Re: If I get memory card, will email be stored on it?


"Jonathan Kamens" <jik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:fstr8v$m8b$5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If someone could actually make a convincing case that
Microsoft cared about Windows Mobile quality, I might change
my mind, but I've simply seen no evidence of that.

Perhaps the crux of the problem is that WM is an OS- not a hardware product. It's up to the OEM to create a stable phone by adding working drivers and stable hardware to the base OS.

My wife's WM 5 smartphone, a T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur) is about as stable a phone as I've ever used- it never crashes, never requires rebooting, and she has several hundred e-mails on it at any given time. I've had Nokia phones (my usual "rosetta stone" for a quality cellular phone) that had more bugs (lockups, reboots, out-of-memory conditions, etc.) than the Dash. Unlike my WM phone (a T-Mo MDA/HTC Wizard) she runs it "stock"- few if any added apps. (I added Google Maps and the TCPMP media player to handle DiVx movies to entertain her on frequent plane rides.)

I'd probably use a Dash myself, but I'm hung up on having a touchscreen, and, unlike you, I do use my PPC phone as a laptop replacement, and the non-touchscreen MS "WM Standard" platform just isn't as robust for that.


Take a look at this article, published today, about WM 6.1:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=mobile_and_wireless&articleId=9073998&taxonomyId=15&intsrc=kc_top

There isn't a single word in it about improving the quality
of the existing software on the phones. It's all about new
features. New features sell phones, of course, but what
about making the existing features useable for those of us
who have already paid their money?

That's what ROm upgrades are for. I'm sorry yours doesn't seem to work well, but AT&T and HTC have released three different OS revisions for your phone- the original WM5 ROM, and AKU 3.3 update, and now WM6. It's unfortunate that they haven't worked out all the bugs, but compare that to many smartphones that never get an update (like my Nokia 36xx Symbian phones that had the same bugs from the day I purchased them until the day they were retired.)

Another example of a serious WM5 bug that MS knew about and
didn't bother to fix in WM6 -- if you sync a Sent Items folder
in an IMAP mailbox, then when you send IMAP messages the copy
that was supposed to get deposited into Sent Items gets lost
instead.

Actually, while I had that problem in WM5, it was corrected in WM6, at least for the two IMAP providers I regularly use (AOL and GMail.) I'm not sure you're describing the bug properly, either- when I had it in WM5, the Sent Items weren't "lost"- they just didn't show up on the mobile device. Items sent from my WM5 mobile properly showed in the IMAP Sent Items folder when viewed on my other devices (PCs running Outlook), just not on the mobile. (A bigger WM5 bug for me was the handling of Deleted Items- items deleted on the device never seemed to delete from the server- just on the device. That, too, seems to have been corrected in WM6.)

As to your Sent Items problem, is it possible that you aren't sending the items through your usual IMAP server? Like many cellcos, AT&T offers their own SMTP server (smtp.cwmx.com, IIRC) for customers whose ISPs block "off network" SMTP (many cable and DSL providers block external access to control spam) so any mail sent through AT&T's servers would NOT show up in your IMAP Sent folder, since your IMAP provider didn't actually "send" the mail- AT&T did on your behalf. I fell victim to this myself when AOL upgraded their mail servers a year and a half or so ago, introducing a slight bug that prevented WinMo's messaging program from sending SMTP mail through AOL's server, so I had to fallback on T-Mobile's own SMTP server for outgoing mail until AOL fixed the bug several weeks later. (Of course, Murphy's Law dictated that the AOL server upgrade happened while I was on a month-long trip where I'd left my laptop at home, using the WM device as my sole e-mail/internet device! It was a week before I even figured what the problem was- AOL apparently refuses to respond to support requests from non-AOL users, so they ignored various requests from my non-AOL accounts, despite the fact that I couldn't actually SEND a question from my non-working AOL accounts until I switched to T-mo's SMTP!)

Sorry for the long winded response, but I guess I'm doing more WM apologizing- I think it's a good, stable, platform, which is jeopardized by the various OEMs who show the less than neccessary diligence when packaging the software for the devices themselves. Many WM devices run as smooth as silk, while others just fail to hit the mark, despite having the same OS core. Companies like RIM and Apple create both the hardware and software and seem to maintain a tighter control over the finished product. Once MS releases an OS core into a manufacturer's hands, it's out of their control how well (or not so well) the finished product will perform. A company like HTC releases more different models of phone in a year than John Grissom and Stephen King combined write books in a career, so it's not surprizing (but is still very disappointing) that many of them are bug-addled and receive very little after-production scrutiny to fix bugs. By the time the users are complaining, HTC is off building their next bug-ridden model and suggesting affected users upgrade to it! On the other hand, Palm's WM-based Treos, or HP's WM phones seem to be less buggy and receive more carefully crafted and tested updates. (If only they didn't use those quasi-compatible square screens, I might own one!)

In short, (yeah, too late for that!) I'm a long-time WM fan waiting for a day when an OEM is actually up to the task of building a phone that actually implements WM well- at least as well as the various trouble-free standalone WM PDAs I've owned- hopefully the upcoming Sony Ericsson X1 won't disappoint (despite actually being built by HTC!) I have to believe that SE will put the required effort into making sure it runs as it should since they have a long standing reputation as a phone manufacturer to protect, as opposed to HTC, who, until recently, always hid behind the wireless carrier's name, (like with your "AT&T" 8525 or my "T-Mobile" MDA) protected from the shame of being identifed as the culprit behind some truly awful products. (Like the absolutely revolting "Audiovox" PPC-4100 phone I owned for nearly 72 hours before returning it! That thing locked up as tight as a drum if you looked at it cross-eyed!)











.