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Membership Benefits of joining the HPC:Factor Community

These days is seems that you have to register to use everything on the Internet, and unfortunately HPC:Factor is no exception. This page aims to explain why it is necessary for user registration in order to use some (but not all) of our services, and what benefits there are for you as a user in registering with us.

Contents

Please Do Not register more than one account on the system either for the purpose of requesting assistance or because you do not wish to resurrect the existing account. HPC:Factor Forum Rules stipulate that users found with more than one account will be banned

Why does HPC:Factor Require Registration?

There are a number of reasons that we require registration before you can access some of our site services; but let us be clear: none of them are commercial!

HPC:Factor does not charge for the services that we offer, we do not profit from running this site and this site is not supported by advertising revenue. We do not collect personal information for any financial or competitive benefits and we certainly do not sell your information.

The reasons why we require registration in some respects relate to our non-commercial, no-advertising philosophy. These are:

  • Ensuring quality of service
    By ensuring that only members can access certain "expensive" (in terms of processor and database time) site services, we can ensure that members receive a good level of service from our systems, with minimal wait times in getting to the information that they require.
  • Minimising SPAM
    "No good deed goes unpunished", or so they say. We used to have more open systems, and those systems were continually attacked and exploited. Hours of administrative effort was required to continually clean-up systems after attacks on content and denial of service. As such requiring registration allows us to filter problem traffic before our servers have to think about it. Quite simply:

    if IsMember() = false then drop();
  • Minimising Bandwidth
    As we do not make money from our site, it is important that we use the resources available as efficiently as possible. By restricting certain services to 'members only' we can reduce bandwidth and prevent content hot-linking (bandwidth theft which benefits other people but which we have to pay for).
  • Security
    As some of our systems require EULA acceptance, we like to know that people are using the systems properly, safely and as intended. Requiring registration allows us to ensure this on a more personal level.
  • Community
    Although we welcome anyone to the site, getting to know each other is what this site is all about, and if you are a registered member you are more likely to get involved, help out and stay around.

To see more specific information on why we require registration for each of our services, please click here.

View: Registration
View: Why do I need to register to...?

Member Benefits

So what can you do as a member that non-member cannot?

H/PC:Update

  • Only members can access and download from H/PC:Update

Software Compatibility List

  • Members can vote on / rate any app in the SCL
  • Members can contribute compatibility success / failure feedback for any app in the SCL
  • Members with a reputaiton ranking or who are a subscription contributor can download from the SCL

Hardware Compatibility List

  • Members can submit compatibility with their specific Handheld PC Hardware - i.e. tell us if a certain device works with a Jornada 720
  • Members can rate hardware devices
  • Members can submit hardware to the HCL without needing to populate contact fields
  • Members who submit hardware to the HCL have their forum name listed along with their submission in the public listing

Community Directory

  • Members can submit links to the community directory

HPC:Factor News

  • Members can submit news to the news desk without filling in their contact information or security data
  • Members can add public comments to Front Page News (FPN) items

Handheld PC Census

  • Members can participate in the Handheld PC Census

HPC:Factor Polls

HPC:Factor Forums

  • Members can post to hpcBay - HPC:Factor's Auction forum for Handheld PC buying, selling and trading
  • Members can private message (PM) each other using the private e-mail like messaging system
  • Members can use our automated system to generate a list of the Handheld PC's for their forum profile
  • Members can post with signature and avatar graphics
  • Members can post and create threads in all public forums (non-members cannot create threads in all forums)
  • Members can subscribe to threads and receive e-mail notifications when content is updated or changed
  • Members can create forum polls

HPC:Factor Interface

  • Members can change the theme/colour scheme used on HPC:Factor
  • Members can de-limit the page size on some windows to force the page to use 100% of the screen size

Downloads & Uploads

  • Members have access to a larger amount of binary download content than non-members
  • Members can contribute binary content to help improve our services - such as the HCL and H/PC:Update

View: Registration