Just got my new toy! It's clearly going to take quite a while to try things out and get used to it. First impressions:
1) Really cool hardware, despite the lower resolution screen in comparison to my Clie HiRes 320x320. Put together nicely, fun to use, and solid. Has things like a voice recorder, voice command software (which I'll never use, but is a neat feature). It's uncanny how thin it is also.
2) Everything looks less business-like, more glitzy and cartoonish.
3) System stuff is a little more complicated. Like deleting programs, or stopping programs, etc. But I think with 3rd party sw and some familiarity it's no big deal.
4) AvantGo was really easy to set up (as was the PPC in general), but it runs really slow. For example to go to the home page in AvantGo takes a while which is annoying. This is a 300Mhz or so processor, much faster than my 33MHz or so Palm. But my Palm blazes in AvantGo in comparison.
The PPC fonts in AvantGo are much less readable also. They are very "busy" and weak looking, maybe because of the resolution of the screen. I'm anxious to try iSilo and eReader to see if it's software or OS or screen.
5) I don't like the way there are layers and layers of windows on the screen. And I'm always looking for that silly tiny "OK" circle at the top right of the screen (I wish it was bottom right where I keep looking first.) Things seem much less straightforward. More like desktop windows in a way. Palm seems "slicker". But these are first impressions and I need to take some time to learn my way around and find some more efficient usage patterns.
6) The conversion from serious PalmOS user to Pocket PC is both easier and harder than I thought.
Easier because there's really not much to it. Just an enormous quantity of little things to learn and try and get used to.
Harder because the move of all my data is taking some thinking, some tedious cut/paste and probably about $30 for some software. More about that later. Also just the surprising amount of activities that are second nature on the Palm, but take some time to figure out on the PPC. It's fun, but almost depressing to think how long it's going to take me to get comfortable enough to let go of my Palm for a while and be self-sufficient with PPC and Outlook. BTW, I'm new to Outlook also, so that doesn't help.
7) I don't like the continuous sync philosophy. I turned it off in favor of manual synching. Probably one is not better than the other, but you need to go with what you are comfortable with. I may try continuous sync again later.
8) Cases are almost as important as the form factor of the PPC itself. If I decide to stick with this, I may upgrade the case. (Of course, if I like it that much, I would prefer to upgrade the whole thing to a VGA version!) I really miss the convenience of my SJ33's built in flip cover. My Toshiba case is a decent leather flip cover (Krussell), with a flap and snap to fasten it so it doesn't move around too much from side to side and even maybe expose screen.
9) My first hour or two with it is utterly inconclusive! I may hate it or I may love it. Can't tell yet. But I think I'll be pretty pleased if the text fonts are better where needed, e.g. ebook reader software, and if I get my PIM and Shadow data over okay, and if the PIM/Outliner programs are adequate. But my thought so far is that PalmOS is a so much better foundation. But no matter how good the foundation is, you have to like the house built on top of it (the PDA). I hope Palm can continue to build us some good PDAs in the future.
As fun as this is, it's really really late here, so good night to all. The adventure has started!