[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] craigiecraigie4:
I've used my JJ for a week [+] now, and after being a pretty strong user on my Himalaya, I'm not convinced that the JJ has a lot to offer. Here's a summary of my experiences, and some questions ppl may b able to help with:

What it truly offers vs XDA

Look, it works. But is it worth the money. Here's what you truly get, make your own decision. I have loot, so I went for it. But if I was stretched, there's no way...

Pretty kewl internet surfing: Speed good in 3G areas, and screen size along with small fonts (hi res) makes page width manageable. I find many sites where the combo boxes do not populate, but it definitely works on many sites that my XDA did not. Can't wait for Opera, tho many others anxiously await NetFront.

Useable email writing due to good keyboard. But, even with WebIS Mail, there is no HTML mail - just plain text. U can receive HTML as text of course.

Battery life not much different to XDA: a well set up XDA that is. I'm only now trying with 3G turned off to see if that helps further [Actually, I think it's quite a bit better than the XDA afetr all]

Pretty: Yep, VGA is very pretty. [After some use, I'm finding it very nice for calendars, surfing, emails, and anythng else where screen estate was apremium]

Terminal Services client: (aka remote desktop) - STUNNING given hi res. I can now get into my remote eMule server and see how things are going in crystal clarity. Love it!

Issues I have not solved - any thoughts?

Not enough hardware buttons in good locations: I drove my XDA with ButtonMax and the easily located hardware buttons. The JJ has fewer, and rather discrete, buttons. This means that you can't always hit that "close app" button easily, and paging in MobiPocket is limited. I HAVE gotten buttonMax to work - but a workaround is required. [VIto ButtonMapper also works]

No 'New' button: This sux BIG time! I had my XDA customised to "New SMS" vs "New eMail", and now I have to go into mail (WebIS mail beta is sloooow), choose account (SMS vs eMail), then hit new. Sounds like I'm whining, but I churn out a lot of messages in a day... [Using pocketPlus, I;ve gotten a "new message" command mapped to a hard key. Works great: hit the button and I get a list of account options. So it goes button-click accounnt-type message]

No Pocket Informant: Oh this is BAD BAD BAD!! The internal calendar app is SO crap one cannot believe that devices actually sell with it! I wouldn't have ever changed to PPC if I hadn't known about PI in advance. ANyway, PI fails on the JJ, even with October-1 ROM, due to 'POOM' issues. They are workin on it, but I'll be watching Agenda Fusion's progress equally closely. The first across the finish line...

[UPDATE: I've got it working - read their forum covering v3 this beta release for more. It's AWESOME in VGA!]

Nope - it fails after a day, and PI dev/ceo dude says he thinks it's a JJ ROM issue and it not working on solving it. SO start watching for Agenda Fusion to solve this for us...

Titlebar date/time: the OBOpt hack works, but the damned date only shows in the today screen. Go into any app or programme folders, and it gets knocked off the title bar. I WANT the time visible at all times - not like a today plugin damit!! Any suggestions? [UPDATE: Answer below - I didn't know of this WM5 feature]

Speed dial and recent call access: Up/Down on joypad no longer take me to speed dial and recent calls list when in phone mode. Now I have to touch the screen to dial whilst driving. Voice dialing will help - bit I've not tried this yet. Will see if ButtonMax can solve l8r tonight. [No, there's no "recent calls" command to map BM to - will have to work on a reg hack at some stage for this]

If ur buying for the keyboard, be careful; it's not that accessible. I still use the SIP for a lot of input, and only unrevolve the whole things when I'm settling in to surf or message [But its a GREAT keyboard!]

No BT icon. Bit daft. [Will test out BT switch apps this w.end]Buss updated his BT icon app for the JJ - look elsewhere under my posts. It's great - but it showed me that the BT issue is actually a deeper problem covered elsewhere - BT disconnects and is unreliable at best!

[*]Duplicates: I can't f'ing believe that I STILL get duplicates in the notifications queue!!! M$ have absolutely no excuse for not sorting this widely known issue out once and for all. Havn't yet found a proggie that does nightly cleanup - any tested suggestions? [REMOVED: this must have been a rogue app cos after a hard reset and re-insatll, I no longer have dups. I'll try to figure out what caused it over the next few days]Npote - they are BACK! sddeamon dups, and despite several hard resents I have not managed to figure out if there's a specific app causing them. I do know that there's no software to automatically clean up every night that works for the JJ on this particular dup[/list:o:e4db347fb1]

Things that work well for me

I've got quite a few of my critical apps up and working. Here's what I rely on:

Uptime Meter: gr8 4 battery life watching

Phone Dashboard: to track monthly 'free' minutes. Charts and dialog boxes don't do well in VGA, but it works [No it doesn't - no minutes are tracked - sorry!]

PocketPlus: Now, some forums say this does NOT work - latest 3.0.0b3888 does (with October-1 ROM). Repeating alarms do not work tho so...[UPDATE: I have recently hard reset and am installing 1x1 over a few days to see what the bugger is - PocketPlus is a contender at this stage...]

apReminderPlus: ESSENTIAL repeating alarms (who the hell hears that wank "cheep" in the morning!?). Not the best app but it's free and works. WIll try others over time. Reason I'm not happy is that altho it repeats and ascends, it does not pause for 5 mins then repeat the process over until u finally get back to your phone and realise how many meetings you've missed. It tries - wants to auto-snooze, but this feature does not work in WM5

Terminal Services client is great

ButtonMax: Now ESSENTIAL given the lack of external buttons on JJ. Map the few buttons u have to click, double-click, click-n-hold. I can't record Macros yet despite remapping "button 4" and readin all the help. They just don't record. [Also de-installed for now]

Pocket Sudoku: Yeehaa!

Mobipocket reader: Works - but fonts are not great to read for long [Get beta 5 from their dev site - Google it - STUNNING in VGA res!]

1-Calc, total commander, and eWallet all work fine.

Bluetooth headset support: Does a damn good job of reconnecting with my headset when I'm in rangeNOPE - it's a load of sh*t. Read my posts elsewhere on this!

Voicel dialing: Works VERY well - 1 click of BT headset and I'm ready to go

Extra section: Why I had to hard reset

Things went tits-up when I tried to install an app, then half way thro the cab transfer from PC-PPC I cancelled the process. DOn't see why it's an issue....but thereafter:

Add/remove list was blank

Could not install any new apps

Registry restore via sunnysoft did nothing to help (sunnysoft say "not for WM5" in their email to me - so don't expect too much from this...!)

Pocket Informant had failed (blank calendar issue) on me earlier so I was happy to re-build and give it a second chance anyway

At one stage my BT device went spastic - would not work, and when I deleted it I could not re-pair it

What's important is that there doesn't seem to be a way to get back to a saved state. Sunnysoft is NOT reliable according to THEM, and a simple memory copy cannot be restored.