[8525, TyTN, MDA Vario II, JasJam General] pgamble:
Hi guys

After a long time (since the very first TyTN in the UK - which I managed to secure from Vodafone before their sales organisation even realised they were supposed to be selling it) and a lot of fun ...

I went through 7 exchanges with Vodafone (who were very good at that side of things). I never experienced the display issues or problems with keys on the keyboard - my problems were trapped keyboard ribbon, large gap between the two sliding bits, stylus issues, SD corruption etc.

Following the 7th one, I finally said to customer services that I can't keep going on swapping devices. This happened around March time. At that point, the Nokia N95 was expected. I decided I would have one of those as an exchange and they were happy with that. Although the N95 didn't have many of the benefits of the TyTN (keyboard and touchscreen and the huge base of WM software) it did at least offer some new toys and a proper phone keypad - I got fed up with the lack of a tactile keyboard for the phone (this was the first phone edition device I'd had).

As regard the software this was a worry. I had a huge up to date library of WM5 software.

I decided to rebuild my old iPAQ 2750 (already upgraded to WM5). This would let me have a powerful WM tool with a separate phone that offered the HSDPA transport. The iPAQ wan't as sexy but it was a far better workhorse that the TyTN because of the extra RAM and the massive flash storage potential.

I built the 2750 as below with all the s/w I had. It's absolutely rock solid now (early builds were unstable) with 35mg of free storage flash and 95mg of RAM following a reset. I have backed up the whole lot with Sprite and tested the restore.

Current iPAQ 2750 build - 4GB SD, 4GB CF, 128M RAM, 128M Flash. WM5.

PocketInformant 2005, FlexMail 2007, FlexWallet 2006, VoiceMinder, PhatNotes, Cash Organiser 2007, PIEPlus, 40iPlay, Memory Map v5, CoPilot 6, 1-Calc v3, SoftMaker Office 2006 (Textmaker and Planmaker), Skype, Imov Messenger, Avantgo, Newsbreak, 4Winds Mahjong, Gamebox Classics, Galaga, Invaders, BubbleShooter, Bejeweled 2, Broken Sword, Billiard Master 3, Flux Challenge, Guardians, Resco Photoviewer, Resco Explorer, Microsoft Reader, PDF Viewer, Sprite 5.1, SKTools, Tweaks2k2, Pocket Breeze, ILauncher, Contact Breeze 2, Pocket Weather, Journal Bar, BatteryPack Plus.

I have 2.5GB of AAC music and 3GB of memory map maps (all the UK ordinance survey).

For data entry and spreadsheets etc - SoftMaker Office with the BT Keyboard and Mouse gives a lot more flexibility than the same install on the TyTN - the keyboard and mouse live in my briefcase.

The only missing thing really is the all in one device (which I would still miss a little) - I need to carry two devices (three if you include the keyboard).

In April ... I found out Vodafone were going to be stocking the Nokia E90. I begged that they let me have that instead of the N95 because of the lack of a keyboard on the N95. They agreed. I should be getting this sometime in May. It's actually thinner than the TyTN and the same width ... but it is a couple of cm longer.

It's going to seem odd going back to Symbian after all these years.

I'll have a proper phone keypad, better normal keyboard, very wide screen for data entry and film watching, decent camera with good video .... the E90 weakness being the availability of third party s/w.

So - two devices again .... but way more power and flexibility than any WM unit on it's own.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Paul.