So – I’ve had the droid for about 3 weeks now and I can give you a more detailed review of the phone than I did initially.

Bottom line – I still like this phone and would recommend it to anyone looking for a high-powered phone that is actually a portable computer. Having used it for some time, there were things that I discovered that were both good and bad.

On the good side the phone works great as a phone, which is something you don’t see in reviews. It is the best speaker phone I have ever owned. The speaker phone is good enough and loud enough that you don’t need a Bluetooth headset to use in a car. You can lay the phone on the passenger seat and carry on a conversation and it’s loud and clear. At home I put it on the kitchen counter-top and walked to my front door 25 feet away and I could hear them and they could hear me just fine. I wasn’t expecting that.

For the car, I bought a generic windshield mount phone-holder to hold the phone like one would mount a GPS. That’s because it can replace a GPS and the speaker phone is even better if it’s a little closer. As a GPS however it is both extremely cool and pathetic at the same time.

The cool part is that because it is multitasking the GPS can run while you are talking and even check your email at the same time (although I wouldn’t do that while driving). It is also cool that you can select “satellite view” like Google Earth has and you can see a moving view as you drive. As you drive fast on the highway it zooms out but if you slow down to make a turn it zooms in so you see the intersection. As you approach your destination it switches to street view so you can see what your destination looks like. All very, very cool.

But i’ts functionality as a GPS needs a lot of work. If you tried to navigate to my house it would lead you to another street in back of my house where you would have to cross a creek to get to my back yard. It also connects a dead-end street with another street on the other side of the dead-end. And it seems to have little or no concept of one-way streets, so it’s a little iffy as to whether or not it would get you to where you want to go. But since that’s software and is upgradable, I’m expecting it to be fixed in the (hopefully near) future.

Battery life depends on what you are doing. If you have the phone on standby, and just use it to talk, the batteries last a long time. But if you are running GPS with satellite view, it really sucks the battery down. Even with the car-charger connected there was still a net battery drain.

I am a former Palm 700p user and not an iPhone user so my standard is the Palm which worked very well for its generation of phone. When it comes to things that just work and easy to use and figure out, the Palm is significantly better than the Droid. The Palm had their “Palm Desktop” and the sync application that backed up everything. I could, and did, backup up the Palm, install a new OS wiping it clean and then use the sync to restore… and everything was restored as it was before the upgrade with everything working. The Driod lacks this kind of backup and really should have one.

Another little annoyance is that while the email app works well, my phone system sends me emails with WAV file attachments and when I download the WAV file and click on it, I expect a WAV player to open up and play the file and optionally give me the opportunity to save it under a different name. It doesn’t do that.

Since this is an open source OS and runs Linux I expected that there would be a command line bash shell that I could run as root and start messing with things like a Linux server. No such luck. I also expected it to have an SSH server available and an Apache web server available so that I could use a standard browser to configure the phone setting from a web interface… not there yet.

When I briefly had the HTC Touch Pro2 running Windows Mobile there was an app that turned the phone into a WIFI hot spot that worked great. I expected that would be available for the Droid since in Linux it would be a simple shell script to do this. No such luck. I also expected that more things would be configurable than there are.

However, because it’s a Google phone and open source, it’s my hope that development will be faster than Windows and the problems I’m having and the things that are missing will not be an issue 6 months from now. So, because of my belief, I am giving the phone higher marks based on “faith”. I’m hoping they don’t turn me into an Atheist and my faith turns into Droid Rage.

I was also surprised that I found myself using the software keyboard more and the real keyboard less than I expected. I thought I would be opening up the keyboard all the time but I’m not.

The apps store was better than I expected with lots of cool toys to play with. It also tracks updates and will alert you when new versions are available. The message system, which is a pull-down from the top of the screen, works very well and was an unexpected bonus.

Overall though I am pleased and recommend this phone even though it’s still awkward and the OS needs significant polish.

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I’m more than a casual user of Creative portable media players. I use a 60gb Zen Vision W, my wife uses a 4gb Zen, and my kids each have a 16gb Zen. At the time the purchases made sense because they offered more features at a lower price than either Apple, Microsoft, or any other manufacturer. For example, they have built-in FM radios, which my wife loves as she’s an NPR junkie. You can also add storage to them via SD cards, which is great for long trips. And they natively accept a lot more formats than either the iPod or the Zune.

However, Apple completely changed the portable media player market with the introduction of the iPod Touch. The Touch is essentially a micro-tablet-PC/portable gaming system/internet accessible/media player. It’s literally like having a computer in your shirt pocket. Microsoft answered Apple’s challenge with the Zune HD. I had to wonder what Creative would come up with. That wonder is over.

Creative is set to release its touch screen ZEN X-Fi2 to compete with the iPod Touch and the Zen HD. I’m amazed at how pathetic it is. The 32gb version is only about 50 bucks cheaper than either the iPod Touch or the Zune HD, but has none of the compelling features.

