If there's a positive review about Microsoft products, then that must be old-fashioned or somehow that gets some kind of negativity attached to it.

If there's a negative review, then bloggers are happy with that.

It's amazing to see how MSFT manages to grow and sustain it's leadership inspite of all this.

The truth hurts dudes...I've been using a Wing to run my production company for the last year and a half. It gets no fanfare like the iPhone, but kicks ass in the real world with all its business tools, communications capabilities, insanely long battery life, etc. It helps me save dollars (internet reviews on products before I plunk down my cash at Frys) make dinero (I have 3 push email accounts on it)...and plays my mp3's on BT wireless headphones while I roam the office...SWEET!

@cloudshine

"It's amazing to see how MSFT manages to grow and sustain it's leadership inspite of all this."
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Yes but its not growing as quick is it? Its certainly loosing customers to alternatives right across its product range.
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Putting that aside for a minute, are you saying that the bad press surrounding Vista is not deserved? What about the recent IE exploits? What about Windows Mobile? Are you saying that these products are actually worth the money, and there are many people who waste their time posting just to belittle MS? Are you really saying that?
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Lets look at WMlive, are the reports wrong? Is infact MS beating Google?
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I fail to see any incorrect reporting. If the only news that can come out of MS results in adverse reaction then thats hardly the fault of the people here or indeed the original poster of the news.
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Maybe your attitude is why MS is loosing customers. It doesnt believe that people have a right to complain or voice their opinions, and maybe why alternatives to MS are attractive. In the past there was no choice, now there is.
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Just an idea.

I like Windows Mobile.
The number of hacks available make this phone far more customizable than what's currently out there.
Sure- it runs slower on the backend, but I'd rather have a slightly slower OS- than one that is limited, and restricted in what it can do.

@Brotherblah
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What phone is it running on? Im sure it cant be the MDA Mail (since that is the phone I had)
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Restricted? I cant speak for the Iphone, however what restrictions do other platforms have in comparison to WM?

Everyone that has a Windows Mobile phone always says the main reason for buying it was push email (to me anyway).

Microsoft only led in this market because they were the only ones that were allowed to have the secret Exchange server sauce.

Thanks to the EU, now anyone can get the specs for push email so every phone can operate on a level playing field. That leaves Windows Mobile without any real selling points, since its just Windows 95 squashed onto a small screen.

Thanks again EU!

I'd love to see this Windows Mobile equivalent to the iPhone advert that shows how easy it is to get apps, browse the web etc.

Please someone record a Windows Mobile screencast.... This is how you browse the web... This is how you get great new apps....etc.

Just connect to your PC, download setup.exe, locate in explorer, click OK, OK, OK, remove crapware that came with app, click start (with teeny tiny stylus), programs, scroll, scroll, scroll, click app. Any problems, just update your drivers or something! Remember to close all open programs!

Some people think features > usability. If you can't use the features without screaming in pain, then theres no point having them. Thats why Apple controls features so thoroughly, just slapping in a half-baked copy&paste implementation is Microsofts job.

P.S. Smartphone is an outdated marketing term used by Microsoft to try to explain why their phones were so slow and unreliable. Somehow any phone not running Windows was dumb. Maybe it was to try to make their users feel better about their decision? "I bought a smart phone coz I is smart! WOOT! Push my mail, baby, I am super important and need my spam NOW!"

Herendo wrote: "I've been using a Wing to run my production company for the last year and a half."

Really, Herendo? Well, please share more. I'd happily be shown to be wrong. I'm sure other readers would like to learn about your Windows Mobile smartphone experiences.

Anyone else with WM smartphone success stories? Please share with the class.

Joe

Last year I was trying to eat some soup, but I only had a fork. People laughed at me for trying to eat soup with a fork, but it was quite chunky and I managed to eat it all, OK - so I used my tongue at the end but I couldn't have eaten the soup without that fork.

Truly an eating-soup-with-a-fork success story!

