix.

http://trevorj.is-a-geek.com/dev/blog/item/9/

[baralong]

Thanks trevorj

I've got all to work only 4150. I ordered the keyboard last week and it arrived today, where I discovered it didn't come with the driver :evil: I'd checked on the pocketop site http://www.pocketop.net/comp_list.htm and saw it was compatable so I didn't think anything of it.

Anyway thanks to your post and **URL removed by mod SJC. Please go to the link to get the drivers** (link from here (http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=30632)) I'm up and running. :D

Thanks again
edit: actually with this version of the drivers I just installed and did the reg hack!