9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Haunted vibrator motor
Date of Review: Nov 26, 2007
The Bottom Line: Limited lifespan for such a big investment. You may get lucky, you may not.
Love this machine when it works. Unfortunately, it doesn't love me. My first one had a dead spot on the touch sensitive screen. I was sent a refurbished model, which was unable to go wireless upon arrival, so I was sent another refurbished model. This worked well for about a year...just until the extended warranty had expired (or course). Then the haunting began...
I began to have episodes weekly, then daily, when the vibrating motor would start vibrating all by itself and drain the battery causing all my data to be lost. ActiveSync saved my data, but I began reinstalling everything almost daily. Sometimes I would wake up to the sound of the 5555 vibrating, thereby catching it in the act. It wouldn't stop until it went dead, so I force fed it AC with the battery out, and it just vibrated until I gave up and unplugged it. I checked all the support forums and it seems this is a mysterious bug with the 5555 series--even HP knows about it, but doesn't know what causes it. HP wouldn't support me for free, so I had to do a surgery recommended by one forum and corroborated by another--I opened the unit and cut the power wire going to the vibrating motor. This cured the spontaneous draining battery, but now the unit can't be recognized in ActiveSync. I give up. Anyone out there who knows a good Windows CE-like device I can switch to, please let me know (drdileo@gmail.com). I've lost all faith in the HP company. I should have smelled a rat when they wouldn't let me download for free a new driver for my HP scanner after I had upgreaded Windows OS. They wanted to charge me $50--the scanner only cost $129--so I have the same place to put my hp 5555 now.
