[MDA III, XDA III, PDA2k, 9090 General] Chef_Tony:
i also had different gui improvements installed on wm2003, but still it didn't feel to fingerfriendly, which is important for me, because, let's face it, the BA is a modern phone, not some geeky 90s PDA ;) , so fumbling around with a stylus is just not cool. also, whenever i looked on engadget i was incredibly envious of all the cool apps and GUIs. whenever i looked at ppc freeware pages i saw that most games, media players, browsers... would just work with wm5 or above, and after i found out, that it is incredibly easy to make your BA become a modern device (i would even go as far as calling wm6.5.3 a 2010 phone), i decided i want that, to kick every iphone's butt, to install any app i want, not to be forced to install 20 programs after a hard reset anymore, because everything already works fine and looks nice. i mean, these days, you hard reset, the extrom installs windows marketplace for you, you log in with your live account, it downloads everything you had installed/bought from there, including microsoft myphone and when you start myphone, you are already logged in, so it syncs all your pim data with the internet, and you have everything back. back in the day i was afraid i would lose everything i set up for ages if i ever had to hard reset, these days it just takes an internet connection and 20minutes of your time, to have your phone completely back up after flashing a new rom. it is amazing. before upgrading (the procedure for windows xp is to be found in the 2nd post of the link above) you should still make a backup of all your data, either through pimbackup (freeware by dotfred) at http://www.dotfred.net/ or with spb backup, available at spbsoftwarehouse as a trial version, in case you want to go back. about those backup apps, pimbackup is great because you can schedule backups of all your important information, also stuff that is not synced, like sms or the call history and restore it to any other rom or even other device, but it does not back up your installed programs (most of which you won't need anymore anyway.). spb backup on the other hand makes a backup of the entire system, and can restore the exact state of the device after a hard reset, including all installed programs and those programs settings, on the downside, those backups are worthless on another rom, just work for hard resets.

that was just a fair warning, because not everybody is happy with wm6.5's battery life and performance, especially when coming directly from wm2003. i started with wm6.0 and so i am used to those disadvantages, and since the roms get better with every new release, it is actually an improvement for me every time.

also i need to tell you, that by tomorrow, there will be a new rom released build 23518 by egzthunder1. yes, although the number is not higher, that rom is newer. but since none of us know, if that rom has any bugs, it might not be right to start with that one right away, you should probably try the one from my signature / from here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=569869 (same thing) because there, the bugs are known and listed. when you have found your way around the new OS, you can still switch roms in about an hour, as stated above, you travel light with the new roms, and as long as your pim data is backed up and you follow the instructions, everything will be fine.

with best regards,

Chef_Tony