[HD2 General] Wilco:
I agree with the last person staing that sense does not (dramatically) slow down the HD2, an I am still using Stock ROM.

The snapdragon is so powerfull.

The thing I notice however, especially with people complaining about battery life:

Most people think of the HD primarily as a Phone.

This also explains the complaint of a lot of poeple that there are no applications for it.

Given the HD2 has a big screen, which has an unusual format (like the touch HD had), there are still a lot of old apps around which run on the HD2 (some somewhat crippled, others do not run at all)

But, I came from Palm iV (monochrome) via Ipaq to p330o, Touch HD to HD2.

For me the primary use for this machine is: PDA with phone capabilities.

And not like for a lot of people, phone with PDA capabilities.

All phones of the latter category (Like eg. Nokia E71) lack a grat deal of PDA capabilities. This is where Windows Mobile has made a big heap of programming with a lot of open ends.... The PDA community jumped on top in order to improve the PDA experience.

The PDA community slowly moved to phone.

In my opinion, all die-hard tweakers / modders / programmers use the HD2 primarily as PDA. Most complaining users use the HD2 primarily as phone.

Yes, as a phone it lacks stamina (batterylife), Yes as a phone it is higly adaptable, but you will have to adress the HD2 as PDA.

On a PDA, one would tune applications (run this, kill that, beware of sync etc) Most ROM cooks still use the what I call PDA approach (load only what is nessesary, not what could eventually ever be needed, kean and mean) thus saving powerconsumption.

As to my past experience, I switch on things only when needed (wifi, bluetooth, activesync etc), except for push mail. This gives me after a normal day of use more than 50% battery life left (on a stock ROM).

For a PDA (except for the PALM iV, which did not have (serious) backlight and colour display) this is quite good.

A PDA should at least sync daily..... so this is acceptable in my opinion, and do not forget Older machines had wordse battry lives.

If one starts navigating, power consumption is incredible, and a good car-loader is almost an obligation, but then again, most navigation units need a powersource. Even the Nokia E71 drains the battery very quickly if navigating without loader attached.

As for sense/manilla:

I am an winmo addict, even an experienced user (ppc2002, ppc 2003, ppc2003SE, Winmo 5, winmo 6.1, winmo 6.5), and I seem to miss a lot of functionality in sense, so I use a lot of quicklinks to the original WinMo apps (eg. Outlook contacts, WinMo settings), yes WinMo is a bit cumbersome, but if you know your way..... Beats sense a lot of times in functionality.

On the other hand, for the quick "thingies" I still use Sense, but as soon as Sense does not live upto the functionality I need..... WinMo!!

All in all:

I can understand the review, seen from the perspective of a phone user, and I agree with it, but with a twist :)

For me the HD2 Rocks in a major way.

Currently I am sticking to stock, as the phne/pda does what I need and fulfills all my needs. (and more)

For apps: goto www.windowsmobilesoft.net, www.freewareppc.com, www.handango.com, www.wm6software.net, www.pocketgear.com, www.mobiletopsoft.com, pocketpcfreeware.com, pocketpcfreeware.org, freewarepocketpc.net, pocket-pc-freeware.com and many others....

IF one adds up all apps I believe there are a multitude of apps available for our winmo device even more than for any android, iOS or symbian phone all together. Agreed same apps exist 100s of times.....

Moreover even a lot of old ppc2003 software can run on winmo 6.1 (and perhaps also on wm6.5, but I have not had any time or need to experiment)

Concluding:

I am very happy with my HD2, still on stock,

Superfluous speed, no lag from Sense, but one need to use it with a lot of sense (but that has grown on me from ppc2003 on )

Battery life could be better, but I cradle it whenever I can, thus my batterylife is more than sufficient. (As an early adopter from pDA, I am used to cradeling :) )

Later on I will start experimenting, mainly because of Android :p (need to experience that too.)