XDA Exec Problems

[Paul Barker]

I believe many of you are computer heads. I'm just a valve head, so I have to relate to you what happened and maybe you have some input.

I bought a sexy xda exec and was getting along with the pda features like a house on fire, filled out my diary made my 15 strong todo list that will take a month to get through. To me todo's are jobs that don't make the diary.

Phone side of it is a pile of sh1te. My bob the builder phone has never failed to connect in the year I've had it and has recovered from no end of being thrown around building sites. The xda exec fails to make connection nausiatingly often. A look at the web reveals yes this is the norm for it. Might aswell have bought a pda.

Anyhow what I don't understand is why they bring a product to market with a useless rom and then put fixes on the web.

Problem with rom 1/ Won't load the gprs program supplied with it, stating don't try again until you have upgraded your rom. email technical help who reply after 36 hours go to such and such a web address and download this. You do that and it downloads to your laptop, then you run it from the laptop with xda linked. Halfway through the process the laptop thinking it would be the end of the world for the battery to get lower than 3/4 full turns itself off. Result? xda without the old or the new rom, dead as a dodo. Fortunately it's brand new so it got baxed and returned with a sort of "I got up this morning and it wouldn't come on" reason for sending it back.

Complexity of the situation is more grave. My sole reliance on the xda for my diary shouldn't have been a problem because when I link it to my laptop they talk and my calender gets put onto outlook. Sadly this failed because my outlook is 2003 and the xda says this is too recent a version for it to work with. (Strange) SO OK I take off my 2003 version and load the version supplied with the xda. No they won't talk to each other.

Finally, I buy a nice little blue tooth 32 satelite receiver. But will tom tom 5 load onto the xda? You know the answer don't you? Looking at the net it's ok all you have to do is re write the registry!

Anyhow I still like iut on the whole, and I suppose in three months they will have fixed the bugs. I've asked for a replacement not my money back.

But I can see now that I shall have to get a pay as you go card for it and keep my bob the builder phone with my business no so I can guarantee a connection. The xda therefore becomes a pda for now, and since neither gprs nor gps works on it without a degree in writing registry code, if I do need sat nav in the interim (until about 3 months time when the bugs might be sorted) I'd better buy a secondhand xda II or something which is now fixed. (My mate with the IIS said it took 3 months before they brought out sufficient upgrades via downloads off net for that to work at all also!

[Paul Barker]

On the plus side it earned it's keep in one day. I sat with customer did her estimate on the excell part, she liked the estimate and accepted it, I hire in help to do her job on Monday because I am fully booked and she wanted a quick decision from me. I came in at £2,600 British GAs she told me after were £3,400 except they weren't going to powerflush (£750 extra) or add any new rads (I am adding 4).

So she was very happy with my quote. When I got home and put it onto laptop it turned out I had added up some numbers twice on the xda because the screen is so small you get lost on the page. So it has earned me £400 more than I would have normally charged. Since I beat BG by a country mile and she is very happy, we'll put that down to me geting my rightful pay for a change and pathetic little xda screen has earned it's keep.

What's really needed is something between xda exec size and dell laptop size for me to estimate in front of customer and read my adobe manufacturer's instructions. The adobe reader on xda is too slow and again too small for navigating around page/s.

In short xda is useless as a phone, as an adobe reader, as a excell user.

Excellent for texting and for calender and todo list.

Mine by it's very nature has payed for itself (that was a stroke of luck)

But it seems what I need is smoething between the two sizes. What is available for that?

[Andrew]

Hi Paul,

How about a little Sony Viao laptop, some of them a dead small (just over A5 size) and come in two halves a fully functional small laptop that plugs into a mini-dock that contains the CDROM etc that you leave at home. You can then give the home PC to the kids 'cos the laptop will do eveything you need.

Alternatively, try one of those notepad computers? A laptop that you can use as a palmtop! Expensive but nice. HP also do an IPAQ which has various flavours and runs a cut down mobile version of Windows, you could just about do Excell on those, but a very lightweight laptop is the way I'd go.

And stick the PDA cum phone on e-pay.

cheers,

-- Andrew

[Paul Barker]

Thanks Andrew, yes the carbon one would be just what I need, but over the price I'd want to pay. My friend runs an Apple shop he recons their 12" laptop would suit.

I do use a dell laptop anyway, but it is too big and not rugged enough for a field engineer.

Actually what we need is an external monitor for a pda. I find the keyboard of the xta exec perfectly alright.

My firend says that it's not possible to get a fast enough connection through a usb port for a screen and that's the only interface the xta has, apart from blue tooth infra red and wifi. My friend did say this morning that firewire would be fast enough. Is firewire another way of saying wifi or not?

[NickG]

No, firewire is another high speed serial interface, firewire is faster than USB1 but slower (I think) than USB2.

[Andrew]

Hi Paul,

No firewire is just a half brother of USB.

What about an older 'second user' laptop which you wouldn't mind if it broke. You could pick one of these up for a few hundred quid, just instigate a good back up regimen and away you go. In fact stick to OS on the local hard drive and all your customer data on a goodly sized USB stick and then ther's no need to back up the laptop.

USB 2 is pretty fast, but you need a very fast and wide bus to drive a modern screen.

I doubt if you will get anything for the xga, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

cheers,

-- Andrew

[Paul Barker]

You've just described my dell. Maybe I'll get a usb pen for the data as you say.

It's a little large too though.

The marketeers have missed the market, they make a whole load of uselessly small things and a whole load of uselessly big things.

Imean xta screen is 3.6inch laptops are down to 12 inch, so where are the 6 to 8 inch devices with the processing power of the laptop but can fit in a large coat pocket. That I would pay a grand for.