[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] pschoch:
The following should give users an idea what they are in for if they decide to take the plunge...

It happened again. Out of the blue, my XDAII froze, then turned itself off. I closed my eyes and there it was, this terrible electric 'bling bling' sound. I didn't have to open my eyes to confirm that another hardreset had just happened on my XDAII. No particular reason. As if my XDA wanted to tease me, it had just decided to clear everything in its memory, all installed programs. And now? installing everything again? when there was no insurance that it wouldn't hardreset itself again?

No, I said to myself, not this time. I opened the file explorer on my PC and did what I thought I would never do: I started the upgrade to install Magneto or better known as Windows Mobile 2005 on my XDAII.

When I downloaded the Magneto files, I thought to myself that I would just keep them for storing. You never know. One hardreset later and suddenly Magneto sounded like a godsent to me.

The upgrade went smooth, very smooth in fact. Before the upgrade I deleted the extended rom files and storage files. Maybe that helped.

All OK? Not quite. I could not connect to my PC and activesync via USB. Everything worked well via Bluetooth, but USB? No chance. I found out that it had something to do with XP and not having the servicepack 2 installed. Well, no choice. Goodbye USB sync. I could live with that since I still had bluetooth.

Once I had Magneto running, I started installing my standard programs. Most of them worked. The only one that did not was WorldMatePro. OK, I tried to live without it.

I installed most of the programs into Storage. They all worked. I even tried to install some of them into Buzz' RAM disk. A few worked as well, some couldn't be installed there. Well, I anyway planned to use the RAm disk for storage.

I was actually surprised that XCPU_Scalar worked. Well, even Magneto is now overclocked to 530 MHZ on my XDAII.

I also installed PocketZenPhone and Pocketbreeze. Somewhere I had read that these programs would not run on Magneto. But no issues on my machine! They both worked. The only issue I have with Pocketbreeze is that the category icons & colors are gone. Pocketweather also worked fine. Again, I was surprised that Magneto was so compatible.

Unfortunately, PocketContacts was a dead-end. "No contacts found" was the only message I ever got from it. Goodbye PocketContacts.

I had a few more programs in my folder on the PC, but the memory on my XDAII with Magneto is limited. Very limited. Very very limited in fact. But for me not such a big issue as I do not have too much necessary software on my XDA. I could live with this limitation for time being.

Anyway, I wanted to try Magneto for a week and see if I stayed with my new friend.

After I made the first few phone calls with Magneto I was impressed with the dialer. Nice interface. Also, it seems to me that the phone connects much quicker to the provider than before.

But why didn't they include something like the intellidialer? Well, the new contacts application is quite nice, so I will use the contacts instead. Not too bad.

Then, on day three, the disaster. Suddenly, the screen stopped reacting. Well, it actually didn't stop, it just didn't react to the places where I touched it with the pen.

I was already thinking about "hardreset", when it came to me that the screen orientation was wrong.

I had installed Vitobuttonmapper and mapped <rotate screen> to the record button as press and <start bluetooth> as press & hold. I figured out that I must have pressed the record button not long enough, therefore the <rotate screen> command was executed. But somehow, the screen orientation remained in Portrait but the touch screen was now in landscape.

I managed to fix this problem by changing back to Portrait and making a softreset. Then I tried to repeat this error. Yepp, the <rotate screen> was the culprit.

Consequently, my Magneto has no screen rotation anymore. But I can also live with this.

The rest of the week went fine. Magneto is stable and smooth.

Now the final question: Will I stay with Magneto? Yes, I will. I am often travelling and therefore I need a device that I can rely on. If I'm on the road and my XDA hardresets, I'm dead. Therefore Magneto is the solution for me. No hardresets, and even if the battery goes dead, I'm safe.

But one thing is clear to me. When the first Magneto devices come out, and hopefully there will be the Magician with Magneto, I will immediately retire my XDAII and buy one of these devices. Magneto is the future. No doubt about it.

What do I like the most about it besides the "goodbye hardresets"? for sure the softbuttons. Just great!

I hope this was useful.

Cheers

Pat