PPC 6700

I have had my PPC-6700 for about a week now. In the beginning I was a tad disappointed; specifically with Outlook Mobile. Let me start by stating that there is no push mail unless you are using MS Exchange ’03. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you won’t care. That aside my problem with Outlook was that I originally had the device synching with my Laptop/Desktop Outlook. This meant that it created it’s own set of directories for the synched Outlook. Then in order for me to send/receive email using my usual MindTouch POP3 account I had to setup another account, which meant that it created another set of the usual Outlook directories. Get ready for this, I couldn’t even reply to emails that were synched from the Laptop/Desktop Outlook client. So, I would synch, run out of the office and couldn’t reply to the emails that were synched. Incredibly lame! Well, Steve resolved the problem for me by altering my behavior in a very simple way: don’t synch email. I leave email on the server, and receive email on my device from the previous three days. Very obvious, very simple. Leave it to Steve to point out that which is right in front of my face. Sure, no push email, but I’m satisfied with email now.

A big complaint of mine is that copy/paste is very limited. Not at all like my Treo. It should be pervasive throughout the OS. It isn’t. It seems to only be available in selected apps and the clipboard is not persistent between apps. This makes for providing a WEP key a real pain the ass, let me tell you. Especially when you roam between more than six different wifi networks. Another complaint is speed. I could do without some of the eye candy if the damn device would be a tad more responsive. When I am in a pissy mood and want to make a phone call to bitch someone out I want it dialing: NOW. It seems like it always lags when I am in a pissy mood and want to bitch someone out. Maybe this has something to do with the frequency of my pissy moods…I don’t know. Another point: the device tries to think for me. Often it does things (e.g. – flight mode) and I have no idea why. Slowly I am learning that it mostly has to do with holding down buttons (inadvertently) for a certain quanta at which time the button performs a different behavior than if you just tap it. Very poor design if you ask me. UeX 101: provide a system that is predictable and simple. Don’t get smart with it because users typically are not smart (myself included); more importantly, users are not going to have the same ‘smarts’ as you, the engineer. What the engineer deems as an obvious ‘smart’ move involving ‘thinking’ by the system based on the behavior of the user is almost always a bad idea. This should never be done without informing the user and giving them opt-out for the event and all future instances of it. Another huge complaint with my new PPC-6700 is that my Treo was WAY better designed for dialing a contact. The Treo was S-I-M-P-L-E. With the PPC-6700 I have to use the keyboard to get it done, which means sliding the keys out (see photo), which rotates the display (lags), and banging out a full name. The Treo would take two letters: last, first — much better design. Another complaint: I sure would like to be able to toggle through all the open apps and be able to quickly close those I no longer care to be open (in an attempt to diminish the lagginess of the OS).

What do I like about the device, now that I have bashed it extensively? EV-DO screams compared to the old Sprint data network. The display is gorgeous. I am absolutely in love with the ability to quickly and easily capture voice notes. I’m really digging audio books on the device (I liked this on my Treo too, but I constantly had issues with my Treo [I went through four in as many years]). Umm… I think there are other things. OH! The keyboard is awesome! It’s very easy to bang out a lot of text.

As an aside, who the hell named this thing? PPC-6700? I mean c’mon! Oh, SunNimubus looks surprisingly good on this device. It’s at least legible.

I’m currently scrounging for cool apps. I did find: Virtual Earth for PPC, which is pretty cool; although, I won’t get into the usabilty problems of this app here. I’ve not gotten into the dev environ setup or other apps, but I’ll now promise that in the near future I’ll follow up on both topics.