According to Andre Da Costa (on another thread here) he claims that 4 in 5 WM customers are satisfied. Joe, I wonder if you know the source of that "survey"? of course in true Andre style he hasnt backed it up with even a link.
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Come on Andre, Im sure Joe would love to see the source of your satisfied WM customers stat.
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These MS posters are great. They dont come back when presented with that inconvenience called facts.
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Joe, not that it means much to you, but I always believed you were impartial posting both pro and negative MS articles. Your comment above proves I was right.
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Thanks Joe for keeping it honest!
Regards.

Just dumped my Dash for a G1.

Couldnt be happier.

Windows Mobile 5, 6, 6.1 never did the job.

6.5 won't either.

Windows Mobile didnt make 4 of the top 5 phones last year.

If you believe that I have a Blackberry Flip to sell you!

Its better than the iPhone and G1!
lol

@Goblin

Maybe one of the main reasons 4 in 5 WM users are satisfied is because their companies pay for the phone and associated usage plan.

As for the iPhone, it really rode the wave on the iPod and a very well implemented UI. Of late, one has to give Apple cred for launching their app store.

The G1 isn't a world better of a phone, but I'm sure the next iterations will most certainly get better.

In my opinion, comparing WM 6.1 to either the iPhone or the G1 is near apples to oranges. In the next 90 days, we'll have a really good idea how consumer centric WM7 will become. I for one would like to see M$ hit a home run, simply for no other reason to push Apple to the next level. At least for now, it appears M$ and even Google will be stuck in catch up mode with Apple.

@Goblin

Maybe one of the main reasons 4 in 5 WM users are satisfied is because their companies pay for the phone and associated usage plan.

As for the iPhone, it really rode the wave on the iPod and a very well implemented UI. Of late, one has to give Apple cred for launching their app store.

The G1 isn't a world better of a phone, but I'm sure the next iterations will most certainly get better.

In my opinion, comparing WM 6.1 to either the iPhone or the G1 is near apples to oranges. In the next 90 days, we'll have a really good idea how consumer centric WM7 will become. I for one would like to see M$ hit a home run, simply for no other reason to push Apple to the next level. At least for now, it appears M$ and even Google will be stuck in catch up mode with Apple.

My experience with Consumer Reports is that they put a lot of weight on price. A lot of times unpopular products rate very highly because they are heavily discounted. I think this is the case here. In regards to WinMobile IE being terrible, it certainly isn't alone, I have a Blackberry and its built in browser is horrible (no JavaScript support). I often hit web sites I can't browse at all. Very annoying. I like the Android and iPhone concept of using the full browser with full JavaScript so you can Browse all sites and for site designers they just need to support the WebKit engine (the same as they do for full Safari and Chrome).

slightly OT: Whenever I look at Consumer Reports ratings of stuff I *DO* know about, I strongly disagree with their rankings.

So why do I ever look there for "research" on things I DON'T know about ????

@Goblin
"What about the recent IE exploits?"

What about the current Firefox security holes?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/17/mozilla_3_0_5_and_2_0_0_1_9_updates/

Every browser has a problem, IE is not an exception.

I am no fan of Microsoft, however I far prefer
Windows mobile devices over Blackberry or Apple products.

The first time I tried a stylus it became a must-have for me. I find a stylus is dramatically superior to other methods of interaction. In particular I hate using the tiny incomplete keyboards available on many devices (Including most Windows Mobile smartphones). It is a godsend to have the stylus available.

On Windows Mobile I use the free Opera browser, not IE. This browser is better than anything else out there I can assure you.

Windows mobile is one of the few operating systems for which I can get a sophisticated Telnet Client that works properly. My device includes SD card support and can play both MP3 music and DivX movies.

There is a ton of free software available for Windows Mobile. Part of the reason for this is that the operating system has a history and longevity.

To Joe,

Maybe you should just ask someone who uses one the next time you see one...18 million shipped in fiscal 2008 alone. Shouldn't take long.

