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Recap:  I am trying to do almost all my work with my smartphone and I am slowly getting there… this series of articles (this is the second part) is intended to document my findings and opinions about the process.

Here is where I am with my little project, and how successful (or unsuccessful) I’ve been so far.

Web Browsing
For the casual browsing, any browser that comes with your device is pretty good. There are always some limitations in your browsing experience when you use a mobile device… you would think. But my thoughts are that if I use my mobile device most of the time, it better do browsing well, otherwise I am going to have a rough time. In any case, there are many third party browsers to choose from.

Since my device already came with two browsers: Internet Explorer and Opera 9.7 I decided to go for a while with these two. It was good enough, but good enough sometimes doesn’t cut it… You see, I had to install Flash Player 3 on top of Opera and was able to see websites that had their menus and minor animations with no problems, but video websites (such as YouTube or Hulu) would take too long to load, and then video quality would be too jumpy. That was when I decided to install a third browser that can handle most of what is out there just like your desktop browser. Enter Skyfire v1.5. This little giant can do wonders… it behaves and reacts just like any of the major browsers on your desktop. You can download it [here]

Email
Having resolved the web browsing issue, I can access my email using webmail, but I usually don’t like webmail interfaces, they are clunky  and some of the features are not always available, so I put to the test Messaging from Windows Phone. This will be no news, but since Windows Mobile 6, you can see HTML emails formatted in HTML as they are intended to be seen. This makes it work just like the desktop and the major features are just the same as in my PC.

All I need to do is make sure that I can connect to my email accounts and have them setup so that what I do on my Windows Phone also shows up in my PC where I keep a permanent copy of my emails. Windows Phone Messaging is a pretty good solution and I decided that after evaluating other options I will stay with the default. After all, the extended features offered by other tools don’t really justify the hassle of  installing and using another user interface.

OK, with browsing and email covered, now I am doing about 60% of what any average user uses a Netbook for… let’s see what else can be done in these little devices. If I can use it for a few more things, I will be able to reach a comfort level high enough to go around without lugging my desknote around.