Rui CarmoGot around a bazillion things to do, to the extent where I'm actually spending hours on the phone dealing with all sorts of stuff. Started using my V800 for voice and video again, and David (whose project we'll be testing during the next few weeks) can attest to the fact that its speakerphone mode is pretty good.
Between one-hour calls and a few SMSs, I managed to drain the battery in a single work day. My Blackberry rocks in that regard, going for nearly a week without charging (not even USB trickle charge) - although, to be honest, I seldom spend this much time on the phone, and the Blackberry, being a GSM-only device, can't do video calls.
At home, Skype (which has just reached 1.0 for the Mac) has proven to be quite practical, although admittedly of limited use. So far, only folk with Macs seem to be able to use it naturally, due to the "just works" microphone settings - a lot of Windows people seem to have trouble with the sound mixer, and oddly, none of my Linux friends seems to be on it...
In the meantime, and despite the effortless syncing nirvana of the Blackberry, I've been wondering about PDAs again. The main culprit is an old Palm V that is still lying around, next to which current Palms look cheap and plasticky. Of course, the current crop of Pocket PCs also manages to look absolutely hideous and clunky, but the thing that absolutely does not lead me to buy any of them (assuming I was inclined to) is the lack of a slim, metallic model with the form factor of an old Palm.
Considering that the Palm V is still perfectly usable, fast and truly pocketable (despite its black and white screen and limited connectivity per today's standards), I wonder what the hell PDA product designers on all camps have been smoking this last couple of years. Palm has completely dropped the ball in terms of quality, and Pocket PCs are just too badly manufactured (to fit inside their price brackets) to be of any use.
Yeah, Apple should do a PDA again, even though there's no real business case these days. They're probably the only company that can come up with a decent one at this point...