Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 4

Hi,

I decided to get my first PDA and after reading the guides at various sites, decided to buy a visor, but got discouraged from buying it when I saw some opinions at cnet. But when I found this site with lots of reassurances, I am back to visor. I need some feedback from you guys before I decide to order it.

1) Has the customer support improved lately (I read a posting that says that the shipping time lately has improved) ? Lot of postings at different sites give a terrible feeling.

2) There were lots of complaints about wrong shipments and defective shipments. Have they improved the quality of visors now ?

3) Is visor's graffiti (recognition) as good as that of a palm ?

4) There were some complaints about visor being (more) unstable (than a palm). Can someone please assure me that it is at least as stable as a palm ?

5) There were many complaints about the stylus pen, that it scratches the surface. Have they improved it lately and if not is ordering an additional set of them going to help ?

6) At zdnet, the review says that when the visor was tested, it lasted only 48hrs though it is claimed to last for 2months. Can someone please clarify this ?

7) An angry poster at cnet says that he realized he needed a HotSync cable to take full advantage of the visor'r functionality, that is not shipped with it. Is he correct ?

8) Some posters complained that the full data is not getting backed up. If so, does the problem exsist with any palm also ?

I will be indebted to anyone who replies to this message and helps me in deciding upon this issue. You may give any of your personal opinions about its advantages/disadvantages. Thanks a lot in advance for your time.

Hari

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Columbus, Ohio USA
Posts: 255

Somebody just asked this question yesterday or so..

Check out this link for a bunch of opinions.
http://discussion.visorcentral.com/...TML/001244.html

Registered: Sep 1999
Location:
Posts: 95

I'll try to address these in order as best I can.

1) Customer service does seem to have improved. Handspring seems to be setting up various contact methods independent of the idiots they've hired to handle the phones.

2) I hadn't seen all that many distinct posts about wrong shipments or defective shipments. (see #1 at bottom)

3) It's the same OS doing the Graffiti recognition. The biggest difference is that the Visor seems a bit more responsive. But that's just due to the fact that Handspring went ahead and removed a slew of unneccessary 'wait' states from the code.

4) The stability question comes into play with software using some cute 'trick' in the code (generally to increase speed). Any code that bypasses the official PalmOS API stands the chance of not working the same way when ANYBODY (that includes Palm) makes changes to the OS or hardware.

5) Recent posts about the stylus with newer Visors seems to indicate that they've gotten that problem solved for the time being. They're still looking into exactly what is causing the problem on the 'older' units.

6) I'd have to check the article itself to see what the specifics were, but I'm getting a reasonable amount of time out of my rechargable batteries. If they were measuring actual run-time, then they got AMAZINGLY good battery life to have it keep running constantly for 24 hours of normal use. The 2 month estimate is based on an 'average use per day' estimate. (not sure what that estimate is)

7) Odds are he was using a machine or OS without USB capability and was venting about having to shell out a bit of extra cash to get a second cradle. The cradle included with the Visor or Visor Deluxe is a USB cradle, which provides MUCH hotsync times than the serial model does. Either that or he was an idiot and ordered the Visor Solo (doesn't come with a cradle) and failed to notice the fairly prominent notices that it didn't come with a cradle.

8) Using the official Palm Desktop software, you will get updates of all the 'standard' databases every time you hotsync. If you have any other software that needs to sync data to your PC, it will probably either come with, or have available a 'conduit' which will handle it.

#1 - I say 'distinct' posts because a large percentage of the *****y posts made are made by the same group of people. Some of them may have every right to ***** given their situation (it seems that a few of the earliest orders have managed to fall through the cracks), but they still post at a higher rate than the people who have their Visors and are happy with them.
I call it Squeeky-Wheel syndrome. Just because you have one wheel on your car that squeeks doesn't mean that the others aren't there, it just means that the squeeky wheel is making more noise.

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 4

Thank you so much. Your feedback did help me in deciding. And guess what? I already have one. I got it at an amazing speed, just in 4 days. I already started using it and thanks to the tip given in another topic, I even had my data ready to sync up with the visor, as I installed the software in advance and typed everything in. I just loved the speed with which the visor synced up the data through USB. I had no problems all together. Thanks again.

Hari