Windows Mobile 6 was introduced to a small gathering of media and hardware partners recently. It had none of the swagger or pomp that heralded the recently held Vista unveiling – which is about right because what was being introduced after all is a serious piece of software coding, for serious working professionals.

                                     My notepad was never this colorful...

I admit that I do not count myself in the ranks of “working professional” – in the sense that I never have had any need for a mobile device  to keep track of my “things to do” on a day-to-day basis. Sadly, it was enough for me to stagger along daily, and I managed to survive on pen and paper, somehow. The event opened up my awareness of these wonderful productivity tools that had always been under my nose – smartphones and the software that runs in them.

Of course I have been aware of these products from the beginning – they represented high tech for work, as opposed to the flip side of the coin – high tech for play, such as videocards and media players. I marveled at the miniaturization of such functions as email, scheduling, Word and Excel – but scoffed at the number of hoops a user had to jump through to get mobility to behave nicely with productivity.

Email messages were handled through text-based output, meaning pictures, charts, formatting eccentricities of various programs – all were reduced to the simplest text file so that the user can access the email on their mobile device. Formatting on the parent version of Word and Excel on the desktop invariably ended up being mangled on their smaller counterparts – prompting re-edits and gnashing of teeth by the mobile pioneers who worked on the go. These are actually some of the reasons I’ve gotten chummy with my trusty notebook, pen and desktop computer instead of adopting a mobile device – there were definitely sacrifices in having mobility.

                                     I used to do all of this in my head...

Windows Mobile 6 was a revelation for me, it does not attempt to re-develop the mobile computing platform, rather it ties up everything nice and tight so that each function is supported properly by other integral features in the mobile computing series of software. Case in point: SQL server and .NET Framework is already installed and running on a device with WM6 – this enables easy syncing of Word and Excel files, and more importantly, email contacts and schedule details as well as other previously desktop-only programs. This in turn is supported by the “round tripping” feature of the platform – which preserves formatting and changes from desktop or office server to the mobile device – skirting one of the bigger “hoops” that a user had to jump through before. An overriding feature is the improved security that governs storage card access and user access of a mobile device.

                                      Shortcuts will soon replace my Shorthand...

The final straw was the improved user interface similar to the desktop standard and improved connectivity options like over-the-internet access of the mobile device – minimizing confusion for mobile newbies like me. There have been many users of mobile devices who mastered the less than optimal interface of previous releases, but the latest WM6 release seems to be targeted at people like me who were not prepared to accept compromises in mobile computing: someone who has never shown interest in keeping track and being productive – now there is no excuse. Now all that’s left is to buy a WM6 device this weekend – where’s my notebook planner?