Medion ppc200 GPS bundle

mastertek · Posted: Mon May 03, 2004 8:38 am Post subject: Medion ppc200 GPS bundle

I purchased this unit from Aldi last year. I couldn't beleive the value. As a self employed engineer I use this daily to find addresses and to give clients an eta within ten minutes. The other features of the PPC are useful too such as contacts and email. The only draw back to this wonderful unit is active sync. I called Medion in December some two weeks after buying the unit. Medion simply said box the unit up and send it back for an immediate exchange by return. Six weeks of hell and phone calls eventualy got a reworked unit. Medion had no replacement stocks. How poor is that?. I must have spent at least £50 on chase up calls through their revenue raising none geographic phone number. When I eventualy got the reworked unit it wouldn't charge on the cradle so more phone calls eventualy got a replacement cradle. However again a week later the unit won't sync. I contacted them via email. Guess what. No response. Again contacted via phone. Gave up due to excessive waiting times. I sent another email. Recieved a response from Germany but not UK. I dont know how Germany got the email as it was sent to UK. I recieved a phone call last week asking if I still had problems. If so please return the unit for an exchange. I would love an exchange but I am reluctatnt to wait six weeks or more for a second hand unit. Stale mate! By the way the unit has been patched as per advice on this great site!
Has any one else had a similar problem with Medion? Maybe its a ppc thats faulty or even a desk top pc or similar technology product. How did you resolve the matter? Is Medion a one man band? or is it a large company that sherks its customers rights. I am thinking of going to court for a refund and purchasing a palm instead. Are palm better? what GPS equipment is needed for palm and are their any bundle deals on palm. Now i've used GPS I can't be without it! :|

dejongj · Posted: Tue May 04, 2004 8:29 pm Post subject:

I am sorry to hear about your repeated problems. Would you be able to elaborate a little more regarding the synch problems? Are you using the supplied activesync? With what application are you synching? Is it the supplied Outlook? Which operating system are you using? etc...

pronto · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 22, 2003 Posts: 17

Broke the screen on my PDA some time ago - had similar problems getting through to Medion on their expensive telephone number and no response to emails. Initially got some pretty ill-informed advice (like the GPS / software would work with another PDA), however after a few days perseverance I got to speak to somebody who was VERY good. They ended up replacing the PDA by return of post (and FOC!!).

I've had no problems with ActiveSycc - I use both the cradle and IR connections for a range of applications - what sort of propblems are you having?

mastertek · Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 7:58 pm Post subject:

Thanks guys.I am using Windows XP, Active sync 3.7.1 and office XP providing the Outlook. I have tried the PPC on my Acer laptop and on my HP desktop PC. The unit will not synch unless it has been reset. Same problem on the cradle and infra red. Medion. What a joke. I won't be buying this brand again and as they have failed to honour the promise of a phone call it looks like court action starting soon. :x

Tim Buxton · Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 9:01 pm Post subject:

Hi,

When I used my 3970 I used to have terrible problems when Navman SmartST was already running and I tried to connect to my PC using Activesync. I found that shutting down the GPS software sorted that problem out. Give it a try. Smile

_________________
Tim

ashleyw · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 18, 2003 Posts: 21

If you've had it for less than 12 months, can't you just return it to aldi for cash refund?

hi-baby · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2

just a few words that describes medion unsupported takes hours to try and sort it out and you are no better off once you have got off the phone .

The Technical help is crap they have not got the faintest on how support this unit and they should get rid of the staff on the technical help line and put someone in that can support you. if you go to trading standards keep all phone bills letters you have sent them ,any expense's they have caused you if you take them to court you will get all this back rather than phone them write to the manager director of the company and tell them the problems you have had and get reply date of at least 14 days .i hope this helps [/b]

mastertek · Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 9:37 pm Post subject:

I am in tals with Aldi to have the unit exchanged as they have another promo next week of the unit. The later version!
A refund is my last option. I want GPS at this price but I want a unit that works. by the way no other programs are running and still it won't synch without a reset. I am going to the media so watch out Medion!

DavidW · Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 12:37 pm Post subject:

ActiveSync can cause trouble on some people's systems. The problem is that it's a big and complicated system that has arguably reached the point where it needs a complete rewrite, as it's kept having features added to it without a total rewrite.

The latest versions of ActiveSync, 3.7 and 3.7.1 work with Pocket PC 2000, 2002, 2003, also SmartPhone 2002 and 2003. They work with Outlook 2000, 2002 (XP) and 2003. They work via serial connections, USB connections, Bluetooth connections, Infrared connections and network connections. There's also support for synchronising directly with recent versions of Exchange Server.

As you can imagine, with that multiplicity of options, there are cases where things don't work properly.

Some of the default options on ActiveSync aren't that sensible - in particular, Pocket PC 2003 tends to automatically select the "Use mobile schedule..." option on the Pocket PC, when that's best unselected.

At the very least, if you're having ActiveSync problems, it's best to do a 'detect and repair' on Outlook, go to Office Update and install all offered updates, then repeat until it says you have all updates installed, then reinstall ActiveSync - either the version you're currently using, or, if you're prepared to uninstall first, consider installing 3.7 (though there are some caveats in downgrading from 3.7.1 to 3.7 that I can mention if necessary).

