Worlds Worst PDA/Phone?

[Guest danktuft]

Has anyone else had all of their Calendar info just disappear into thin air like I have? Both on Outlook and the phone, no settings changed anywhere, one day a full set of appointments, the next nothing except a couple of all day events and a birthday? As a bonus my Sprite backup software stopped backing up every morning at 4am on the 12th November and the last one it did do was corrupt. I really have had enough of this phone, WM5 is appallingly written, bugs rear their ugly head every single day, resets have to be done three or four times daily, it can't be used as a 3G device unless you carry around about 5 spare batteries. Crummy is the polite word I'd use to describe everything about it and I definitely got conned. I'm going to use this thread to list every single crappy bug I experience when I remember to.

1: The name lookup in messaging when filling in the 'To' field all of a sudden wouldn't work unless I typed in the start of the surname eg Joe would always bring up a list of Joe's, I had to type Joe B to get Joe Bloggs into the field. Reset cured it.

[Guest danktuft]

1: The name lookup in messaging when filling in the 'To' field all of a sudden wouldn't work unless I typed in the start of the surname eg Joe would always bring up a list of Joe's, I had to type Joe B to get Joe Bloggs into the field. Reset cured it.

2: Become impossible to change settings under Configure server.... in Activesync. That's handy.

[Guest jimbouk]

Sounds like you've got a real chip on your shoulder... and that you are confused. Firstly the Hermes and WM5 are not from PALM.

Have you had a similar device before?

Secondly, why not share your specific set up and see if the guys here can help sort it out for you.

I have a hermes, with just spb pocketplus on it, and it is the best WM device I have ever had.

I hard reset it the other day for the first time in three months and havent had to soft reset it for ages.

With regard to finding names in the "to" box, I don't understand your problem. WM uses its own version of predictive text to find contacts so you can use the on screen keypad - it takes some getting used to, but once you are used to it, it's actually very intuitive. Its not the devices fault that you have lots of contacts called "Joe" - and I think you will find that any other OS would offer you all the "joe"'s if you typed in "joe"

Server activesync config can be done on the device after a successful sync.

[Guest danktuft]

Sounds like you've got a real chip on your shoulder... and that you are confused. Firstly the Hermes and WM5 are not from PALM.

Have you had a similar device before?

Secondly, why not share your specific set up and see if the guys here can help sort it out for you.

I have a hermes, with just spb pocketplus on it, and it is the best WM device I have ever had.

I hard reset it the other day for the first time in three months and havent had to soft reset it for ages.

With regard to finding names in the "to" box, I don't understand your problem. WM uses its own version of predictive text to find contacts so you can use the on screen keypad - it takes some getting used to, but once you are used to it, it's actually very intuitive. Its not the devices fault that you have lots of contacts called "Joe" - and I think you will find that any other OS would offer you all the "joe"'s if you typed in "joe"

Server activesync config can be done on the device after a successful sync.

OK, I understand that it's not a Palm device or Palm OS. I moved from a Treo 600 to this device and have had a few PDAs including the (what I thought was the worlds buggiest/useless phone) P800.

I've found out what was going wrong in the address book look up. Because I can spell and it's damn annoying I set the word completion to 5 letters so I don't keep getting the OS trying to complete words for me. However, this also applies to the address book look up. Clever huh? God knows how a reset made it change either but I've discovered that if you turn word completion off totally then address book lookup comes back! Hurrah! By the way this does work, like most things just work, on Palm.

[Guest danktuft]

1: The name lookup in messaging when filling in the 'To' field all of a sudden wouldn't work unless I typed in the start of the surname eg Joe would always bring up a list of Joe's, I had to type Joe B to get Joe Bloggs into the field. Reset cured it.

2: Become impossible to change settings under Configure server.... in Activesync. That's handy.

3: Crashes upon receiving text messages maybe 1 or 2 times out of ten. Text is never retrieved and any unread emails are mysteriously wiped from the server at the same time.

[Guest danktuft]

1: The name lookup in messaging when filling in the 'To' field all of a sudden wouldn't work unless I typed in the start of the surname eg Joe would always bring up a list of Joe's, I had to type Joe B to get Joe Bloggs into the field. Reset cured it.

2: Become impossible to change settings under Configure server.... in Activesync. That's handy.

3: Crashes upon receiving text messages maybe 1 or 2 times out of ten. Text is never retrieved and any unread emails are mysteriously wiped from the server at the same time.

4: The option key sticking on when typing so that half way through your message you realise that a stream of gibberish has been written (OK, not that unusual for me). There seems to be no rhyme nor reason in getting it 'unstuck' as well, sometimes just pressing it again works, sometimes that and the Caps key, sometimes pressing it twice etc

[Guest jimbouk]

Double pressing the option button locks it on. Just double press it to turn it off again. You will find that the keyboards on Hermes have some sticky and some reticent keys when new - but they get better with use.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Either he's making these up, or he has a REALLY faulty unit :)

P

[Guest chucky.egg]

I hard reset it the other day for the first time in three months and havent had to soft reset it for ages.

That's good?

A device that you have to completely rebuild from scratch 4 times per year, and one that you have to reboot manually every once in a while.

I know the OPs message sounds like a bit of a moan, but I think we forget just how management intensive our WM devices can be at times.

[Guest richard_d]

That's good?

A device that you have to completely rebuild from scratch 4 times per year, and one that you have to reboot manually every once in a while.

I know the OPs message sounds like a bit of a moan, but I think we forget just how management intensive our WM devices can be at times.

I have hard reset once, just to check it worked, but I've never needed to in the three months I've had the phone. Yes I probably soft-reset about once a fortnight, but 50% of the time that's when using a beta piece of software like hitchhiker. For comparison on my Nokia 6630 I was needing to power-off (and occasionally remove the battery) at least 2 or 3 times a week. I'm pleasantly surprised with the Hermes stability - am I just lucky?

[Guest jimbouk]

That's good?

A device that you have to completely rebuild from scratch 4 times per year, and one that you have to reboot manually every once in a while.

I know the OPs message sounds like a bit of a moan, but I think we forget just how management intensive our WM devices can be at times.

Yes Thats Brilliant. I only had to hard reset as a result of mucking about with loads of software...

And thats the thing that people who moan about WMobile forget. Its not a locked down mobile phone that can call people or text or that you can simply buy clip on covers for - its a completely programmable, customisable device. You can load apps - you can even design your own - you can connect it to 90% of pc's in the world and you can also MUCK IT UP by playing with the settings.

I am fortunate that a) I do know what I am doing abd :) I have an exchange server - so a hard reset to completely set up device takes about 15 minutes. Whereas I acknowledge that without a server and without a lot of experience it can take an hour to two - but thats a small price to pay for the freedom that WM5 and WM2003 SE have given us.