First time posting here, I caught your article from a pocket pc thoughts feed on my google homepage.
I have had a series of WM devices - 2 x O2 XDAs, the newer version from T-Mobile in the UK, then a Treo 750, through my work - I am continually on the road, and access to my emails, calendar and contact lists are essential. WM's compatibility with my work Exchange servers, and a quad band phone have meant that I can leave my laptop at home when travelling unless I really need it. I haven't gone the blackberry route as I don't like the way it works, and from our purchasing set up, it's more expensive than accessing webmail. The handset changes that I made were in pursuit of better hardware, with the expectation that I would have to cope with the software.
I had all sorts of additional software (registry access, SPG everything, wisbar, etc.) installed on the WM devices to make them work as I wanted them to work: is that a good sign from Microsoft that this is possible, or a bad sign that it is required? I was really curious about android, then discovered how ungainly the hardware is, and swapped my trusty Treo (I loved that phone) for a symbian powered Nokia e71. Interestingly, I haven't had to add anything to the software to use the e71 as I want (other than mail for exchange), and in 3 months of usage it hasn't crashed, or made me think "I wish it did x".
MS would now have to do something quite special to get me to switch back: someone would have to come up with some good hardware (I can't tell you how impressed I am with the e71) and MS would have to come up with some software to match!
As an aside, do you think I could load android on to my e71 or Treo 750
?
R