Thought I would follow up on my new Pocket PC. After a few more weeks of using this device, I’ve found more I like about it, and, of course, I’m finding the things I don’t like about it.
I know this sounds far-fetched, but this device is the coolest, most dramatic productivity improving tool I’ve had since I got my first laptop. Some of my recent ah-ha moments have been
- The seamless integration of contact list to both phone, text message, and email.
- The ability to use text messaging with a keyboard… I’ve always liked text messaging for all the same resons I like IM so much. Now, this is like taking IM with me. (More on the downside of actually using IM mobile down the page.)
- So, I thought having a camera on a phone was a stupid idea. Now that I’ve got one… I think it’s really cool. Witness, we went to see the Rangers in their winning effort against the Twins. My parents had paid our kids a few bucks for picking up their paper while they were away on a vacation. The kids decided that it would be a good idea to buy Lemon Chills with their newfound wealth. (Not a bad idea given that it was 92 degrees and 45% humidity. I’m proud to say my kids are pretty bright.) The kids wanted to let my parents know what they had done with the money, so we snapped a pic with the phone, and from the picture menu, I shot the pic over to them in an email. My dad picked up the email before we left the game.
- The video feature is way over the top. It’s a nice video player. I’ve, of course tested it out predominantly on my kiddos, but it’s also integrated so that you can send email upon recording or later from storage.
- The Microsoft OneNote integration is awesome. I’ve bought into OneNote. Even when I take notes on paper now, I transcribe to OneNote for storage. OneNote on the phone is awesome because it syncs with OneNote on my laptop everytime I do a standard sync. Only problem I’ve found is that I don’t have enough memory on the device to keep it loaded all the time. I actually have to install and uninstall it based on my current activity, which is a major bummer.
- Web browsing is really nice. The speed from the Sprint EVDO network make browsing easy. I’ve used this a lot lately to keep up with the World Cup, but I’m also finding that I can pull up a lot of the sites I use in my business, including LinkedIn, Plaxo, and research sites.
Now for the drawbacks, as I’ve found ‘em.
- MSN Messenger is confusing. It looks the same, but it doesn’t perform the same. I have a hard time knowing when, or sometimes why, I’m logged in. I’ve also not figure out how to store my messages, which is important to me. The other issue is persistence. I like IM and the new Live chat because they persist messages. I get that effect with text messages.
- Performance is not consistent or fantastic. I don’t know whether this is because of an undersized processor or too little storage memory. But, it can take me as much as 3 minutes to search and find a contact in my contact database. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes it’s faster, but, as a knucklehead who does a lot of calling while I’m in the car, I need fast and easy.
- I can’t figure out why, but I only have between 1 and 4 MB free on the device at any given time, which limits what I can put on the device, including OneNote, as mentioned before, but also I think that this may be causing the performance problems. I bought a 1GB mini SD card, which is great. (I’ve been listening to audio books. Jim Collins Good to Great is the current book loaded.) I can store a ton of stuff. I guess I wish I had better control of where stuff got stored on the deivce. I have a feeeling if I could store my contacts list on the SD card, I’d free up a lot of space on the device, improve performance, and be able to use OneNote all the time. (Grrr.)
More to come.
