Journal Engineer Andy's Journal: avoid the HP ipaq rx1950 1
I bought an HP rx1950 in october/november last year to help organise my life. I love HP gear as they make the ultimate in rock solid calculators for engineers. their consumer lines leave a lot to be desired though. One of the main things which i wanted in a PDA was that it would synchronise my calendar, email and contacts from the PDA onto my desktop at work.
Problems I have had:
1. microsoft XP, service pack 2, closes out many ports and programs with its firewall settings, and our corporate IT guys had to specially open up those ports just for me, as i was an early adopter of the model of PDA which got blocked by it.
2. The synchronising bit of software is very temperamental. Some days it will synchronise, and other days it will not. this is the ultimate in frustration as problems are harder to diagnose if they are only sporadic ratehr than an ongoing problem. HP know well about this (it is logged extensively on their inhouse forums from other users), but between them and Microsoft, have done nothing to date. I have emailed their support system, and their CEO to express my frustration at this, but have yet to get a real solution which works every time. this is my biggest annoyance with the rx1950, as this is the one thing which you would expect to work perfectly first time every time.
3. The operating system is very unstable. On a daily basis, i have to soft reboot my rx1950 two to three times as it will lock up, and this only gets cleared when you soft reset. On a PDA this is the equivalent of having to reboot your desktop PC several times a day. Something which would have been kind of OK back in the dark ages before later versions of Windows, but something which should not be needed any more.
4. The bible study software I use (e-sword) will not work properly on the windows mobile 5.0 that the PDA uses. The program runs well enough, but some bug in the operating system prevents you from cutting and pasting from the bibles into your own notes. I have spoken with the developer of the software, and he has no idea why or how windows mobile is breaking his software. That it's a bit of religious software is beside the point for the atheists among the readers. Operating systems should accommodate backware compatibility well enough to not choke on software that used to run without drama.
All in all, i do like it when it does work, but it doesn't work far too often. It is not the delightful piece of kit which just sits in the background of your life, and is more like the bit of kit which works only jsut enough to stop you from hurling it out the window in frustration.
HP have inflicted the beta testing of the rx1950 onto the public, and I would be very reluctant to buy another ipaq based on how buggy this one is, and how slow HP have been to fix it up.
suggestion from HP (Score:2)