I use WM for all the reason John mentions above. However, I do admit that Iphone's friendliness is superb. My only complain is that most devices with WM, with the exception of 1 or 2 that came out recently, only use 64MB or RAM ,which is quite limited. By contrast, even though Apple does not release this info, some claim that the iphone may have up to 512MB of RAM. In addition, I find some of the phone companies using WM for their phones,namely HTC, unreliable with quality control problems. It's nice to see that Samsung has now a WM phone out there and I think i saw an LG somewhere. Greater selection is always good.

@herry
What a way to answer the question. I think its a poor state of affairs when a multi-billion pound company hits problems with its package, and the only thing that can be said in its defense is "what about package xxxxx?" Yes its true, they all have faults, although I think you will agree Firefox is far more secure than IE, AND Firefox is not backed by a bank balance of billions.
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A pretty poor justification for a company that has (IMO) let its customers down AGAIN. Microsoft, had better improve next year, for its own sake (if its not too late already)

My personal phone is a 3 year old Win 5 smartphone. My work phone is a Blackberry Pearl. I hate the Pearl, and love my old Smartphone. My phone is a touch screen with a slide out full keyboard. It has my calendar, contacts, email, word and excel. I have Garmin on it. I loaded it with my favorite TV series, my mp3 collection and a couple of games. It has WiFi and bluetooth. If I wanted the internet I could have that (I found I wasn't getting my $40/mo wort so I canceled it) I see these people with their iPhones and say, I've had almost all those feature for years! (No 3G, but I don't use that) The sound quality is fine, my network works everywhere I go.
It is my little mobile computer and phone. It's not glitzy, but it does everything I want. And even though the bluetooth loves to turn itself off at the worst times, it isn't as much trouble as the company owned Pearl that loves to turn itself off at the worst time. The Pearl also loves to switch from plain letters to caps lock when I try to logon. I can't get it to stay in caps mode when I want it to. I actually find my smartphone is more reliable O/S wise than my Blackberry.

I have used a Windows Mobile device for 3 years. After I wore out my most recent one, I replaced it with an iPhone 3G. The 3G is an amazing device with a truly wonderful UI and the app store is one of the best ways ever to get at an application.

The iPhone is also one of the dumbest most annoying smartPHONES on the planet. Where do I start? Text-selection? Cut and Paste? Inability to access storage? Its reliance on the top-heavy, extremely intrsusive itunes? Horrible battery life? Apple's stranglehold on what kinds of applications -especially the inability to build functions that extend the environment? The annoying way it doesn't display the names of saved contacts? Not being able to use bluetooth for anything except headphones? inability to do video? Can't do Adobe reader? Can't download attachments? Is Cupertino dumb by not providing what many now consider standard in phones over $100 or just devious and planning to roll them out in more versions down the line and get people to buy them like they did with the new Ipod Touches?

Whatever can be said against WM based devices, it has all of the features I ranted about above. As a smartphone, as a phone, most WM phones really do beat the iphone hands-down.

My conclusion is that Windows Mobile may have stunted growth from not taking its vitamins, but the iphone was maliciously crippled at birth.

Could it be that the CR reviews had less to do with the OS and more to do with the phone hareware and functionality?

And on an unrelated-to-the-story note.. I find Joe Wilcox a real pain to read. I'm not sure exactly what it is about about his writing style. I just can't read a paragraph straight through without having to read it again to figure out what he was trying to say. It's exhausting!

I'll pick out just a random paragraph as an example (it wasn't hard to find one):
"Smartphone users were most satisfied with models from Apple, RIM and Samsung. Do you see any incongruity with the manufacturers receiving top ranks from CR? Yes, these were business users, and CR writes for consumers. But based on the evaluating criteria, CR favored business features, I say."

That last sentence made my head hurt. Obviously he has some voice inflection that would make it more clear, but I had to re-read it to figure out what it was.

Perhaps Joe Wilcox should limit his rants to podcast-form-only, and hire someone who can write to paraphrase his viewpoints more clearly.

