I was going to post on this late last month, but got a little sidetracked. Basically, we would have seen more enthusiast site reviews on the new iPAQs released late last month, including the hp iPAQ h6300 Pocket PC Phone, were it not for a little hitch which developed. I'll let a couple of the affected parties tell the tale, and also include a short piece from Engadget I hadn't seen. Then I'll give my own take.

Chris at iPAQ HQ:

"Here is the skinny. On June 18, 2004 I received an email invitation from HP.(see below) It was asking us to moderate our users posts to delete references of the "rumored" models. I had a poll on how important this is to the users, the results, I could not agree more. Rumors help the industry. I used to have a different view, but I realize that buzz excites people. There was very little leaked info and really no buzz prior to the X30 release. There were hundreds that ordered the x3i weeks before the X30, but would have bought the X30 if they knew it was coming. Anyhow, there were other things HP was asking me to do related to "rumors". They wanted us to discontinue posting leaked info as well. I was willing to do this. What were we getting out of this deal? Early evaluation units of new products 1-60 days pre-launch (at HP's discretion and dependant on availability) and a few other info related benifits that, in my opinion, should be available to media without selling out.

So this is why we can not provide the service of an on time review on the models that will release tommorow. I have ordered a couple of the models out of my pocket and will probaly keep the rx4715 and ditch the inferior models on ebay after a couple weeks of testing and evaluation. Who knows when they will show up though. Thanks for supporting the site and despite my displeasure for HP's practices, I intend to move foward and provide the same support, knowledge, and info that we have in the past."

Jason Dunn at Pocket PC Thoughts:

"For the past year and a half, I was a part of HP's enthusiast program. I worked with some really great people, and they did their best to provide me with early information and hardware for review. I got a chance to talk to the product manager for the 6300 earlier this year, get some good info about the unit, and give him some feedback about how I felt they could improve the product (on paper at least - I still haven't seen a 6300 in person). A good example of this arrangement was the iPAQ 2215 review that I did a year ago last month. HP sent me the unit about a week before they were in the stores, and I was able to get a long, detailed review published within 24 hours of it being fully public.

What did I give HP in return? My agreement with them was not to publish NDA information that was sent to us. That means that if someone had sent me a PowerPoint slide deck a month earlier with details on the 2215, I wouldn't publish it. However, if that information was public to the general community and other Web sites were posting on it, I was allowed to link to it, as long as I didn't add any of my own NDA knowledge to the mix. This is the same NDA I have with Microsoft as an MVP. It wasn't perfect, but I felt it was a good balance between giving HP something they wanted (plugging one hole in the leaky wall), yet still allowing me to point all of you to hot rumours and news on other sites. The worst thing would be to have to pretend I'm off in la-la land and not be able to even post a link to a new device that the rest of the community is buzzing about."

Engadget:

"We understand wanting reviewers to sign non-disclosure agreements (not a big deal, though we generally refuse to sign them ourselves) or divulge confidential information, but trying to squash all rumors and speculation about unreleased gadgets on user bulletin boards is absolutely freaking stupid and ultimately counterproductive. Most companies would kill for people to be interested enough in their products to spend hours scanning the Web searching for any morsel of news about them, and what HP doesn’t understand is that anyone obsessive enough to care to know about a Pocket PC that won’t be out for a few months is probably one your BEST customers and is likely to buy more of your stuff not less. Kill the buzz and you’re going to kill the enthusiasm for your products. It’s fine if they don’t want to send out early review units—that’s their prerogative and they have every right to deny this to whoever they want—but we’ve got a problem with them taking a generally hostile position towards people who are genuinely excited about their products."

First off: BIG pat on the back to Chris and Jason for having the guts to say no to a company with such a big stake in the Pocket PC market. That takes a lot, and I could just as easily have understood their agreement to the terms if they'd felt they had no alternative. Some sites obviously did just this, and perhaps they had no such problem with the terms: that too is fine.

I'm going to take my own swipe at HP here though, for daring to think that they have a right to editorial control over enthusiast sites. I know that it's not compulsory to agree to their terms; after all, they don't exactly NEED enthusiast reviews... it's pretty cheap advertising though, and in many ways much more effective than mainstream media reviews or even traditional advertising. In fact, one could probably argue that Pocket PC and Smartphone would be far less likely to do well without the enthusiast sites.. they'd still sell, just nowhere near as well as when you can go to your favourite site and read about real people like yourself using the product you have in mind.

I understand, of course, that a big company such as HP needs to protect its secrets, but I honestly have to say that this is going overboard. Leaks happen. It looks like Motorola can deal with them (and there's been plenty of leaks for their devices), and one could argue that leaks can even be used both for feedback on ongoing development of a forthcoming product and for a form of word-of-mouth advertising. It's risky, but I'm sure there's cases where this can be said to have paid off.

As to telling enthusiast sites what they can or can't post: fine, in the case of an NDA and in preventing them from deliberating leaking that information. But it's unfair to stop them from linking to other sites who post it that aren't bound by the same NDA, or from pretending that the information isn't out there. More importantly, don't try to make them responsible for information posted by users of the site, or require censorship of the same.

I fail to understand what HP's purpose really was with this. It didn't change anything, other than to make life difficult for a few admins out there. To bring it closer to home, back in April MTekk posted specifications and an image of the h6300 from a draft brochure that we knew full well was under NDA - but we weren't bound by that NDA. I thought it would be clever to post just the text and the image, rather than the brochure itself, on the basis that if need be, HP could deny the information and claim it to be a fake. If they wanted to request it to be taken down, I would happily have done so, along with a story to explain why I had to do so.

But I didn't hear from them. That's no big deal - sometimes it is better not to respond to rumours or leaks so that less attention will be given to them. Motorola don't really seem to make any response to leaks, and bully for them .. hasn't seemed to hurt interest in the MPx220, and in fact the product may well have benefitted from all that public discussion.

Requiring a small number of the more popular enthusiast sites to keep totally silent? That's unfair to those sites, and doesn't really change the fact that the information is out there.

Going back to what I said earlier; some sites might well have no problem with doing this, and more power to them. I hope the payoff of having an early review is worth it. I must say though, that I feel much more for those sites who do have a problem with handing editorial control of their site to a company like hp, and again I applaud their stand.