Here's my story... Maybe it'll provide some correlating details that others can confirm?
My initial device (pre-ordered, received a week or so after launch) worked fine for a few months, but began having problems in late December if I remember correctly. It required frequent re-alignments and eventually was pretty much unuseable, so I called for a replacement.
Replacement came, worked fine for a couple of weeks, then it, too, started having problems. I was in the middle of several huge projects and simply didn't have time to deal with tech support, so I got along without a PDA for a couple of months, then when things calmed down I contacted Dell again, and another replacement was sent out.
When the third device arrived, I didn't install any of my usual software. I just put my battery in and put it in the cradle to charge the backup battery, The next morning, I grabbed it and stuck my SD card in it on the way out the door.
All I did with it that day was pull it out during a lull in work and fire up the ZUMA game (by Astraware) that was on my SD card. Within twenty minutes of playing, I noticed that my taps weren't registering correctly. I went into Notes and sure enough, I was getting the "heart monitor" across the screen when I drew a straight line. I immediately did a hard-reset, but the problem was still there.
So... Here are my conclusions... They're based on the assumption that this problem is rare enough that the odds of my getting three bad units in a row are astronomical, and that therefore the fact that all three of my units had problems must be related to something I was doing.
With that in mind, I went over every step in using my third unit and decided that there are only three possible causes:
1: My battery (which is the original battery that came with my first unit) is causing the problems. I doubt this one, because I also have an extended battery and if memory serves, I used the extended battery exclusively in my second unit from the time I got it until the time it failed, while I used the standard battery exclusively in my third unit. So unless both batteries are bad, I don't think they could be the problem.
2: My SD card is somehow causing the problem. I have no ideas on the likelihood of this one.
3: Astraware ZUMA is causing the problem. The more I think about it, the more I think that this one may actually have some merit. If my memory serves, my problems with my original device started shortly after Astraware released ZUMA in late December of last year. Several people in this thread have mentioned heat issues, and my device certainly gets quite warm (almost uncomfortably so) when I'm playing ZUMA for an extended period.
In reality, I suppose it could also be a combination of (2) and (3), since I'm playing ZUMA off the SD card. The heat does seem to be mostly localized toward the top of the unit, so it's possible, I suppose, that it's the SD card that's getting unconfortably hot and damaging the digitizer chip. Only way to test this for sure would be to try ZUMA for an extended period out of main memory or BIS, but I'll need a working unit for that.
Whatever the cause, it seems to be permanent. Once I've had problems, it doesn't seem to matter if I let the unit cool down, or whatever, the digitizer is permanently screwed.
So can anyone correlate any of this with their experience as well? Are we all avid ZUMA players?
(I assume if ZUMA is indeed the cause then other CPU-intensive games could have the same effect).
