One more thing that *REALLY* **bugs me** about WM - it's nonsensical decisions about which apps to close and which apps to stay running in the background. The example that I always give is this one: I am in Skyfire and browse to a site that requires credentials, and I have forgotten the password. I switch to the Home screen, open eWallet, find the user name and password, and then, when I switch back to Skyfire (or IE or Opera Mini, take your pick) I often (though not always) find that the OS closed the app in the background, and I must surf my way back to where I was.

Say what you will about an OS like Palm OS or iPhone that suspends background tasks - at least when you go back to them, it remembers where you were. A thousand lashes to WM developers who do not offer at least a preference to bring you back to where you were last when their app - a web browser, a text editor, a mail app, whatever - was when it was shut down by the OS.

@doogald:

Those are good suggestions, and I'll add them to my editorial.

Reminder times should be done like snooze times. For both, maybe you could make the entry field a combo with your most frequently used reminder times (and pre-populated with Microsoft's standard choices).

I can't believe I forgot the Calendar's missing Categories field. I guess I've been using Agenda One for too long. I did list it in my Motorola Q review), but that was written over two years ago. Even the poor Tasks program supports categories, so why not Calendar?

I also think I may have been too hard on the Tasks program. In WM 5, it was horrible -- you couldn't edit tasks and most of the fields weren't there if you created on your Smartphone. However, in WM 6, it seems to have all of the function that the Pocket PC version has. I just hadn't checked in a while (thanks again to Agenda One).

Finally, Outlook (both desktop and mobile) should allow changing recurring appointments and tasks at will. I understand that may cause exceptions in the future to disappear, but it shouldn't change appointments in the past. Even changing the recurrence end from No end date to a specific date warns you that you'll lose exceptions, apparently including those in the past. I don't want to lose my past exceptions as those serve as a record of what I actually did.

Steve

That's a nice article, and an awfully long to do list. The one thing that I will add (if this has not already been done in 6.1) is expose the category field in WM Standard calendars.It drives me nuts that this is not there - the field is there, as I see it if I install a third party PIM app, but the standard PIM does not show it. Categories are how I separate all of my calendars.

Reminder times on WM Standard could also be better. Why make me choose from a list box? What if I want it to be 23 minutes for some reason?

Ditto on the search; it's silly that it is not there.