HP Changes Outlook

Well, not really ‘changes’, more like ‘removes’.  I just received a link to this article on the HP website which explains that as of March 2007 iPaqs will not be shipped with a ‘free’ copy of Microsoft Outlook. Now, given that Pocket PCs are designed to work hand in claw with Outlook, doesn’t that seem a little short sighted? Even with Outlook the process of synchronisation is hardly seamless with stuff getting duplicated and just plain refusing to sync; my favourite error message from ActiveSync has to be the one that says in effect:

‘There are thousands of files on your Pocket PC, some of them didn’t sync. I’m not telling you why, and I’m not telling you which ones. Good luck with that.’

So what’s going on? Is this HP or Microsoft at work? I don’t know but I do know that if I’m expected to pay several hundred pounds for a new Pocket PC and then another big lump of cash to get the software to work with it I’ll be looking for something different.