Palm m100s - A Pattern of Defects?

An Anonymous Coward writes about his experience with a brand-new Palm: "Having a few years experience watching co-workers scratching out Grafitti on their little palm-sized toys and being reminded of appointments by musical ring-tones, I decided to take the plunge. More of a dip into a wading pool, as I chose the Palm m105. It was inexpensive enough ($149), and the 8 MB of memory seemed a more prudent choice over the tiny 1 MB in the $99 m100. My experiences quickly turned from elation to dread, however." This is the story of a piece of hardware's inexplicable degradation within 14 days. I thought we were making hardware better than this, but over the past few years, this is becoming more the rule than the exception. Is hardware issue limited to Palm, a case of bad manufacturing of a specific product, or a sign of things to come?

"I took it home and started playing with it. The Windows Palm desktop software installed and worked fine, the HotSync cradle did what it was supposed to do, and I happily started filling up the address and date books using the stylus. Only a few hours after I started using it, the display started acting up. The lower-left corner of the touch-screen started becoming insensitive and inaccurate. Not only were the neatest attempts at Graffiti input reduced to unrecognizable scrawls (using the Graffiti tutorial to trace out what the unit thought I was writing on the screen), but buttons on the screen above the input area were being activated (despite my going nowhere near them with the stylus). Repeated attempts at recalibrating the digitizer, as well as both a soft and hard reset, failed to fix the problem.

A quick search of Google Groups yielded several threads about this issue from others experiencing the exact problem. These experiences were also confirmed by negative reviewers at CNet. Some of them went back and forth with either Palm or the retailer with multiple replacement units, none completely working and defect-free.

Having had my m105 for less than 14 days, I promptly took it back to Office Depot for another one, which they were cheerfully willing to do. The second one worked just fine except that the top power button was inoperative! I was almost willing to live with this (as I could turn it on via other buttons, and have it automatically turn off), but the power button also controls the backlight and the hard reset. Based on my experiences with two defective units, and the bad experiences others have had going through both replacement and repair with Palm, I'm wasn't sure that I wanted to try a third. I took it back for a refund (also cheerfully done, and with apologies).

Obviously my experiences are not unique or even rare. Furthermore, repeated attempts to fix the problem via replacement or repair are not successful. Is this just a poorly-engineered and manufactured product to meet a price-point? Have there been quality control problems at their new assembly plant in Mexico (Previously all Palms were made in the United States)? Should I just forget about trying to get a low-priced starter Palm for the time being?"

Comments

Bad motherboards

[akmed]

I bought a Asus A7V266 mobo about a year ago and starting a few months ago it decided to assassinate hard drives. No idea why. I replaced it with an Asus P4B-266 and it's worked fine (I got a new processor as well). It strikes me as odd though that such behavior would come about. As well, the ALi chipset the old board relied was supported by linux just slightly better than an AT motherboard. Anyway, I definitely wouldn't recommend those motherboards. Asus knows Intel, but for whatever reason it's still working on getting AMD right.

the price you pay means nothing

[azosx]

A month ago I purchased a PowerBook G4 from Apple for well over $2000. When the unit arrived, the AC port was bent to one side, making it almost impossible to plugin the AC adapter or remove it yet it did still worked. Also, the paint near the power button was peeling. Having it for only a day I contacted Apple and told them about the condition my PowerBook came in. They agreed to fix the AC port and "made an exception" to fix the peeling paint. Over two weeks later I received my PowerBook back, the peeling paint was gone but the AC port was still bent and now, not even functioning. Grease was oozing out of the LCD screen hinges that connect it to the PowerBook, and smeared all over the top, bottom, keyboard and screen. A big chunk of paint and plastic was missing off one of the LCD screen hinges, which protrude from the back, as if it had been dropped! A five inch black scratch graced the upper left hand corner of the screen and the PC card slot would not eject cards, nor would the eject button reseat into the PowerBook. In the two weeks Apple had my PowerBook, they had completely thrashed it. I called Apple up five minutes after receiving the unite from repair and told them about the condition my PowerBook came back in from repair. They transfered me to a repair admin who had the audacity to tell me I need to be "ginger" with the unit, as if I was responsible for the damage it had sustained. He then told me he would make an "exception", and fix the unit one more time. Furious after my conversation with the repair admin, I called back Apple to see what their policies were on repairing defective products, and if it was customary for them to blame any defect or damage caused by repair on the customer. I was transfered to a senior staff member who seemed genuinely appalled by my earlier experience with the repair admin. She was kind enough to place my repair order on a loop, enabling me to send it back that same day, making sure repair would be expedited. She was most kind, giving me her work contact information incase further difficulties arose. Now I wait for my PowerBook to return, hoping it will be in good condition but knowing after all it's went through, it'll never be "new" again. This has been a terrible inconvience to me because the PowerBook was purchased for the summer session of college.

Has anyone else had a similiar experience with Apple? From what I've garnered from the internet and other Mac users, Apple is supposed to be tops in customer service, satisfaction and product quality. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case for me. I've had much better experiences with PC companies such as Dell, which I'm sure, many will refute.

Palm == bad

[eap]

Ever since palm sent unsolicited phone spam to my pay per minute mobile phone, thus costing me actual $ for having to listen to one of their ads, I will have nothing to do with the company. The fact that their hardware QA is substandard does not surprise me.