NEW: spurious hourglass showing when playing video

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

The hourglass cursor appears every couple of minute for no apparent reasons.

This is particularly noticeable when playing video or games (i.e. applications causing high CPU load).

According to MS, it has to do with the system task that periodically flushs data (e.g. registry) to persistent storage.

MS says that it is less noticeable on devices using TFAT rather than IPSM, but apparently the problem is still there on Smartphone 2003 (especially those still using the bogus IPSM driver from Intel).

[Guest maxh2003]

PocketTV team: have Microsoft named *which* system task it is that causes the problem? Is it a single process, or multiple processes?

And, have you found any way to mitigate the effects of this bug? Possibly there could be some way to *force* data flushing at a moment convenient to the game/app, rather than waiting for the OS to decide that... NOW... would be a good moment?

Have started coding my own GAPI app and was actually quite *pleased* when I saw the wait cursor appear; if every other app does it and now so does mine, then I must be doing something right!

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

> PocketTV team: have Microsoft named *which* system task it is that causes the problem? Is it a single process, or multiple processes?

It is a system task, part of the WinCE kernel.

> And, have you found any way to mitigate the effects of this bug? Possibly there could be some way to *force* data flushing at a moment convenient to the game/app, rather than waiting for the OS to decide that... NOW... would be a good moment?

Apparently there is no way to control when the system decides to flush data to the permanent storage. I'll ask them again...

> if every other app does it and now so does mine, then I must be doing something right!

Yes, you did not do anything wrong that made the hourglass cursor appear ;)

[Guest maxh2003]

I'll ask them again...

Worth a shot! Obviously I was wondering if you could maybe even fill the flushable storage area so that it then *has* to flush it to persistent storage. But I guess only Microsoft know... :x or not, as the case may be!

I'm AMAZED that this is confirmed as a defect in Smartphone 2003. So even though I've never laid my hands on a Smartphone 2003 device, I can categorically state that every game (and video player? :shock: ) will inevitably give a bad user experience. Talk about not learning from your mistakes!

Keep up the good fight, PocketTV Team ;)

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

I'm AMAZED that this is confirmed as a defect in Smartphone 2003.  So even though I've never laid my hands on a Smartphone 2003 device, I can categorically state that every game (and video player?  :shock: ) will inevitably give a bad user experience.  Talk about not learning from your mistakes!

According to MS the problem should be less noticeable on most Smartphone 2003 devices (since they use TFAT instead of IPSM).

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

PocketTV you still have a developers phone or a proper SPVTanager Smartphone now? as the hourglass is not really a problem at all.

most people very rarly see it and never every couple of minutes that you claim. That has never happened to me and I've had the phone for almost twelve months now. Also I know of no one else that has it every couple of minutes either :?

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

We have a Red-e. And we see the hourglass occasionally, but not very often. It is not a major issue, really.

The Smartphone has many more important problems!