Monday, October 10, 2005
Why Can't I Upgrade My Device?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "ARTICLE" @ 03:00 AM
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/10/06/477999.aspx
"We released Windows Mobile 5 a few months ago and devices are starting to hit the market now. A question I've seen asked in a number of places is, "Why can't I upgrade my existing WM 2003 SE devices to WM5?" The answer is sure to get me a bunch of angry comments from people who abbreviate our name "M$." You can choose to see this as spin from a greedy marketing wonk, or you can see it for what it is--an honest attempt from a developer to explain how this stuff works."
I can certainly understand the frustration on a user's part that the device they paid $500 or more, considerably more in the case of some phone devices, when they learn their device won't be upgraded by their manufacturer. Anyone pay $900 for an iMATE PDA2K? :evil: Yeah, I know. For that particular model their are illegal alternatives, but that isn't the point. I am not going to steal the upgrade, which is what that amounts to.
This blog goes a long way towards explaining the economics of providing upgrades as well as what they plan to do about it with Windows Mobile 5 devices. "In WM5 we spent a lot of time building an infrastructure for enabling updates that anyone can do. We're heading toward a Windows Update sort of experience, where you're using your phone and it suddenly pops up a box that says something like, "An update is available, would you like to have it installed?" Then you just need to select "Yes" and it'll happen for you. How much OEMs and Mobile Operators make use of this infrastructure is up to them, but it's there now. This should solve the "could your grandmother do it?" problem, especially for smaller updates like security fixes."
I hope this works, but the cynical side of me recalls the "XIP Updates" introduced in Pocket PC 2002 that were used for only one or two OS updates and then left for dead.
"We released Windows Mobile 5 a few months ago and devices are starting to hit the market now. A question I've seen asked in a number of places is, "Why can't I upgrade my existing WM 2003 SE devices to WM5?" The answer is sure to get me a bunch of angry comments from people who abbreviate our name "M$." You can choose to see this as spin from a greedy marketing wonk, or you can see it for what it is--an honest attempt from a developer to explain how this stuff works."
I can certainly understand the frustration on a user's part that the device they paid $500 or more, considerably more in the case of some phone devices, when they learn their device won't be upgraded by their manufacturer. Anyone pay $900 for an iMATE PDA2K? :evil: Yeah, I know. For that particular model their are illegal alternatives, but that isn't the point. I am not going to steal the upgrade, which is what that amounts to.
This blog goes a long way towards explaining the economics of providing upgrades as well as what they plan to do about it with Windows Mobile 5 devices. "In WM5 we spent a lot of time building an infrastructure for enabling updates that anyone can do. We're heading toward a Windows Update sort of experience, where you're using your phone and it suddenly pops up a box that says something like, "An update is available, would you like to have it installed?" Then you just need to select "Yes" and it'll happen for you. How much OEMs and Mobile Operators make use of this infrastructure is up to them, but it's there now. This should solve the "could your grandmother do it?" problem, especially for smaller updates like security fixes."
I hope this works, but the cynical side of me recalls the "XIP Updates" introduced in Pocket PC 2002 that were used for only one or two OS updates and then left for dead.
