Ebay gripes, soft reset and "ctrl+alt+del"

No one is selling MP in this part of the world and I wonder why? Its a shame, really. So I acquired a used MP900 from eBay US. It seems no US seller is willing to ship it outside the US even after explaining that I'm a credible buyer. Why?? But to cut the story short, my friend brought it over from the US and I received it after nearly 2 months of waiting.

The condition is about 6.5. Quite disappointing cuz it wasnt as what was described. But anyhow I was delighted that I finally got my hands on it.

There are a few hitches I discovered and was wondering if anyone may have an idea.

I cant soft reset the unit at all even after poking the small reset button repeatedly Nothing happns. I know in J720, when you soft reset the unit it goes blank and turns on. Is this normal? is there a "special" way to poking that thing?

Also in J720 if you "ctrl+alt+del" the task manager comes on...but in a MP900, nothings happens!! So the question is does MP900 comes with a task manager? If no, is there any utility out there?

The third hitch is recalibration. I recalibrated it as carefully as I can but still find that it is not responding very well. For example to close off a doc i would close it by the X icon located at the top right hand corner, hitting it in the middle doesnt work but I have to touch near the edge of the box before it would respond. Anyone has a suggestion as to how I can realign or recalibrate?

And also I find that touch display is less responsive than J720. Sometimes I have to wait as the program hangs a while before responding to a command.

Would appreciate if anyone can help to resolve the issues above.

Cheers.

hello!

congratulations on getting an MP900!!!

i too just got one on monday

how much did you pay for it, i hope not much if the condition isn't perfect...

as for your questions..

it isn't normal that it can't soft reset itself. you're out of luck as there's no software softreset option. i read somewhere that NEC left out the command that's needed for software reset. but i'm not sure and i'll try to get an app soon.
oh i see now what you said.
"the unit it goes blank and turns on."
are you SURE that you poked the real reset hole? i did it wrong the first time.. and i got just the same reaction (goes blank and turns on again)! but when i realized it was the wrong hole, everything worked fine afterwards..

ctrl+alt+del won't work, just tap+alt on the taskbar and you will get the taskmanager option there!

recalibration? yeah it's just that way, you'll have to get used to it.. my jornada 728's screen is so much more responsive, just amazing.. so it was even harder for me to get used to the 900's screen. but i'm ok with it now.

i hope i could help..

btw do you have hpc2000 on it or ce.net 4.2?

Congrats to you as well! Paid about US$400 for the unit. How much did you pay for yours? Within a span of three days I have had hard reset the MP. This time I'm going to wait out at least 8 hrs before powering it back on. I hope its not conking out on me!

Regarding the soft reset, I'm dismayed to learn that there is nothing I can do about it! Nothing happens when I pushed that reset button. Yeah I'm sure that I pushed the right button. It should work like J720 right...I mean when you soft reset, it should go blank and powers back is it? I sure hope that you will have find an app soon. I tried searching the web for some sort of utilities and none worked so far! I'm desperate cuz some of the utilities that I was downloading required a soft reset! How to get around this if the soft reset button and no utility is found...

Thanks for the tip on the task manager.

Hope you are having a whale of a time with your MP. Well at least one of us is...

yes, that's true that MP900 always hard to perform soft reset .....

and now, my MP900's rom is damaged, even hard reset can't recuse it..

so be careful~~~

you also mentioned that you waited for 8 hours ..... for what purpose???

I am sorry to hear about your MP900. Is MP900 available in HK? If mine really conks out, at least I know where to get it from that is nearer home...

I read somewhere that in order for the memory to be wiped out totally one should wait at least a few hours. I may be wrong.

not in HK ......

please try
http://www.expansys.com.sg/product.asp?code=120452

this company based in UK, but singapore's business is handled by HK office.

It's strange but.....

Screen sensitivity seems to be different on every Handheld PC I've ever owned. It's doesn't seem to be based on name brand, but rather on each individual Handheld. For example, my HP 720 has a better screen response than my Mobilepro 900, but nowhere near as good as my Mobilepro 780. Does this mean that the 780 is better (in terms of screen response and calibration) than the 720 or the 900.... in my case yes, but not necessarily? If you test 3 other 780,720 & 900s, the results might be quite different.

