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Since you use Outlook/Excel etc, I would most definitely suggest a winmo. And in that vein I beg you with all my feeble being to go for a Touch Pro 2. Samsung's WinMos are absolutely awful, slow, bug ridden and poorly built. Me and mum have had 3 between us, all identical to CDMA models and they were sh*te.

Appreicate the opinion, but I beg your pardon - the devices which are available cheaply enough to not be a consideration are the Saga (about which you've made your feelings clear,) the HTC Ozone, and the HTC Touch Diamond. More expensive but within the realm of possibility are the Imagio and the Samsung Omnia II.

Yeah, also, it depends on what you want to do with it, since you seem to want it for a lot of low powered stuff, nothing that can't really be done with a feature phone, but a smart phone is just faster with it.

So I will give you all the basic options.

I will not even list blackberries, they are slow, and cumbersome.

You have the webOS (palm phones) overall not bad, no expandable memory, not that many apps, good at what it does, but what it doesn't you can't do, for what you want I wouldn't suggest it.

WinMo, I agree with them, just go with the HTC TouchPro2, it is the best Windows Mobile, Unless you want something for purely sociality, if you do then I would go with the Kin two since I'm sure you text a lot, and it has a bigger screen and better camera, it's a Sharp, but the software is great for social networking, no apps, but still decent for being a social person. Kin Two

If you don't like any of those options I would suggest going with the something fairly sturdy and tried and true, all of the Google phones have outlook support actually, and if you want you can just use a gmail account which is pretty nice on the Android devices. If you go with an Android go with either the Motorola Droid, wait for the Motorola Droid X, which is like the Droid, but is nicer overall.

So if you really want a Windows Mobile device, go with the TouchPro2, only real decent Windows Mobile Phone out there, just know that it already is fairly outdated by modern standards, and will be more outdated in 2 to 3 months when Windows Phone 7 is released full fledged.

Mikey wrote:Appreicate the opinion, but I beg your pardon - the devices which are available cheaply enough to not be a consideration are the Saga (about which you've made your feelings clear,) the HTC Ozone, and the HTC Touch Diamond. More expensive but within the realm of possibility are the Imagio and the Samsung Omnia II.

If this is the case, go with Android.

Sorry, i misinterpreted your post. I'd say go for the Imagio if you can, the Ozone is a second best.

No, I would beg to differ, don't go with the Ozone, it is the slowest Windows Mobile phone in existence. That's when they really got bad, and the imagio isn't much better either.

I don't think Mikey is a massive speed merchant when it comes to phones. Android doesnt do the Exchange/Outlook syncing he needs it to.

Mikey wrote:The other thing is that I want to be able to sync Outlook, Excel, etc. between my phone and PC. Common sense would dictate that this is much easier twith Windows Phone than anything else... but common sense often fails where Windows is concerned. For WinPhone I can get a Samsung Saga for free (my favorite price,) or a Touch Pro 2 for cheap.

Syncing Outlook and Excel between your phone and PC is indeed easier with Winmo - although its not completely flawless Outlook syncs everything, but only the default folders. If you have say two folders, one for work contacts and one for personal, you can't sync them both. And it will only sync the default email folder, though any other email accounts you have set up in Outlook can be set up on your phone, and will send/recieve automatically when you connect your phone to your PC.

Hotmail can be set up on a Windows mobile phone, and its treated like any other email account on there. You can get it to sync your Hotmail contacts, and have the option of merging them with your main phone contacts if you like. I've heard that Hotmail accounts will soon support Exchange - you can set your device to sync with your Hotmail contacts and calendar, and any changes you make on one will be reflected on the other, similiar to how Google syncs with Android.

Office documents sync pretty flawlessly, but you have to have them in a paticular folder on your pc.

Mike, look at the Kin Two, since it would be in your price range and can sync outlook to it.

Also with Android you can sort of Sync outlook with it, I know people who do it, they set up a gmail account and then theres a program that syncs everything between the gmail, the outlook and the android, and from it's looks its fairly flawless.

But I would not go with any of the Windows Mobile phones besides the HTC TouchPro2 which is out of your price range. Because the rest are really crappy.

Eh, Nick's more of an expert than me, I don't really know US phones that well.

Yeah, on paper they aren't that bad, in use they are worse than crap. Very few Windows Mobile Phones can actually support the software on them.

S'gonna be the case with most OS unless you go Symbian. Symbian's so old, a hamster on a flywheel could power it.

Yeah, sadly true.

iPhone's "death grip" exaggerated...

'cause you weren't really getting that many bars to begin with.