Raymond.CC Blog

Surprisingly found by Arne from the::unwired, but it appears impossible to create a Microsoft Passport account for an existing e-mail address using a Pocket PC.

Normally, you should think, that a company like Microsoft is offering highly integrated services and normally they do if you take the integration of Windows Mobile into the PC and server environment with all the sync functionalities, etc but now imagine you bought a new Windows Mobile Pocket PC, you would like to start using MSN Messenger the first time and a friend tells you, that you need a Microsoft Passport account. Not a big deal at all, since you have the Internet in your pocket and you should be able to easily create such an account right from your Pocket PC. Ok, so far the theory.

And no, it doesn’t matter which language you Pocket PC is (in the example above it’s a German Xda neo aka HTC Prophet), same happens with an English i-mate JasJar and the language recognition is even weirder, Passport recognizes the different device languages, serves the right start pages but doesn’t lets you create an account at all (and the error page is language independent):

Interesting enough, do the same from your Smartphone and wonder what you will get there:

Huuu? Weird! With Pocket PC it isn’t working but with Smartphone it is doing fine?

Some things are curios here:

Somebody in the Passport department is…
a) funny (to serve such an error page) and
b) haven’t heard about the “reunification” of the Windows Mobile platform where it doesn’t matter if it is a Smartphone or Pocket PC since it “should be” just Windows Mobile or the responsible one is using Smartphones but not Pocket PCs and therefore created the Smartphone access just for himself. ;-)
I don’t know at all but it’s my curiosity of the week.

Source: the::unwired