If you have software that doesn't work properly with ActiveSync 3.7.1 (some software that installs maps onto your Pocket PC falls into this category, as does the Audible eBook system), you may need to downgrade to ActiveSync 3.7. Microsoft made some changes in RAPI, the part of ActiveSync that these programs hook onto, in 3.7.1, which improved the options, but broke some commonly used unofficial programming tricks. In these cases, complain to the program vendor and downgrade to ActiveSync 3.7.

A task manager that makes the X on the Pocket PC really close programs rather than minimise can help - the fewer programs running, the more likely ActiveSync is to succeed.

Because ActiveSync uses the TCP/IP code in Windows, some firewalls can interfere with ActiveSync.

Corrupt Outlook .pst files make ActiveSync go crazy.

If you care to post the precise issues you're having with ActiveSync, people will try to help. I don't think "going to the media" will do any good, nor will exchanging hardware unless your USB sync port is dead (that is, the Pocket PC isn't recognised by Windows at all).

Sometimes, simply soft resetting the Pocket PC can make ActiveSync problems disappear.

Meanwhile, going after individual Pocket PC vendors probably doesn't help - the problems can affect all brands, and whilst there are sometimes brand specific problems (such as, at one point, with the Dell Axim X5 - which was due to a defective Resco Picture Editor plug-in that all X5s contained), on the whole, the problems are with Microsoft code and affect all brands equally.

David

mastertek · Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 4:14 pm Post subject:

Going to media is born out of frustration. Frustration caused by manufacturers help lines that frankly don't give two hoots about supporting products that they have sold. I have gained more information off this web site than the manufacturer has ever given. You purchase a product and expect it to work. If it doesn't work you expect that the manufacturer will help resolve the problem. In this case the manufacturer has done nothing. Doing Nothing winds me up and eventualy I want justice. I am stating here now that if any one is looking for a GPS PDA steer clear of Medion unless your prepared to go it alone when things go wrong. Next week I will get my money back and possibly buy a Dell Axim PDA because at least when things go wrong Dell have engineers (be they in India) to speak to.

mastertek · Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 7:42 pm Post subject:

Further to David (Fanatic). The unit simply refuses to sync on my desk top pc or my laptop unless the unit is reset prior to sitting it on the cradle or in front of the IR sensor. There are no programs running as all are stopped and the unit has had reg patches and batt patches applied from the Medion Germany web site. Funny isn't it that the germans have the patches but the UK web site dosen't. What does that tell You about the level of support being afforded to this technology by Medion UK?
Give it its due the GPS software is fantastic and now I wouldn't be without GPS. As a mobile engineer this device plays a huge part in my business. Being able to give customers an eta within ten minutes is fantastic but I also need to use the email, Pocket excel and word. If I have to mess about to synch the unit it defeats the object. If I gave my clients support the way Medion do I would be out of business! :x

DavidW · Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 8:42 pm Post subject:

It may be worth paying a visit to the microsoft.public.pocketpc and/or microsoft.public.pocketpc.activesync newsgroups. ActiveSync does do a reasonable amount of logging on the PC side (mainly in wcesmgr.log in your Temp folder), and examination of those logs can reveal a little more about the problem.

For sure, it is frustrating - but if a soft reset before synchronisation solves the issue, at least you have a work-round.

To be fair, it seems that the Medion has synchronisation issues that other Pocket PCs don't, which could be related to the USB drivers. It's also true that Medion's support is a bit lacking - but, I have to say that my experience with HP support really isn't that much better. They did come good when my iPAQ's speaker failed, but otherwise I've found them very mediocre. Quite apart from some issues I had in the early days of the Pocket PC 2003 upgrades for my iPAQ 3970, I found a couple of problems with an expensive Color LaserJet (one was certainly a firmware bug), also some problems with a high end HP ScanJet, and HP support weren't much use over any of these issues.

I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying that the Medion is actually a badge engineered Mitac unit - so Medion themselves aren't responsible for the Pocket PC hardware, firmware and drivers.

One final thought - it may help if you disable incoming beams (Start Menu, Settings, Connections tab, Beam). If you want to synchronise over IrDA (which you can, but it's rather slower at data transfer than USB - my experience is that no Pocket PCs support more than 115200bps IR), you don't need this enabled, and spurious garbage picked up by the infra-red port may not be helping your sync problems (or, indeed, your battery life).

David

mastertek · Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 9:23 pm Post subject:

welli've rebuilt windows xp after formating my harddrive. Still no joy. Really p****d off now. Enough is enough. Time for a refund. If I cant get a refund then it will be time to let the world know just how crap Medion are.

vicky · Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 10:10 pm Post subject:

If your not happy just take it back to Aldi,

I can't understand why you are getting so fussed about it, if you are not happy whip it back to them and get a refund they have a 12 months no quibble return policy,

Why not dump it back to the store and get one of the new updated packages coming out on Thursday?.

Vicky

budgie55 · Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 7:53 am Post subject:

Best of lcuk Mastertek sound like you have had a real slog with the old unit.

Take it back if I was you and give the new one a try with another 12months no quibble guarantee you cant go wrong (*cough*) fingers crossed!!).

Best of luck

Allan

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