[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Mikeer:
Well, I'd say that there are quite a few other devices out there that can do all this and much more. For instance, Gigabyte gSmart i350 has all the features except for a keyboard AND has a Marvell XScale + a VGA screen. E-TEN has lots and lots of devices with similar features and they perform better than the Kaiser. I didnt research it that much, but Kaiser might have the perfect combination of features for some people.

Yes, it is a business tool. But you could have got a much cheaper device that would perform those very business tasks the Kaiser does, and some of them even better. Sure, TyTN II satisfies your needs completely, but the hardware used (reflected in price) is an overkill. And also the presence of Imageon, a camera and stereo sound (the sound quality is actually not so bad) would mean that the device has some multimedia features and was designed with multimedia capabilities in mind.

Nope, just good old not-converted AVIs to kill some time in flight or when commuting without too much conversion hassle. Kaiser pretty much matches the playback on my old h2210 minus the special FX of the shattered screen.

Congratulations on the upgrade. The problem is that nowadays this is the very minimum you would expect from a communicator (minus the GPS - it's just a nice feature).

If people who were building computers in the 50s and 60s were shown the PIII 500 mHz and a 3.5-inch 30 GB drive with a Win98 installed on the system they probably would have been amazed by all the features packed into it - a film projector, a vinils player, a calculus machine, a typing machine and a long-distance communication device and the list goes on. If a system like this was being sold today for several thousands of USD, surely there would be people arguing about how overpriced and underperforming it is, and surely there would be people who would have bought it and tried to defend it saying that it can play DVDs and you can play some simple games (whoa, check out the bundled Solitare, Minesweeper and Hearts megapack!) and you can browse web and listen to the music.

Just rambling, but you know what I mean...

I'm a poor bum and I can afford to buy expensive toys only once in a while, so I feel like I've been sold that very PIII 500 mHz labeled as E6750 and I cant even return because I had to order it from overseas to have Cyrillic keyboard. Should have finally bought a car instead, hehehe.

PS

Even though I am one of those aforementioned "stupid foocks" (smile for the camera) at least I didnt get my ass ravaged by ATnT or Vodafone in the long run. Trust me, no company in the business of making money would ever lose money on purpose unless they were planning on gaining more money in the long run. So you got the same package for the same price for another 2 years? Basically, you have been paying them 20 bucks more for the same service every month for the past 2 years and will be for the next 2 years, unless you flee the US of A and seek political asylum in a lawless dictatorship country.

Sure, there will never be a perfect device simply because everybody has different needs and different views on what a "perfect" device is. But those issues Kaiser is having and the way HTC handles them are kind of stupid, arent they? Dude, I dont know how business works, but I always though that marketing is a major part of it and making the product appealing to more than one group of consumers is usually a good thing - not just the business users, but the multimedia- and enthusiast-users too.

Speaking of design, what IS a perfect business device? Let's see: unlimited contacts, good connectivity, availability of a quick typing/input method, a long battery to survive a crazy day at work. While Kaiser's design does in fact satisfy the first three conditions, the presence of Imageon, overheating, a 400 mHz processor are all eating away at the battery life. They couldve put in a TI OMAP running at 200 mHz and created a better battery (Seidio managed to do that, didnt he?). This would also make the device cheaper and not eat up all the budget. You could say that business users dont want cheap devices (actually, yes, they do - they should know that expensive electronic assets get depreciated much faster), then they couldve made the Kaiser gold-plated for all I care.

You also mentioned that might have had to "pull certain aspects of the the original concept". By that you mean... drivers, but not the actual hardware? I'd be happy if they knocked off 50 bucks off the Kaiser and didnt put the Imageon chip in there at all. Or replaced that dinky GpsOne with a proper SirfStar III.