Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Travis Owens — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 20:05:05 GMT

While I don't know what company first embraced the comcept of eating their own dogfood (but I think we all know MS coined the term) it was definetly the best way to get quality releases.

I mean, if the Outlook team weren't using Outlook 12, would they worry too much that feature X is flakely. If they're using the software as their primary email software, they certainly will care and attempt to fix it ASAP (nobody wants to use flakely software).

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Cliff — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 20:51:11 GMT

So if some enterprising pocket pc fanantics wanted to have a "reference design" based on the new HTC Universal built that supports Cingular's new HSPDA service, sports a 4gb flash drive and aGPS for $3,000 a device.

Who would we call?

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Riki — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 23:45:39 GMT

Cliff, any of the standard embedded partners would do it, eg:
www.embeddedfusion.com
although we won't have any reference designs close to what you ask for, but there are a few of us around.
the $3000 a unit would likly only cover hardware - so you'd have to add software development costs onto that. thats kinda the expensive bit.

Riki

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Nick Dunklee — Tue, 09 May 2006 01:45:57 GMT

The sad thing that I have seen is in almost every case, the "hacks" are better supported than the OEM updates - if an OEM update even exists. This isn't to say Microsoft isn't trying, obviously you are, but the "chain of command" to get a patch out is so inordinately bloated due to "outsourcing" and all that economic "productivity" that by the time your patch gets out to fix a bug, the product has long been discontinued.

Hacked firmware generally has more information regarding how to install and maintain it, how it works, and how to change parts of it. Hacked firmware generally also has better support and turnaround time than actual OEM firmware. Not only that, but often you can get right on a messageboard, and directly ask the people responsible for the hack, "hey it's doing this, how do I fix it?" While asking about commerical firmware....good luck, even if you do find a person who has the knowledge to answer, they won't due to "licensing restrictions."

It seems to fix a single small bug in an OEM product, it takes so long to wait for a lackluster change to filter down to the masses, it isn't worth the time.

The bug I found in the WM5 Treo 700w's cellular radio probably won't be fixed for at least 6 months, if not longer. I don't see how people enjoy waiting for bugs to get fixed, and taking the problem into one's own hands is not only educational, but beneficial in that you get a solution when you need it instead of waiting and getting fed a constant stream of empty promises.

It is sad today that the life-cycle of consumer products is so short that companies often never even fix software glitches in their hardware, let alone allow updates to the "next version."

Again this isn't necessarily the fault of you programmers at Microsoft, but you gotta realize that you only have one chance to get a product right, especially on these embedded devices. Unless you offer direct-patching of the devices, the time-to-fix is so long, that many will skip over your product because they'd rather buy a device that works out-of-box.

Like the 700w, while not a device designed by Microsoft, had you told Palm, "look you are absolutely stupid for selling this device with only 32 MB of RAM, also, CHECK YOUR RADIO SOFTWARE, people aren't going to want to buy a cell phone that can't make cell phone calls, regardless of how much you charge for it." The solution to this scenario would probably be more along the lines of Microsoft reevaluating your minimum hardware requirements for a WM5 device. You should set license restrictions on WM5 to prevent an OEM from putting it on a horribly underpowered device that will just constantly choke and crash. It makes WM5 look grossly unstable and horrible, even though on other WM5 devices it runs great.

The convergence device market is still growing of course, but it is very frustrating for us in the know now, who can SEE the potential for these devices, and instantly recognize the shortcomings...we just bash our head against the wall asking, "WHY????"

Keep up your good work though!

Nick Dunklee

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Matt Sharpe — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 19:22:23 GMT

i have to agree with Nick on the support for unofficial upgrades. the amount of knowledge and help available on forums is fantastic, and in my experience these unofficial upgrades offer stable, useful, enjoyable added features or os updates which just arent there through the legitimate channels.
the motorola mpx200 runs windows mobile 5 wonderfully! and it originally came with wm2002.

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Dmitri — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:14:41 GMT

I had a conversation with a Cingular (Att/whatever) rep recently about the "smartphone" platform in general. He told me he sees up to three times the rate of returns on Windows Mobile devices vs. Blackberrys. Why? Their software is buggy as hell. Its not Microsoft's fault, the carriers preload their phones with all sorts of useless software and make the device feel unacceptable. The Blackberrys are limited in software, but they appear to just-work (at least the 8800 I have tested). This is essential to most customers over features. I realize there is a lot of politics involved, but its hard to explain to an average user why they can't have a stable/relatively bug free OS build from their carrier. I personally own the HTC Wizard and it has been great, with some patches Cingular will most likely never release. People are not going to put up with buggy software, and the blame falls on the OS, not the carirer or the OEM. This seems to be the unfortunate reality. Definatelly an issue that needs to be addressed.

