Bugs and Errors Plague Handhelds

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MSNBC (Wall Street Journal)

A rash of bugs and user errors crops up to plague handhelds Users sometimes bring on the problems themselves By Pui-Wing Tam THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Dec. 8 — While most Americans were relaxing and eating leftover turkey on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Chuck Mefford was spending hours trying to fix his Palm V handheld computer.

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EIGHT HOURS, to be exact. “I worked till midnight or one in the morning that night,” says the Dallas-based broadcast consultant. Mr. Mefford’s imbroglio began when he accidentally transmitted a computer virus from his desktop computer to his Palm V while synchronizing the two. The virus wiped out all the data — addresses, appointments and memos — on his Palm. Panicked, Mr. Mefford rebooted twice. But each time he reconnected his Palm to his desktop, the virus reappeared. “It was pretty frustrating,” says Mr. Mefford, who finally zapped the problem by installing antivirus software on the Palm. Call it personal digital aggravation. As the popularity of personal digital assistants increases, so does the frustration level of many consumers. As happens with any new technology, a fresh crop of bugs, viruses and hardware flaws are cropping up on handheld devices based on the Palm Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Pocket PC operating systems. And the problems — in some cases brought on by the users themselves — can seem particularly torturous because the gadgets store important personal information, including friends’ phone numbers, bank-account passwords, and digital images of family.

“For a whole week, I was out of commission,” laments Stacey Leong, a lawyer at an audio-device maker in Milpitas, Calif. When her Palm V inexplicably froze recently, Ms. Leong was so unnerved at not having her contact lists close at hand that she printed out sheaves of addresses and appointments from the Palm backup files on her computer and carried them around with her. She ultimately turned to her employer’s technical staff to get her Palm fixed. “I don’t know what caused the blip,” Ms. Leong says. “I’m just glad it’s functioning again.” Makers of handheld-device operating systems acknowledge there may still be some bugs to work out. When a Palm’s batteries run low, for example, the device sometimes miscounts the days in the date book so that users end up losing days from the system. Palm says only a small number of its devices are affected and recommends trying a “soft reset” to solve the problem.

As for the Pocket PC platform, it hasn’t been out as long. “It’s true to say we’re trying to get the kinks out of software — period,” says Derek Brown, chief mobility evangelist at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters. “Handheld devices aren’t any more buggy than any other type of technology,” he adds, “but people just seem to have a more intense personal relationship with their handheld devices.” Software experts also expect that handheld computers will increasingly become targets for hackers and viruses. A malicious code called Liberty Crack, which deletes programs on Palms, created a stir in August when it was first detected. It has been contained. A month later, the first Palm-specific virus, dubbed Phage, made its debut, though it affected only several thousand handheld-device users before antivirus programs were developed to contain it. “The Palm is a novice platform gaining mass momentum, [but] it has no security culture,” says Adam Bresson, a network consultant in Irvine, Calif. He says viruses can be transmitted to devices in two ways: infrared beaming between gadgets and downloading infected data from PCs. Already, a slew of antivirus software programs being produced by companies such as Symantec Corp. and McAfee, the computer-security unit of Network Associates Inc., can be loaded onto the gizmos to prevent viruses from creeping in. McAfee says its antivirus software takes up only 11 kilobytes of memory. Advertisement

But more protection may be required further down the road. “The threat level to the handheld community is low right now,” says Gene Hodges, president of McAfee. “But once these devices go wireless and are continuously connected, that’ll make them more of a sitting target.” Hardware flaws are also popping up. In June, Palm discovered that several thousand Palm models had been manufactured with a faulty chip that was causing some of the machines to crash. The company issued a diagnostic test and a patch to fix the problem. David de Valk, the head of customer service at Palm, says the company has also recently invested in new customer-service systems. “We use each customer contact to try and build enduring relationships,” he says. Frequently, though, the customer, not the software or the hardware, is at fault. While visiting Seattle on business two months ago, George Lu, chief executive of a wireless-solutions concern in Vancouver, Canada, suddenly had to make do without his Handspring Inc. Visor. Its screen had turned black. “My face turned pale,” Mr. Lu recalls. “I was really panicking. I’m so reliant on this machine, it’s scary.” Mr. Lu immediately tried to reboot the gizmo. The screen momentarily flickered back to life, but then quickly faded. Back in his office the next day, he fired off an e-mail to Handspring’s tech support. The reply: His Visor needed new batteries. Sometimes there’s no easy answer. Denyce Kroll, a corporate marketer at a security software company in Los Gatos, Calif., owned a Palm V for five months before it started giving her problems. The pocket computer, she says, became unable to quickly transfer information to and from her desktop. Ms. Kroll called Palm and spent an hour chatting with tech support, which suggested she send the machine in to be fixed. The refurbished Palm was returned to her a few days later. “I thought, ‘Great, yay, it’s fixed,’ ” Ms. Kroll says. But in just half an hour, the gadget had begun to slow down again. “I don’t have time for this,” she complained to her husband. “Your life’s in here, and it’s scary when something like this goes out.”

Palm’s Mr. de Valk says Ms. Kroll’s Palm may have been affected by something in her environment, such as an error in her desktop’s software. He says Palm’s customer service has contacted her again to try to figure out the problem. Rudy Dvorak, a senior account executive at a computer-support company in Irvine, purchased a Pocket PC-based Compaq iPaq gadget from a Newport Beach, Calif., branch of Circuit City Stores Inc. several months ago. After the device was loaded with 1,900 contact numbers and information on 1,400 business accounts, its screen unaccountably turned into a mirror image of itself. “The whole thing inverted,” Mr. Dvorak says. He initially thought he had done something wrong. Then he got mad. Unable to read the data he had input into his iPaq, he missed a dentist’s appointment, two eye-doctor appointments and a meeting with his chiropractor. He says he has now assigned a part-time secretary to help him figure out his schedule, taking her away from other tasks. “I thought about throwing the iPaq and stomping on it,” says Mr. Dvorak. But he ultimately exercised restraint and took the gadget back to Circuit City to ask for a replacement. Nearly two months later, though, he still hasn’t received a new device. John Clee, a manager at the store, says the branch is waiting for new Compaq iPaqs to arrive. Still, Mr. Dvorak says he hasn’t entirely given up on handheld devices. All technologies have bugs in them, he says, and people just have to grin and bear it. Indeed, Mr. Dvorak is even thinking of buying a handheld gadget for his wife this Christmas. “They’re still great tools,” he says.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), December 08, 2000


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