Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 117

stories from the trenches

Let's face it. As much as Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky preach, Visors are not yet mass-market "polished". It takes a certain kind of person to enjoy the bleeding edge of technology experience--most of these people work in the IT industry. That said, I'd like to share some recent adventures.

Shortly before going on vacation I discovered the IR on my Prism was not functioning at all. I first noticed because I was trying to set up IR syncing with the laptop so we could back up our data on the road. I also remembered trying to use the IR earlier in the week to backup some of my phone records to my old Deluxe. So, I tried to beam between handhelds again and that did not work. Then with BackupBuddy at my side (Thanks, BackupBuddy!) I did a hard reset and tried to use IR again, with and without the patches, beaming and syncing--no go. Then I tried IR between my Deluxe and my g/f's deluxe, that worked fine (plus my Deluxe was able to IR sync with the laptop, YAY--but that's another story). With that info, I had everything I needed to know that my Prism's hardware was faulty.

I went on vacation and mysteriously lost ONLY my phone book data (???). I opened up my Minstrel-powered PalmVNC session with my desktop at home and attempted to logon so I could set up a custom hotsync to overwrite my phonebook entries on my next Network (via Minstrel) hotsync. Unfortunately, throughput was poor, so I could only get as far as unlocking the screen (my brother who was watching the house had left the system logged in as "guest"). Hotsync manager was also not running under the guest account . Feeling frustrated, I decided it was time (although too late for this trip) to buy us the backup module. I had never considered it before because I had thought that the backup module only backed up data from the built-in apps. I had mixed feelings when I discovered that it backed up EVERYTHING. Happy because I got a good product, annoyed that the product documentation or reviews never really made it clear (because I would've bought the backup module instantly had I known and I would have had my phone book intact on vacation).

Today I called Handspring Technical Support and simply detailed the troubleshooting that I had already done before vacation. After verifying serial number, credit card, and shipping address, the agent said I should be receiving a new Prism and pre-paid shipping sticker with which to send back the faulty one within 3-5 days. Even if I never got to find out if the guy was competent (because I did all my own troubleshooting), it was pleasant to deal with someone who wasn't going to waste my time by following a script and walking me through a bunch of useless canned troubleshooting steps. Barring any shipping fiascos, this should end up being a positive customer service experience.

[Edited by zelchenko on 01-02-2001 at 10:38 PM]

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 34

A fun way to test if your IR is actively beaming anything is to point it at a digital camera or video camera. Video devices will be able to see infrared as a white dot on the screen. It's pretty neat to try out on your remote controls and see them flashing in patterns and frequencies. It works for Visors as well. It won't necessarily tell you that it's receiving, but you'll know that the unit is transmitting at least.

__________________
Green Vdx
The Mountain Dew of PDA's.

Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 117

fast service. go HANDSPRING!

I would've had my new Visor the next DAY, if I had been home to receive it. Kudos to Handspring for the quick service. I also think their sending replacements just for the defective hardware instead of the whole kit-and-kiboodle makes very good business sense. The instructions for sending back the defective unit were perfect so that nobody could screw it up.