My rather ambitious goal was to completely manage my Comdex coverage with a Compaq iPaq equipped with a Sierra Wireless AirCard 300 for wireless access of e-mail and the Web via OmniSky, and ThinkOutside's collapsible "stowaway" keyboard. For the many appointments made prior to the show, I would use PocketPC's built in calendaring program to tell me where I needed to be, and when. At meetings and interviews, I would take notes using Pocket Word (the built-in word processor) to record my thoughts and observations. After the meeting, I would shape my notes into a story and send it to Tech Update's editors via OmniSky's wireless e-mail.

Not only would I be testing the PDA's in a real world application that goes beyond basic personal information management, but there would be significant professional and personal benefits. For starters, instead of taking paper notes at each meeting and waiting until evening to write the stories from my hotel room, I would have the stories finished and transmitted within hours of my meetings. The result: more timely coverage of Comdex (a competitive issue for any media outlet) and a more restful night's sleep. The productivity gain alone would be phenomenal! Another thing that would benefit was my back. Having ruptured two disks in my lower back this past summer, I've gained a new appreciation for lightweight devices. (At the time, I couldn't even lift a notebook computer.)

Bottom line? I would leave the notebook computer and conventional paper behind as I headed to the convention center each day. This proved to be a grave mistake.

Things went swimmingly over the weekend and through part of Monday. Several of the stories that now appear on ZDNet including ones about the Parsec Group, Wave Systems, and Pico Communications were all prepared and transmitted via my wireless iPaq setup. As a side note, collapsible keyboards, such as the ThinkOutside model, are significant gating factors for turning PDAs into primary computing devices. Even if the PocketPC's handwriting recognition worked flawlessly for me, (which it didn't), I find it far easier to take more complete notes with a keyboard than with a pen or stylus.

Halfway through Monday, however, things went awry. While attending a press conference on why Compaq and Intel feel the desktop isn't dead, I took copious notes with my miniature setup. There was a certain amount of irony in the whole situation. Here were two computer companies telling me why the desktop wasn't dead, and there I was, in real time, eliminating the desktop as a tool of my trade. Even funnier, it was with the iPaq, which is manufactured by Compaq!

As the meeting drew to a close, I became very aware of why desktops may not be dead yet. As I finished my story, the iPaq experienced a catastrophic failure. I figured, if there's any good time for your PDA to experience a catastrophic failure, it's during a meeting with executives from the company that makes the darn thing.

In the hour that followed, I worked with Compaq officials in a desperate attempt to revive the iPaq and hopefully recover my story. But more than the story was lost. After several failed attempts at a soft reset (which should not result in data loss), we were forced to perform a hard reset. The process wipes out all data, programs, and device drivers. Not only was my schedule lost, but so were the drivers and software needed to use the collapsible keyboard and OmniSky's wireless services. The schedule and other data that I synchronized into the device from my PC were easily recoverable when I got back to my hotel room.

But without the device drivers, I would not be able to continue with my intended mode of operation for my remaining meetings with Xerox, the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Association, and Oracle. No problem, I thought. I'll find a cradle in Compaq's suite, attach it to some system with Internet connectivity and Microsoft's ActiveSync software (necessary for loading anything into PocketPC), download the drivers from OmniSky and ThinkOutside, and install them into iPaq.

Wishful thinking. Though the process worked well for the keyboard, the same could not be said of OmniSky. The only download we could find on OmniSky's Web site was a driver upgrade that required an existing driver. I had no choice but to give up.

As I walked to my next meeting, I started to realize how ridiculous the situation was. Even if we were able to restore the device to working order, doing so required all sorts of resources that the iPaq itself should be able to eliminate. Imagine if this happened anywhere but at Comdex? What are the chances of a user being near a computer, let alone one with a cradle for the same PDA you have, running Microsoft ActiveSync, having internet access, and an expert who knows how to run it all?

Furthermore, add-on companies like OmniSky need to realize that such a catastrophic loss is a very real possibility, and that a user most certainly won't have the CD-ROM to install the original software. That software needs to be online.

I've been wrestling with the iPaq and its PocketPC operating system for several months now. Microsoft PocketPC product manager Ed Suwanjindar, who is here at Comdex, has insisted that the problem is the iPaq's hardware, and not PocketPC. That's the sort of fingerpointing users really hate. Even so, Suwanjindar has asked that I give the PocketPC 2002 OS a workout before continuing on my warpath.

I'm not getting my hopes up. If Ed is suggesting that PocketPC 2002 will never crash, I don't buy it. I've never owned a system--desktops, servers, handhelds, running Windows, Linux, PocketPC, PalmOS, and others--that didn't eventually crash (often because of third-party drivers). When systems crash, and they will, all of the companies involved--Microsoft, Compaq, OmniSky, ThinkOutside, and others--have a responsibility to make sure that the entire system's functionality can be quickly and easily returned. End users will accept no less (and certainly won't accept fingerpointing) if they expect to use these devices for mission-critical applications.

One way this could be accomplished is by loading critical software and drivers into a flashable portion of memory that isn't wiped out if a hard reset is performed. An alternative would be to allow those drivers and software to be backed up to a specially allocated memory area that's not affected by hard resets. Had this capability been included with my iPaq, and I had known which files to backup (another challenge), I could easily have restored them without the need for anything or anybody. I asked Suwanjindar if any of these features were incorporated into the new version of the OS. Suwanjindar said they had not, but agreed that the suggestions were good ones.

Until PDAs can be resurrected on the fly, I'd be hesitant to deploy them in mission- critical situations where novice users will need to depend on their resilience to faults.

Meanwhile, my iPaq is now restored from a backup that ActiveSync created on my notebook. But I won't be depending on it for tomorrow's adventures in the convention center, a bitter disappointment to me--and my aching back.

What do you think? Share your thoughts with your fellow readers in our Talkback below, or write directly to david.berlind@cnet.com.