"Is Cupertino dumb by not providing what many now consider standard in phones over $100"

Yes - they are really dumb. If you list the features of WM vs iPhone, then the WM list is way longer. All these people must be stupid, buying features that have been available for years on WinMobile phones. Just like the iPod, they are doomed to fail unless they add more features.

@billybob
Refraining from answering your sarcasm with same, I will point out that the ipod created a genre. Zune and it's ilk came along after the fact and copied then extended ipod features such as including radio, lowering or matching price, allowing storage to be used as storage and so on. The iphone on the other hand can to a market that already had a rich established feature set for the device type. They gave us revolutionary things in the iphone, but very alarmingly left out such standards as the ability to forward a text message, voice dialling, swappable batteries, the ability to set any audio file as a ringtone, and many others. As much as the iphone may have added in in usability and brilliance, it takes away in features.

It is the idiot-savant that can multiply two 7-digit numbers, but alarmingly cannot tie it's own shoe laces (well that may be a bit extreme, but makes my point)

Apple didn't invent the iPod genre at all. They were loads of MP3 players available before the iPod, most or all had more features on their list. Have you recently been near the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field?

The iPhone and iPod are different from the competition because they create a great overall experience. People who just list and compare features are doomed to never understand why the iPod and iPhone are so successful.

Its understandable, Windows has always been sold on the basis that it ticks more boxes than the competition. Its only after you buy it that you realise that half the features are unusable and/or unfinished and buggy.

Look how many WM developers are rushing add a new front to WM to make it look as much like the iPhone as possible, except with more listed features. Its not like they couldn't do it before. Yet they still end up shipping IE6 as the browser, which is totally useless on a mobile phone.

Personally I do not want people 'extending my environment' - thats how viruses spread, and and how Windows became such a mess. A well controlled device will be reliable, just like mobile phones were before Microsoft started making 'smart' phones. No other consumer electronic device has the expectation that it can do anything you like, at the expense of reliability. I actually like the fact that Apple controls the App store, if they ever start abusing the trust then I am free to switch or jailbreak if I want, until then I know they are interested in keeping my user experience intact.

If the iPhone is so featureless and useless then why is it the best selling phone this year? Are people so stupid they cannot count features in a list? Or, do WM fans not quite understand 'user experience'?

@billybob.
1. I am an iphone user and I love it. That however does not mean I am blind to its shortcomings.
2. My biggest beefs are with basic features surrounding text messaging, copying and pasting. They may have been esoteric once upon a time. Now they no longer are and even the most basic nokia has it. The iphone should bet the fundamentals complete.
3. Wow, you acknowledge Microsoft as creating the Smartphone. So are you saying Apple "embraced and extended" the genre?
4. So what if Apple didn't actually event the MP3 player? My point is still the same. They brought it to the world and made it nigh on ubiquitous. The ordinary mobile phone and the smartphone: Windows Mobile, Nokia, PalmOS, Linux, Sony-Ericcson, Motorol have set a baseline of features that we have all come to expect. Remove the web browsers, the app downloads, the storage, java, and so on. Leave just the phone and SMS features and the Iphone does not match the most basic of the others.

That's why I truly dislike my iphone and truly love it at one and the same time.

Lastly, the wisdom of the crowd is not necesarilly the best indicator of quality. More often than not it is the best indicator of great marketing. As Joe's number's indicate, the iphone's glory and fame have nothing to do with the phone part of the name. It is an internet device first, an application platform second, a media player third and (as even Apple's TV ad admits - though not in so many words) it is occasionally useful for making phone calls.

@billybob.
1. I am an iphone user and I love it. That however does not mean I am blind to its shortcomings.
2. My biggest beefs are with basic features surrounding text messaging, copying and pasting. They may have been esoteric once upon a time. Now they no longer are and even the most basic nokia has it. The iphone should bet the fundamentals complete.
3. Wow, you acknowledge Microsoft as creating the Smartphone. So are you saying Apple "embraced and extended" the genre?
4. So what if Apple didn't actually event the MP3 player? My point is still the same. They brought it to the world and made it nigh on ubiquitous. The ordinary mobile phone and the smartphone: Windows Mobile, Nokia, PalmOS, Linux, Sony-Ericcson, Motorol have set a baseline of features that we have all come to expect. Remove the web browsers, the app downloads, the storage, java, and so on. Leave just the phone and SMS features and the Iphone does not match the most basic of the others.

