It was November 2002 when I bought the product that put Toshiba on my "dead to me" list: the e740 pocket PC. I waited months for that model, skipping the more popular iPaq, from Compaq.
 
I waited because I wanted a pocket PC with two expansion card slots, specifically a compact flash card and a secure digital card. The idea was to use the compact flash slot with a GPS unit which I bought the same day. The secure digital slot had maps and music files.
 
I still remember writing a review on Amazon.com describing the unit and making a point that the sound quality was not good enough to use it as a "walk-man" (yes, I am that old).
 
The thing that kills me is that I also wrote to someone in a position to create a similar product. The only difference was that that person was an executive that produced mobile phones. Yes, I received a response. It was so dismissive and let-down that I wrote that executive's name on my "never to work for" list. Yes, I like lists.
 
I recently bought a Windows smart phone. After seven long years I bought the product I wanted. It is clumsy, hard to use and has an awful battery life, very likely to compensate for higher CPU frequency required by crappy coding.
 
The Toshiba unit that irritated me beyond belief had basically two bugs. The battery would not last more than 4 hours with the backlit on and Windows had a bug that would turn on the device midnight and not turn it off - ever. So, every night, my pocket pc would turn on and next morning all my configurations were gone. I would back up my data to the memory card, but re-configuring the thing every night was something.
 
Can I write "visionary" under R.I.P. on my tombstone?