Pocket Pollster on an Old Pocket PC

An Alpha Tester in Colorado informed me that he wanted to try out Pocket Pollster on an old Pocket PC 2000 device, namely an HP Jornada 540. This device uses an "SH3" processor, the files for which are not currently included in the MobileCabs installation package. But I compiled a special set of CAB files for him. He reported that it seemed to install okay but then he was getting an error upon startup.

It turns out that I had an old HP Jornada 545 (same device, albeit with 32MB RAM) in storage. So I found it, charged it, and tested Pocket Pollster with it. The problem was quickly revealed.
As is often the case with such things, it was one seemingly innocuous line of code.

The mobile component of Pocket Pollster examines the hardware and makes a distinction between a Pocket PC and a Smartphone. Unfortunately the hardware identification string retrieved from these old Jornadas is not "PocketPC", but "Palm PC2". A minor distinction but the app didn't know what to do with it and raised an exception. I laughed when I saw this string because it made me recall that Microsoft had originally used the moniker "Palm PC" before they lost a lawsuit to Palm Corporation and had to adopt the new name, "Pocket PC".

Anyhow, I quickly got the application running. Certain parts of it run really slow, but with only a 133 MHz processor, compared to today's 600+ MHz models, it's little surprise. Still, once one got into the poll itself, it worked pretty well. Whether I support this device permanently is really dependent on customer demand. But it was an interesting trip through memory lane nonetheless!