You know that scene in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure where they take the little Corsican to the local bowling alley and it's nothing but gutterballs? Remember what he said? That was me this morning when I found out my Palm died over the weekend.
"Died?" you say, "Like, just the battery?" Well, yes and no. Yes the battery died. But no, it wasn't only that. Remember those pictures I promised? Gone. My contacts, calendar, preferences? Gone, but unlike the photos, thankfully backed up. Silly me, I expected some sort of backup battery to bleed current to the memory. Gosh, Palm, is that too much to ask?
Now, I've done this before. With this same device. I took a series of photos over a weekend and didn't bring the charger along. Juiced the battery to the point where it warned me every time I took a new photo. So I powered it off and left it that way, and all was well at work Monday for the HotSync.
Not so today. My best guess is that after I shut it down on Sunday it self-started Monday to remind me that it was a holiday. But rather than shut itself off when I didn't respond (as I was asleep) it merrily displayed the reminder until 0% power. And all my precious photos were no more.
This wouldn't be so bad if there had been some warning. I went back and read the fine print of the user's manual and they say that a loss of data can occur if the battery is fully drained. What kind of crap is that? I routinely use my cellphone to the last drop of power, and it doesn't erase all my contacts when I recharge it. Lame, Palm, LAME.
So I apologize for the false promises. I've already been through the five stages, but I still wanted to vent here. I was going to post a self-portrait with a sad face, but the damn thing is still charging.
Posted by George at January 18, 2005 08:13 PMboooooo palm.
Posted by: delara at January 18, 2005 11:36 PMDang- That really sucks George! Hopefully you'll get a new gadget that's better equipt.
Posted by: Jeanna at January 19, 2005 08:05 AMI did that with my Sony Clie. Or shall I say, my Sony Clie did that to me.
It does make you wonder about the logic of whoever engineered it: "Hmmm, let's punish the owner for not readily charging this device. How can we do that? I know, let's make all the data disappear!"
After I experienced that, I stopped using it. Take that, Clie!
yeah, i'm not so happy about the pda world these days. my ipaq, which rocked initially, started misbehaving a lot. best buy - which sucks just about as much as palms - didn't honor its product replacement/service plan because "we don't do that anymore". well, they sure did it when they sold me the extra service coverage!! so now, i have a useless ipaq that's just sitting on a table somewhere in our house.
sigh.
k, i feel better now. sorry for using your comment real estate to complain! :)
Posted by: delara at January 21, 2005 12:58 PMD, use all the real estate you want. It's infinite. And comments are the whole point.
Posted by: george at January 21, 2005 01:25 PM