Ok, this is for those of you Axim owners from downunder like me who are wondering what the story is with the PPC 2003 upgrade here. Well, as usual, we are the "poor cousins" and after quite a few emails swapped with Trevor Townrow from Dell Australia he basically said the upgrade is not and will not be available in the near future in Australia (which basically means the whole Asia/Pacific region since it's all run from Singapore). He could name no date when he thought it would be available and when I asked if I could swap my PPC2002 Axim (ordered late May) for a PPC2003 one I was told it would mean a 20% "re-stocking" fee.
This makes me so ****ing angry - why, when we pay more for these sort of consumer electronics than the North American or European market do we *never* get any of these upgrades? Just because A/P is a smaller market why should we have to go without? And let's face it, A/P *is* a big market - it includes Japan, Korea, Singapore, HK, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries with *many* loyal Dell customers - so why do we get treated like sh*t by companies like Dell?
Why am I so annoyed? Well, I'm a freelance .Net developer and have been developing for PPC2002 quite happily for a while - now 2 of my clients are offering me new PPC2003 development work and the only way I can take the work is to get the upgrade... but to do that I either have to pay the 20% "re-stocking" (hah!) fee or part out for a new Axim. Don't get me wrong - I don't expect it for free, but I just *DO NOT* understand why if this deal can be made available to Axim customers in N.America and Europe why the A/P customers can't also have it?
Right, that's my rant over - if any of you A/P owners out there want to email someone to register your displeasure about this try
trevor_townrow@dell.com. PLEASE NOTE that he *was* as helpful as I think he was able to be and I have no agenda against him - but somebody at Dell A/P needs to know how annoyed and ripped off we feel about this!
Mike.
