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iPaq fans fight back against "slur" -blame Microsoft

by Staff Writer | posted on 28 July 2002


Not everybody is prepared to believe that a best-seller pocket PC like the iPaq could have inherent hardware flaws. Scot Wilcoxon suspects the software ...

Looking at the list of iPAQ problems which is at ipaqpetition.com I came to the conclusion that it might be worth asking a few more people about the likely causes of the problems.

When I browsed the list, many items in the "hardware" categories seemed to be unlikely to be hardware problems. They should be in OS or application software categories, and are thus just as likely to be present in other platforms.

Consider 36xx series iPaq list; start with item 5: the command gets stuck, not the button. Item 6: the screen hardware continues to display but the application does not open a new window -- note the mention of Calendar, which should open due to use of either the touchscreen or the Calendar button. Item 8: being stuck in a loop tends to be a software problem. Many other issues have similar points.

This casts doubt on the creation of the entire list, particularly because the petition requests different treatement of hardware problems.

They did put some effort into gathering their list. I just don't think the size of this list reflects problems with the iPAQ which are not also likely to be in other PocketPC/WinCE devices.

I do happen to own an iPAQ, but I chose it due to its Linux abilities and its hardware specs. I've been fortunate not to have been affected by hardware problems yet, so I can't help separate the hardware from software problems.