Well, I got a Samsung Focus S to play around with this weekend and test the windows phone 7 OS out.  Overall, I liked it, but I can't switch from iOS just yet.

UI

The "Metro" UI is actually quite nice, I found it easy to use and find everything.  My biggest gripe is lack of customization beyond just the basic moving around of things.  I can't find the battery percentage at the top, have to dig fifteen menus deep to get at it.

Email

I love the email app, finally someone gives me a way to see only unread emails, only flagged emails, only important (!) emails in my exchange outlook.  The linked inboxes are cool too, even though I finally got that on iOS.

Social

The phone is clearly aimed at social media users, and the integration is really good.  Of course its lacking any Google+ integration.  Not a big deal, but its easy to set up and easy to use.  Can easy send pictures to multiple social media sites. Only biggest issue is you can't easily switch between multiple users on different sites.

Issues

Have to use the Zune software on my computer to load music.  I hate the zune software, why can't I just copy my music over, or why can't I download music from my skydrive?

No VPN???  Really Microsoft? Really?  I can't believe you released a mobile OS without any VPN support!  This is absurd!

App prices are off the chart.  Sure I get xbox live integration, but nothing too impressive here.

No Hulu? Again, Really?  This isn't rocket science, get hulu on your OS!

Development

I'm a native visual studio user, so I found creating apps using XAML very familar, but no sockets connections!  This means any non web based connections are out of the question.  I wanted to write a simple app to query my Control4 system.  Already had a cool C# desktop app, figured it would be easy... Nope.  The SDK lacks a lot of core .NET features.

Overall

I want to like this OS, but I can't.  I like the phone, despite bad battery life.  The camera is good, the screen is ok, a bit gray in the whites for me.  Ultimately, it will be another version or two before they win me over again.  For now, I'm going back to my iPhone 4, I miss my iPhone 4.

Why can't companies make standards based equipment for the consumer?

I have a nice Kodak v570 dual lens digital camera and was sick of Easy Share and wanted to use Google's Picasa 2. Well, Picasa doesn't "see" the camera, heck windows doesn't see the camera, only easy share does.

My old sony works fine, so does my old canon. Why can't the kodak one work?

And on that note, why can't these camera makers use standard usb or mini usb connectors? Kodak, Sony, Canon, almost everyone seems to have a different sync cable. I hope this gets fixed soon. What a great 3rd party fix, a usb cable with a ton of different ends to attach to any device.

My rant for the day... Hopefully someone has some creative way to make Picasa 2 see the Kodak camera so I don't have to import into easy share first.

Frankly, nothing against easy share, just don't need all the extras it offers and eye candy. Just need a simple image manager like iphoto on the mac.

Down at your local arcade there's always some kid who spends more money playing DDR then you do on rent each month. Prepare to meet that guys idol.

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This site should bring back some fond memories for those of you who grew up playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out on the Nintendo. The site allows you to play the game on-line in your browser using the NESCafe NES emulator and automatically tracks visitors fight scores in a Hall of Fame! Should be fun for anyone who played the original classic!

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