Jeff, One of the managers at work recently got a Palm Treo. He started with the 700w which runs Windows Mobile, he had so many problems with it that he returned it a week or 2 later. He got the Treo 680 (PalmOS) as a replacement, it cost less and he's MUCH happier with it. On the Windows phone he was frequently missing calls with no indication whatsoever, the phone just wouldn't ring. Each time he realized it was happening he would have to reboot the phone, and then it would start working again for awhile. When setting up his email on each phone for him I also preferred the PalmOS version. Unfortunately, even the PalmOS phones have major shortcomings. I currently have a Nokia smartphone, and theirs isn't any better either. It sucks, as time goes on it seems the quality of the software on cellphones seems to get worse and worse.

The other promising option is the iPhone, although Apple still hasn't released any information on that phone to developers, which means there will be no additional software available for it. There's quite a bit of hype around this phone, it will be hard for the actual product to live up to it.

I'm waiting for the Neo1973 smartphone to be released. It's still deep in development, but it's being built on a good platform, and it has a chance to be a very good, solid phone. The plan is to release the consumer version this September, but from what I've been reading I'd expect it closer to the beginning of 2008.

So, out of the currently available options, I think a PalmOS based Treo is the best choice. Ask again next year, we should have some much needed new options.