Windows Mobile PDA my beloved

So I have had it with my phone. Updates changing things, notes not saving properly, AI in places it should not be (STILL salty about an update turning my power button into a Gemini button), just becoming harder to use as time goes on.

So I decided to downgrade. Went on eBay, looked for the PDA of my choice, and picked myself up an iPaq rx1950, running Windows Mobile 5.0.

This thing was an oddity in the best ways. The seller said that it had noticeable cosmetic damage, a completely dead battery and a loose stylus. The battery, while very old, still holds a charge very well. The only real damage was an old screen protector that peeled of easily enough, everything else just being a light coating of dirt and grime, typical for electronics of this age. It cleaned up easily enough. The stylus is unfortunately loose, but oh well.

And even though it didn't come with the box, it had almost everything that would've come in the box. User manual, warranty and license, charge and sync cables, and the CD with ActiveSync and Microsoft Outlook 2002, registration key included. It was advertised as the rx1955, but I won't take away points for that, as the two models are basically identical.

The software is a pain to install. You need ActiveSync in order to sync the thing to your PC. Only issue is that it was designed for Windows XP. Now, I do not run Windows, let alone XP, but I do run Linux, so I was hoping maybe I could get it running through Wine.

Nope, it didn't want to install. Even tried going to Windows Mobile Device Center, the successor to ActiveSync, but no luck there either. I did get another version of ActiveSync to install, but Linux would not pick up the PDA through USB, so the software couldn't see it either.

Ended up having to bust out my old 2012 alienware laptop to install it on there. I installed Windows 8 on there because I have the physical disc, but it told me there was a compatibility issue with the software. No worries, I can downgrade to 7, that's what the laptop shipped with anyway. Nope, still an issue. This time though, it told me it needed either Windows XP or Vista.

I hadn't used Vista in a while, and I remember really liking the look of it over 7, so I gave it a shot. Drivers were kinda wonky, couldn't even get the integrated Intel graphics working lol. But still, no luck on ActiveSync. There was no way in hell this thing was gonna boot on XP, so I decided to just bite the bullet and go with Windows Mobile Device Center. And you know what? It works pretty dang good.

Only issue is that the laptop has an SD card slot, and my PDA has a 2 gig SD card already in there, so I would be better off just installing Linux on it and just using transferring stuff to and from it that way anyway lol.

Either way, it does what I need. It takes notes, holds my appointments, has a task list, and even has a few games and a bunch of music for whenever things are going slow. Plus I don't need to worry about this thing updating and changing how everything works every couple of months lol