What ever happened to quality control?

well.. i am sure that the 900 has worse touch screen responsivity than the jornada 720. maybe the 780 is better than the 720, i have no idea but you can be sure about the 900..
another thing worth to mention.. i do have a 720 and a 728 too (ok, it is a little too much of HPC's maybe 720 is still waiting to be sold.. ), and the 728 has a slightly better sensivity in terms of double-clicking responsivity, but the 720 is quite good to IF you calibrate it ok. i had problems with double clicking on the 720 but after some hard resets i believe i just calibrated the screen better..

btw, if anyone is interested in a comparison between the 728 and the 900 in terms of size.. i'll have my pics posted on my site soon, tomorrow to be exact.. i already took the pics but didn't have the cable to upload them to my PC.. (and no card reader, sorry )

thanks
well my 900 seemed to be a steal regarding price.. 225$.. (sssh)
but i'm not sure if it was perfect when i bought it or the rom was already corrupt. or only after a spontaneous hardreset? though not seriously. but i'm waiting now for the ce.net upgrade and hopefully (?) all will go well and then i'll have a perfect unit maybe. but in the meantime my 900 is still VERY cool. and the problem doesn't effect anything (well some things but i've found workarounds), so it's ok..

reset.. tough question.. i'll try to find now the page where they talked about soft reset with the NEC hpc's.
maybe if we can't find one, you should return the unit. or even if we do find one, you still won't be ok: what can you do if the 900 freezes totally?..
there's a solution to that though.. you can setup your hpc in a way that you can perform the hard resets and setup everything perfectly, in no more than 2 minutes! i'm quite experienced on these matters

you don't have to wait for 8 hours! 10 seconds is enough, and then your MP will ask you if you want to clear the RAM, you press Y and it will be totally hard reset. i always do it with my 728. i think the 900 isn't different.

why do you mention you hope it's not conking out? any particular reasons for it?

again a "how do you mean" question.. so, how do you mean it is always hard to do the soft reset? i don't think so, the reset button/hole is really easy to press, and there is a very "fine" feeling to it.

Edited by cmonex 2005-07-01 5:07 PM

Cmonex--

I've become so protective of my 720 that I no longer soft reset through its button. Instead, I reset through Tweaks2k.

There's something that tells me that repeated pressing on ANYTHING eventually wears it out.

But I also believe in the Easter Bunny, so there it is

Jake

not a bad idea at all. i might consider software softreset it's just sooo comfortable, it's right at the side of the keyboard.. hm .. does smalltweak have this feature? i don't have now the money to buy tweaks2k2 just for soft resetting.

What only $225??? Did you get it off eBay?

Can you tell me how to hard reset my hpc and setup everything perfectly, in no more than 2 minutes? Is it possible to back up so that I dont lose all my software and documents. Its a pain having to re-install everything. Dont think I can return it...Sigh. Anyway why are you upgrade to CE.Net? Is it better?

Each time it hangs gives me the shudders!!

Does Tweak2K2'ssoft reset works on a MP900?

John: Dont they use the same kind of LCD technology? Well guess in time iwill be used to it.

Ivan: Thanks for the link. Guess if my MP900 goes, I know where to go...

yes, it was the equivalent of 225$, in HUF as i live in Hungary - here you can get a lot of cheap HPC's! so obviously i didn't get it from ebay, but our equivalent of ebay.

as for quick hard resetting.. there's some tricks..
you take the batteries out only for 10 secs and when you put them back the system will probably ask you if you delete everything or not.
then, i don't use any backup utility though as they don't always restore everything reliably enough. especially drivers. apart from it, the backup utility on my 728 is quite good and it can do a restore amazingly fast.. but i don't use it any more..
so.. you should install everything on CF, and after the first hard reset you can find out which programs won't work without having to reinstall them. usually there are few of them. at least i don't have many..
then, for example the program shortcuts (desktop, start menu, quick launch menu, etc) can be saved to CF too, and copied back fast.
and other things like that.. and when setting some things in control panel
however for example if you do change appearance settings (control panel / display or desktop / properties) in an unique way you can't save it too easily. well you can but that would require a little fiddling with the registry. only once though
so most of the settings can be saved somehow and then copied back. you could even write some script/batch file to do it automatically for you but i don't know how.
or another idea.. do a hard reset, set everything the way you like, but do not install any programs. then export the registry, and at the next hard reset you just have to click on the .reg file
...
but maybe it would be easier for you if you just use a backup program.. maybe it is only me... i can't rely on backup software...
i believe there's a backup app in the internal disk.. i don't have the apps there any longer so i'm not familiar with that utility - how good/reliable it is, etc.. try it if you have it!!

why can't you return it?

i'll try tweak2k2. and i'm going to try to find that page now..

i'm upgrading (or trying to) to ce.net because i'm very interested what ce.net is like. i already have a hpc2000 device so if i don't like ce.net i'll just go back to my 728. (though i think i won't stop using the 728 in any case)
and as i already said my hpc2000 OS is a little corrupted it really doesn't affect anything for me but still it's better to have a perfect machine..