Back in November I visited TechEd 2007 in Barcelona.
Overall (as always with TechEd), the trip was incredibly useful and bought much clarity to a lot of new Microsoft Technologies that we're now actively looking to use in forthcoming projects.
Whilst over there, I was also incredibly lucky enough to be a Session Feedback winner. For this I was given an HTC Touch Smart Phone running Windows Mobile 6 Professional.
Now, being a corporate BlackBerry user, I started using the new phone with a little trepidation as the simple ease of use of the BB makes emailing on the go as easy as it should be.
To be honest, I just didn't get on with the HTC the first time I started using it (messaging especially was irksome). Yes, if was flash (but no iPhone killer like it was portrayed) and it provided some useful features the BB didn't but I really missed the ease of use of the BB for messaging. A little disheartened, I gradually moved back to the BB and simply started using the Touch as a PDA.
About 3 weeks ago, I decided to give it a go once more. So this time, I did a little homework as opposed to simply jumping straight in.
I did a hardware reset on the Touch to restore everything back to factory settings then installed a number of 'killer' apps as recommended by the Windows Mobile community as a whole. Onto the Touch went both BatteryStatus and the PCM Keyboard app.
BatteryStatus provides some very useful features to the main UI as well as the great ability to overclock the processor. The HTC Touch isn't the quickest of Windows Mobile phones and (the lack of) performance definitely contributed to the general bad feeling I had towards the Touch the first time round. However, with the processor overclocked to 256MHz, things are a little more responsive.
Next, PCM Keyboard. Messaging using the standard on screen keyboard (or stylus input) was to be brutally honest, pretty awful and this was really my main issue with the usability (or lack thereof).
PCM Keyboard removes this by providing on screen a full qwerty keyboard fully usable by 'fat fingers'. With a little use, the on screen keyboard is fairly responsive now and this has again removed one of the main criticism's I had.
Overall, this '2nd go' with the Touch (and Window Mobile 6.0 in general) is a lot more productive that my last attempt. With the new version of ActiveSync (Windows Mobile Device Centre) running happily on my new Vostro and partnered with the Touch, it now provides me with a much better experience than previously.
The next plan is to increase the storage to 2Gb, hook up a Bluetooth GPS and install TomTom.