I have been watching a fair number of live webcasts lately... from Systems Builder events (OEM info for MCE configurations), to Visual Studio integration, to Web Services topics, to... well... pretty much almost everything. I love free seminars and presentations, I guess its why I go to so many user group events.
Well, two days ago I got an email from Microsoft...
"Congratulations, Keith, you have been randomly selected as a winner in the Windows Mobility Marvels Sweepstakes! You became eligible for this sweepstakes by attending the MSDN Webcast: .NET Compact Framework 2.0 (Level 100) on January 19, 2005 and by submitting a completed webcast evaluation."
After confirming my mailing address, the following day they overnighted a new Pocket PC to me!
It arrived today, as promised. I didn't know anything about it (mfg, model, etc) until it arrived... but it turned out to be an HP iPaq h2200. Not the fastest or most feature-rich PPC, but definately good enough for what I want (something to bang code against). Honestly, the only downsides to it are the (relatively) slower CPU (intel pxa255), not a huge amount of onboard memory, and lack of WiFi. However, it has CompactFlash2 and SDIO/MMC slots, so the memory and networking can easily be addressed.
I have been wanting a PPC for a long time now, just never worked up enough "impulse shopping" momentum to actually click the "buy now" button on any merchant sites. And now I don't have to!
I love this - not only do I get FREE great-quality education, I now also get great gizmos!