New Shiny? I think not.

[slamlander]

Last Friday, amidst other things (which I will discuss in another post), I had to go down to the SwissCom shop to deal with my Piece-of-Shit HTC s740. What I walked away with is this:

It is an LG E900, aka the LG Optimus 7. As far as the hardware goes it is pretty cool. Good looks, excellent performance, and good accessories. I was even happy with the wired headset.

However, the hardware doesn’t deserve it’s software. Windows Mobile 7 is a pile of stinking pre-composted manure. Since I have a 14 day trial, it’s going back in the morning. Windows Mobile 6.5, what I have in my IPAQ, is loads better than Mobile 7.

My main reason for getting a Windows OS for the phone is sync. I have had major problems with sync I the past and without sync, the damned thing might as well be a brick, for all the good it does otherwise. There are three things that I need sync’d;

• Contacts: My address book is huge, with over 800 entries. These are definitely more numbers than I am willing to try and remember. Loosing them would also be a major catastrophe. Right now, Outlook, on my laptop, syncs with Plaxo. This is an online service that I have learned to trust. The master copy is in Outlook. This is a part of Office Premium 2007. As a writer, it is my main tool these days.
• Calendar and appointments: See above.
• Notes

Note the conspicuous absence of email in that list.

In any case, I fully expected the damned thing to use Active Sync with no problems. It doesn’t. It uses an app called Zune. One problem, Zune does not sync with Outlook or any other Office 2007 application. You have to have a Windows Live account to make that happen, along with an available MS Exchange server. I do not use Exchange. I use hMailserver. Guess what? I’m hosed

I had to upload my Contact list with Windows Live manually and it still will not sync it. I have to do the sync manually. That’s a show-stopper all by itself, right there.

Okay, I think, can I buy an app from Handango? No, Handango doesn’t sell Mobile 7 apps. I have to go to the Microsoft Marketplace. Okay, I think, I’ll just look there. Listen for the screeching halt terminated by the sound of crunching metal here folks: I am an American ex-pat in Switzerland and I was forced to tell my phone that (it goes with the Swisscom SIM card). Consequently, it only allows me to speak German or French. Well, at least they deal with French. My problem is that I don’t do French worth a damn and while my German is scads better, it still isn’t up to legal contracts and I prefer US English. Will it deal in the language that I want? The answer is not a resounding ‘no’ but a blastingly loud ‘HELL NO!’

So no, MS Marketplace will only sell me stuff if I want to switch to German or French. Argh! This is yet another showstopper. The putzes that do Internationalization for American software firms have their collective heads up their asses! They are doing it wrong! This is another post topic for the future.

I will swap this pile of excrement for an Android in the morning. LG is a good company and the hardware is beyond reproach but the OS on this thing sucks.

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