My iPhone experience

First off, I loved my PalmOS Treo 650 - it very capably contained my life. It held my calendar, my contacts, and my to-do list for many years. The base system filled most of my needs, but of course I couldn't leave well enough alone. I added more applications. They made it unstable, but I felt I couldn't live without their added functionality.

Then it died back in June. It refused to power on and I didn't have cell phone insurance on it - even if I did, it was obsolete. What should I do? I toyed with the idea of getting a Sprint Centro, but after playing with one at Best Buy, the keyboard was just unusable to me. So then it was a choice between the latest Treo 755p or something new. I tried out a Blackberry and absolutely hated it. I decided to get the iPhone mainly because the PalmOS platform is a technological dead end.

What I miss:

• DateBk5 calendar - the PalmOS third-party calendar/to-do list program added so much to my calendar. The iPhone doesn't even have a to-do list!!
• ChatterEmail - an amazing third-party mail application that allowed me to read (and FLAG!) my mail messages in all my different mail accounts.
  

What I love about the iPhone:

• The web browser is amazing.

What I hate about the iPhone:

• Battery life is atrocious
• Apps are buggy
• Poor Outlook/Exchange integration -- NO TASKS??
  
• Poor email handling - how do I flag a message for later action?
  

So far I'm just syncing with Outlook and downloading my gmail. I haven't gotten it to talk to our Exchange server yet. It just says "failed" with absolutely no reason why. I'll have to check the logs on Monday, I just don't feel like doing that from home - too many other things to do on a weekend.

All in all, it's a neat device, fun to use, and can probably satisfy most people that aren't coming over from an environment they've used and enhanced for 5+ years.

Me? I'm hoping to find a lot of third-party apps to give me back the functionality I've lost.

Can anyone recommend a task list program that can handle outlines?

Who is this guy and why should we care?

I didn't know anyone cared! Thank you for caring!

I am currently IT Manager at a semiconductor intellectual property (IP) platforms company where I am responsible for all IT operations world-wide at our 6 international design and development sites. We use a mix of Windows, Linux, and Solaris systems as well as a plethora of varying back-end and network devices.

Supporting a world-wide hi-tech operation such as this is a constant challenge. There's always the demand to stay at the bleeding edge of technology, but do it on a shoestring budget. Hence the need to focus on quality so that things can be implemented correctly the first time. And the other focus to go with Open Source when possible.

I want to use this blog as a forum to kick around some ideas and talk about tools that make managing such an environment possible.