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

axim 4700 — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 02:17:55 GMT

bad experience with backdoor upgrades????? bwaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahhaha.. the only bad experience i ever had with my device was with its original os. neither hp nor microsoft ever managed to fix these issues and a "backdoor" upgrade made my device usable. tell the truth at least please. Microsoft arent bloating there allready overfull pockets when people use "backdoor" upgrades which is why you dislkie peolpe using them. finis

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

MikeCal — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:37 GMT

Microsoft doesn't charge its OEMs for Windows Mobile upgrades. Any incentive we have for disallowing unofficial upgrades is not tied to bloating our pockets.

Mike

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

mobileworm — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:47:51 GMT

I disagree with the entire blog post. As per my experience, "backdoor" upgrades are actually more stable than official OEM upgrades.

Take the official WM5 upgrade for Dell Axim X50V for example. Users paid for the upgrade but was given a lemon OS in return.

It literally rendered the device inutile. The device was so useless that Dell eventually offered a solution to rollback to WM2003SE.

And then somebody releases an unofficial WM6 upgrade. What's ironic is that the unofficial upgrade turned out to be faster and more stable than the official WM5 upgrade.

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Vulcan Tourist — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:34:52 GMT

mobileworm said: "What's ironic is that the unofficial upgrade turned out to be faster and more stable than the official WM5 upgrade."

Hear, here! I'm using that "unofficial" upgrade he mentions, after wasting $40 and much time and lost productivity in 2006 on the "official" WM5 upgrade from HP.

When some LONE GUY in Russia is able to make better design, assemblage, packaging, and optimization choices than an entire TEAM at a deep-pocketed corporation like Hewlett Packard, you KNOW you've been fed lies. I was already a proponent of open-source everything (it's a lifestyle, a mental discipline), and this experience has just reinforced the principle. I have a hard time seeing it as "stealing"... I'm merely returning the disfavor and fraud committed against me in the first place.

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Mike — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:53:38 GMT

I'm sorry MS but your wrong, if you Big Boys supplied a reliable OS with decent support then we users wouldn't need these 'backdoor' upgrades. Because of your constant AKU updates (that we can't install) we have to look elsewhere for the patch to your bug, it's the only way to update the device and keep it running as intended. The only reason you don't like the unofficial update is that we users can keep running the same device for years and not have to pay you AGAIN for basically a patch. I'm sick of buying technology that doesn't work out of the box, vista is another great example with SP1 around the corner that fixes so many bugs released to hibernation it's a joke. My ATi GPU I bought 6 months ago still does not perform as stated on the box and monthly updates are required. The Wii when first released didn't support the SD slot without a upgrade. This is getting beyond a joke. I better stop ranting now, only to say, help the planet stay green by upgrading your device for many years with backdoor upgrades.

re: Then Why Do You Get To Upgrade?

Matt Falcon — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:10:52 GMT

Well, thank you for opening my eyes to the possibility of third party images or upgrades to a device. Like I said in a previous post, I don't even use my PPC phone as a phone, but only as a PPC. To be able to actually USE it without wearing out my battery door needing to remove the battery every few days thanks to crappy coding, would be worth the loss of that annoying cell phone radio anyway. It causes TomTom Navigator to switch off Bluetooth (the GPS signal) when it detects the cell phone radio is turned off anyway. If I could completely REMOVE the cell phone radio, I'd have no problems and better battery life! Bring on the third party images!

And no, I agree with most posters here: OEM patches are NOT of better quality. There AREN'T even any OEM patches for devices an OEM wants to disown anyway! I have no choice in my device right now but to run only on the software that originally came loaded on it. There are no updates. The only update is the daylight savings time update from Microsoft - the only update available! Hundreds of patches for desktop Windows, but zero for WM2003. Wow...

Most of the time, the better software comes from the unrestricted third parties anyway. The people that are already doing something illegal, so doing more illegal things like decompiling code and fixing flaws in YOUR SOFTWARE, isn't going to cause them any more "legal" problems than they're already in. I don't know if anyone at Microsoft kept an eye on the Creative Labs public relations fiasco a few weeks ago, but you should take a lesson from that: end users aren't retards. Most may be retards that grunt, beat their chest, and say "MY APPOINTMENT ARE NOW!", but many others are actually intelligent life forms that want a working product that's worth what they paid for it. That, like a computer, isn't going to be unusably obsolete in just a few years. Many computers (especially in my house) are 5 to 8 years old, a few even 10 years old, and still functional in the real world. Can I say the same about my, maybe, 4 year old Pocket PC? No... it's barely functional at all.

I'm off to Google for those illegal, unstable, hacked, unsupported, and overall "nasty" ROM images. Thanks for the tip.