That's why I truly dislike my iphone and truly love it at one and the same time.

Lastly, the wisdom of the crowd is not necesarilly the best indicator of quality. More often than not it is the best indicator of great marketing. As Joe's number's indicate, the iphone's glory and fame have nothing to do with the phone part of the name. It is an internet device first, an application platform second, a media player third and (as even Apple's TV ad admits - though not in so many words) it is occasionally useful for making phone calls.

This is just halarious. Here Joe goes complaining about consumers reports and indirectly claiming that somehow they are in "cahoots" with Microsoft to give them such good rating on their phones. WOW, I have never seen a so called journalist (aka YOU JOE MS basher) be so totally biased for apple and yet write for a MS review site. You really need to check yourself Joe. It is funny, in your eye's Apple can do no wrong. And when their little baby the "iphone" gets a not so positive review, you jump all over it. Is this really unbiased reporting?

Listen, I work with a LOT of corporations and I can tell you this most people need a device that converges home and work life. And everyone person I know that went out to buy a iPhone for the "cool" factor. Now has it sitting at home as no more than a fancy MP3 player. Business people cannot work with the iphone. Or I should say any real business people.

As for IE, yeah it is not that great to browse with on sites not meant for mobile phones. But really, I watch people all the time and guess what, I barely see anyone using the web on their phone for more than a couple minutes. Again, it is nothing more than the wanna be cool factor people that they got this touch phone. I would put up any HTC device against the iphone and it is a much better phone. Unless you are a 13 year old kid who just wants to tell his friends that he got a iphone. It is a joke.

The best thing the iphone has going for it is the app store. So great because I can quicly access and download my geeky star wars sound making program when I move my phone around.

Microsoft didn't invent the phone-that-does-more-than-calling because they do not make phones, I think the first was either Palm or Nokia, but who cares? You cannot embrace and extend a product, you can only do that with standards. They were also the first to make a phone with a desktop OS copy on it.

Copy & Paste highlights my point exactly. I think its a very noisy minority that keeps demanding it, personally I cannot remember ever needing it.

Once Apple implements a copy and paste, it will be set in stone (and more than likely copied by competitors). If they do a bad job then we will lose a lot of features.

How would you do C&P if you were in charge? I am sure its not hard to do, but how would you actually implement the user interface without breaking any existing gestures? Pinching, double tapping and clicking and dragging are already used for browsing, think of a new one which is accurate and doesn't clash with any of those. Complaining is easy, but coming up with better ways to do things is not.

Once you have worked out the user interface, we can work on how its going to work without bogging down the entire machine.

On copy and paste, Apple made a bad design decision from the onset to use most of the most natural mechanisms for this to implement something else. Consequently, fixing this is more difficult after the fact. Sort of like Microsoft's convoluted mechanisms to try and support web standards in today's versions of IE, which they could have avoided by doing things right in the first place. Microsoft deserves all the flack they get for that and Apple deserves the flack they get for this too.

Possible solutions? Context. There are two places where the feature is needed. Editable text fields (the address bar in safari, the phone number bar in SMS, Emails being written or forwarded) and non-editable text fields. The first is easy. Double-tap doesn't work in any of those. So let double-tap select in those contexts and like the button that pops up on email messages when you swipe a finger across the list, let buttons pop-up.

It's harder for non-editable text fields where the pinch and double-tap do things. How about the old staple of tap and hold?

The point is, Apple have had two years to work on it and the haven't fixed it. Back to what I had mentioned in an earlier post about extending the system, someone has designed a copy and paste implementation, but unless Apple buys it off him, he can only use it within specific applications.

A context menu inside a field would mean that you could only copy the entire field or there would have to be different modes for selecting compared to moving the caret.

