Hewlett-Packard has apologized to customers who purchased its new Microsoft-powered PocketPC, which turned out to be less than advertised.

Instead of a 65,000 color display, the new HP Jornada 540 series Pocket PC handheld device offers a roughly 4,000-color display, making it incapable of showing the detailed graphics of some high-end applications or the full graphics of Pocket Internet Explorer Web pages.

The company said a 16-bit component was inadvertently replaced with a 12-bit component in it's the development process.

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