Several iPAQ H3600 series Pocket PC users slash eBook lovers have for a long time faced a major problem; after an upgrade to Pocket PC 2002, some MS Reader eBooks slow to a crawl.
Several users of Compaq's iPAQ H3600 series Pocket PCs have complained of slow application performance after upgrading to Pocket PC 2002. Some of these issues - the slow response of the Compaq-licensed version of Snoopsoft Dashboard, for example - have been addressed by the developers, but one of the most vexing issues concerns a program written by Microsoft themselves.
Post upgrade, Microsoft Reader 2.0 slows to a crawl on many upgraded iPAQs, growing slower with every new page displayed in the book, until it finally reaches a point where new pages no longer appear. Users monitoring memory usage on such systems have noticed that even a relatively small ebook (10 Kb or so) can chew up more than 22 MB of program memory, effectively overloading a 32 MB Pocket PC.
Upgraded iPAQs are at a memory disadvantage to begin with, as many of the applications of the standard 24 MB Pocket PC 2002 build have to be installed to RAM, given than iPAQ H3600 devices only shipped with 16 MB ROMs. Lesser used applications such as Reader and Messenger have to be installed to storage memory, leaving less space for data and running programs than users had under Pocket PC 2000. The apparent memory leak in Microsoft Reader eats through what's left of this RAM in a hurry, grinding the operating system to a halt when it runs out of memory.
Some users have noticed that not all ebooks exhibit this problem. The problem seems to be tied to the graphics rendering in Microsoft Reader 2.0. Even very long text-only books can be read without problems, but books with embedded graphics consume memory at a runaway pace. To date, neither Microsoft nor Compaq has issued a patch for this issue.
Does this mean that ebooks are useless on upgraded iPAQs? Not at all. As mentioned above, some ebooks with no graphics exhibit no problems at all. Users with upgraded iPAQs can also choose to read books in Palm Reader or MobiPocket, two other popular ebook formats for the Pocket PC, which have no problems at all on iPAQs.
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