Well Outlook isn't the same as Gmail. Hotmail would be about the same.
I'm not actually sure what you mean syncing with Outlook. Outlook is just an email program that you can configure for any email.
Yeah, it's not so clear with email, but Outlook has its own address book for contacts, and its own management of calendar/tasks. These are not simple views of what come with various email providers such as gmail or hotmail. My wife had quite an extensive task list that she managed in Outlook to track everything from appointments to upcoming shopping lists.
She has since had to move all of that to Google Calendar (which, she tells me, is not as feature-rich as what Outlook provides). She used to be able to sync her win mobile phone to Outlook (2-way) so that tasks she added on her phone appeared in Outlook, and vice-versa.
Now, she now uses her phone and the web-interface for gmail/google calendar, and pretty much no longer uses Outlook. So Microsoft has lost her as a user on both the computer and the phone.
She could have done the exact same with Microsoft's Live/Hotmail service. So whether she uses the Android phone or the WP7 phone, she's in the exact same spot, which really doesn't give one an edge over the other.
Just switched to a Nokia Lumia 800 for my work phone. The 900 would have been a lot nicer, but we're with Telus so 800 it is.
I have to say that so far I'm very impressed. The Windows Phone OS is actually incredibly smooth and straightforward to use. The animations are slick, and I love the live tiles. The Office apps and Outlook mail client are pretty top-notch (so far), so it certainly has the business capabilities we need. I just have to play around with some of the security stuff now (remote wipe, viruses, etc), but I gotta say that overall I'm really having a lot of fun with this thing. I had fun playing around with a few of the Android phones I've had along the way, but when you boil away the wallpapers and widgets, they're really not that different from using an iPhone (which I've been using for about 4 years now). Windows Phone 7 is the first one I've tried that really has a completely unique experience, and Microsoft pulled it off quite well. I've caught myself a few times wondering if Microsoft really did actually create the Metro UI, since it feels so much better than anything I've ever seen from them before... but that's probably a different discussion for a different thread.
As a company, we're starting to toy with the idea of allowing staff to move away from BlackBerry, but as the guy who makes the final decision, I don't feel comfortable having to sport the myriad of Android devices out there (in addition to security concerns), and I don't really feel that iPhones are the way to go yet either (deployment headaches, etc). If this Windows Phone meets our needs on the security side, then I think it'll be the way to go. I really wish Telus would get the 900 though, it sucks to have the one with the smaller screen and no LTE.
Speaking of Telus... I figured out that Nokia has actually released 4 updated versions of Windows Phone 7.5 specifically for the Telus models, which Telus has never applied to their phones, or even passed along to their customers. I had to download a hacked copy of the Nokia Store Tools suite just to install the updated Telus firmware for my Telus phone, because Telus wouldn't give it to me. Some things just never change...
Incidentally, has anyone figured out how to take screenshots yet? I did some googling, and it seems like I have to jailbreak it and install some kind of app that hooks into the OS as a background service, or something like that...
Just switched to a Nokia Lumia 800 for my work phone. The 900 would have been a lot nicer, but we're with Telus so 800 it is.
Speaking of Telus... I figured out that Nokia has actually released 4 updated versions of Windows Phone 7.5 specifically for the Telus models, which Telus has never applied to their phones, or even passed along to their customers. I had to download a hacked copy of the Nokia Store Tools suite just to install the updated Telus firmware for my Telus phone, because Telus wouldn't give it to me. Some things just never change...
i am in exactly the same boat with the win mobile platform; your last paragraph concerns me because the last thing that this platform needs is fragmentation. were they critical updates or were they just patches for other phones or carriers?
one other comment wrt the lumia 8/900s, they can only get to iteration 7.8 and not the full windows mobile 8 when it is released.
as much as i would like to see blackberry succeed...i cannot believe that RIM thinks that their recent performance does anything to convince decisionmakers to stick with them. if RIM just delivered what they said they were going to deliver, when they said they were going to deliver it, how they said that they were going to deliver it, i wouldn't consider the win platform.
thanks fanin80 for your post; good to know that i am not the only one wondering about the win mobile platform.
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Rogers bias. Hit McDavid? Get Brandon Manninged.
We had joy, we had fun, we had a season in the sun, but the wine and the fun like the season is all gone.
Average team is average. Average drafts, average results, average trades, average asset management, average vision, average outcomes. Average.
Incidentally, has anyone figured out how to take screenshots yet? I did some googling, and it seems like I have to jailbreak it and install some kind of app that hooks into the OS as a background service, or something like that...
Sadly, no. I'm still using a sideloaded app for it.