Restrain from using illicit Windows Mobile ROMs

[Colin Dunstan]

The Windows Mobile Team warns us of the risks inherent when upgrading a Pocket PC device with an illicit Windows Mobile 5.0 ROM image.

Most ROM files which leak on the Net these days are from internal test builds where specific features of a device were being tested either by the Windows Mobile Team or the OEM who made the device. The joy of running your device with the latest Windows version at any cost may only be short-lived: The beta ROMs are prone to severe bugs and make production use often impossible. One example of what could happen:

We needed to test some aspects of our software that our existing dogfood devices couldn't support, so we bought a bunch of devices from them and asked them to give us that test build. It leaked out, and I've heard that it's available on the web. But, in that build, the camera barely works at all, the battery life is terrible, and the cell radio frequently crashes. These things didn't matter to us, because we were able to test our features and release WM5. But a real user wouldn't want to use it.

Not to mention that installing an unofficial ROM may void your warranty and cause you many sleepless nights where you'd lie awake and await the reckoning for your sins.