Click + hold is taken already by scroll. Imagine trying to locate a particular piece of text in a long page, you might keep your finger on the page and move it up and down until you find it. If copy & paste was attached to click + hold then you would scroll the first time, but unless you released your finger quickly it would start copy & paste mode and scrolling would not work. This is very clunky and any hacks added to help would make it worse.

In addition to the clunkiness, it would actually be very very hard to select text reliably. The finger input is very inaccurate and it would be very hard to select the correct text (sometimes its hard on a PC), you can't adjust the start point once you have done the initial click. To get the correct start point reliably, it would have to somehow adjust the start point so its always at the start of a word. If it didn't then you would have to repeatedly stab to get the correct start point. Copy & paste would be renamed stab, stab, stab, drag and paste.

Apple may have had 2 years, but the lack of copy & paste has not affected their sales, and if they implement it wrong, they risk breaking everything that makes browsing easy. The iPhone is only designed for quick browsing and reference, not major work. If I were Apple - I would wait to see how Microsoft manages to accomplish it, then not bother. I recon their solution would incorporate a mode selection, like Adobe PDF viewer. They haven't fixed it because it's not broken.

P.S. You are concerning text only. There are also images and other non-text objects which would have to be copy & pastable, otherwise you have a crippled system. Apple will not want to go ahead unless all of these problems have been properly thought through. They will not do it just to rush to the market with another bullet point. That's why they are outselling WM after only 2 years (and only 6 months with enterprise support).

@billybob

Copy & paste has been in windows mobile for years. I still contend that C&P should have been in iphone OS from the start. Apple was idiotic in not doing that. You're right about images and so forth. My response is just like every else sees gradual improvement and expansion of capabilities, they could introduce text first and images later.

Fine, implementing it may sacrifice some features, but they have been willing to do for other features that are neither useful nor intelligent, such as the real-estate lost in the safari address bar by making the search bar permanent.

However, let's not get stuck on C&P. How stupid is it to enable forwarding in email client and not in SMS which is actually almost the same thing? How about fixing the problem where contact names are not consistently displayed on incoming calls? It's just as annoying in SMS where conversations end up being disjointed because the system doesn't see them as being from the same number?

By the way do you have an iphone?

I am waiting for the phone that will come from the microsoft/Nvidia cooperation.
With the new "Tegra" chip in it.
Then we will see a real "smartphone".
Not just the usual camera and internet, but virtually a "hand held computer phone".
Thats what I want to get. And I dare say that I wouldn't be alone in that (and maybe by then (around August 2009) ms will also release mobile 7, which I think will be the release date for "Windows 7").

I bought a Samsung Blackjack I with windows mobile 5 about 1.5 years ago. At first I was all excited to use this fancy smartphone. Then I realized I couldn't edit documents, that it had a crippled Java environment that didn't allow many download Java apps to run successfully, and that it was buggy as heck. I was going to upgrade the OS, but gave up after realizing that since I don't use outlook, I would have to manually save and reenter all my contacts.

I can't wait until my upgrade period is up and I can get another phone. My experience has been so bad that I am even considering going back to a non-smart phone if I have to.

@ Jay

PPCPimBackup is a little compressed on a wm standard phone but does the job nicely. Backup your personal data to a storage card or your pc and then update to wm6. I'm not sure if Office came with the original Blackjack but Documents to Go is a full office suite from DataViz for $30.00. There are also free text editors out there if thats all you need. As for Java apps, there are plenty of alternative java vm's for wm that are much better than the one built in. However, unless you're looking for java games or Opera Mini (in which case, I suggest you give Skyfire a try), then I would think that any java app most likely has a native wm alternative. Also, if you want 6.1 it's been cooked to run on the original blackjack as well. You can find all of this info on Modaco or XDA-Developers.

Personally I consider wm standard 6 or 6.1 to be very pleasant to use if you know what you're doing.

So - what smartphones do you recommend? I have an ATT Tilt right now that I don't really like for many reasons. What is YOUR choice?