Nathan's Occasional Blog

HP to rerelease their hw6515 Pocket PC Phone with Windows Mobile 5.0 next year?:

We’ve seen plenty of people get hands on with the iPAQ hw6515 Mobile Messenger before, but what specifically caught our eye about Pocket PC Thoughts’ take on HP’s new Pocket PC Phone is the news that HP is going to rerelease the handheld with Windows Mobile 5.0 sometime in early 2006 (it’s currently slated to ship with Windows Mobile 2003 SE). Definitely plausible, but what we’d really like to know is whether HP is going to offer upgrades to the new OS for anyone who buys a hw6515 now.

This is where Palm and RIM have a distinct advantage with their Treo’s and Blackberrys – they don’t have to worry about OEM’s making dumb decisions. Why is this even a question? The answer should be an unequivocal yes. It’s stupid stuff like this that makes MS’ platform look bad (lack of compatibility). I totally want one of these to replace my BBerry 7290, but I’m not going to run one until it’s got WM 5.0 with the messaging enhancement pack announced last week and Exchange 2003 SP2 is out.

That being said, why does it take so darn long for WM 5.0 to roll out to the real world? Is it going to take even longer for the push messaging pack?

Darn OEMs.