One alleged feature the ZEN X-Fi2 has going for it is native support for more video formats, but since most videos will have to be converted to smaller resolutions anyway, it’s not really much of an advantage.

The new Zen also boasts the ability to use flash cards for additional storage, but it uses microSD, so it’s not like its anything to brag about. The 16gb card I found at newegg is about 50 bucks. Suddenly it’s the exact same price as the Touch.

Hilariously, or should I say pathetically, it also offers an RSS reader and a calendaring system, but it has to be connected to your computer with a cable to sync them. Not with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, but with a god fricken cable! What year does Creative think this is?!

As I said, the Touch is essentially a micro-tablet-PC/portable gaming system/internet accessible/media player. While the new ZEN X-Fi2 is essentially an overpriced media player with a touch screen. I can’t imagine who would buy one. “Ignorant” wouldn’t sufficiently describe such a person. “Palin for President supporter” might come close.

I’ve been fooling with this new HTC Touch Pro2 all day and I almost sent it back. The phone itself is good but Windows Mobile totally sucks. I had been using a Palm 700p running PalmOS and when I originally got it for the most part it just worked. With Windows mobile almost nothing worked at first.

The user interface is poorly designed to the point of being unusable. If not for it having a keyboard and arrow keys it wouldn’t work. It can’t be used with just the finger and requires the stylus for about everything. It lacks scroll bars in critical places and you have to flick the screen to scroll. If you don’t flick it just right, you either select the wrong thing or you flip past what you want.

I have the Verizon version. The first thing I noticed when un-boxing it was a large area of paint missing off the back of the rear speaker grill. Turns out it wasn’t paint missing but a map of the world. A really bad map. If I can find the right color of black paint I’m going to paint over it.

When I first turned it on, it dialed *228 to talk to Verizon and program itself. But it only got to the main menu and didn’t dial the option “1″ to actually start the programming. The volume was initially low so I didn’t hear what it was doing until it looped and failed about four times.

The interface was cluttered and non-intuitive. Basically you have to fight every step of the way to do anything. Eventually you learn its quirks and you can get it to be barely usable. Many of the applications were probably written for phones with 4-way selectors that work like arrow keys and therefore there is no way to step one by one through the menus.

The operating system itself seems solid. I’m downloading some free apps to try to get the thing up to usable. I think if I replace enough of the interface with free stuff and some purchased apps I’ll eventually like this phone. And Mobile 6.5 is coming and it will hopefully be better. But the bottom line is that if you are coming from the PalmOS world to Windows Mobile you will be shocked as to how bad the interface is. I’m sure the iPhone folks can really laugh.

On the good side you do get full real multitasking so the email app is still running while I’m online with Putty checking my servers and using the browser. When connecting the USB cable to the computer it mounts the phone like an external hard drive so I can drag and drop files between my laptop and the phone. I also bought an app that turns the phone into a wifi hotspot so I may be able to drop my tethering charge I’m paying Verizon.

I’m looking at adding more apps. Considering something called SPB Mobile Shell which replaces most of the user interface. Downloaded iDialer to replace the dialing app. Looking for a contact manager that will allow me to import from Yahoo Address book (or at least a CSV file). The contact manager has NO import options. Comes with Opera but not very impressed with that either. You would think that you could tap on a link and go there. NOOOOO! You have to change the text size with the zoom bar before the links work.

My conclusion: I would bet that whoever designed the interface doesn’t actually use it themselves. It looks like the designers didn’t even own cell phones. My expectations for this phone were high but I’m really disappointed. Maybe you all can point me to the right apps to make me happy.

I’m looking for:

1. Way to import contacts.
2. Opinions on SPB Shell
3. Want a launch icon for Mobile Putty (SSH)
4. Replacement for Outlook Mobile

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I’m sure most of the techies here have used Newegg.com. It’s my primary destination for all things tech. The fair prices, superfast shipping, knowledgeable customer reviews, and fantastic customer support all keep me coming back again and again.

I recently discovered that Newegg is branching out beyond mere tech to more consumer oriented products. Sort of like a Newegg version of Amazon or Target. You can buy clothes, automotive supplies, cosmetics, etc. It’s called the Newegg Mall.

When I say you “can” buy such stuff at the Mall, I’m speaking in purely hypothetical terms. Whether you’ll ever find exactly what you’re looking for is highly unlikely. Let me give an example…

Last night I saw a kid wearing a Rock Band t-shirt and I thought it’d be cool to get one for my son. So rather than hit Amazon, I decided to give the Newegg Mall a try. A simple search for “rock band t-shirt” (without the quotes) brought this as the first choice:

Sure it’s technically a band, but it is neither a t-shirt nor a rock. So it’s not even close. None of the 36 products offered on that first page were actual t-shirts with the Rock Band logo.

Still, the search was modified for lowest price. I decided to try the “best match” option. The results got even worse:

Sure, it’s a wedding band, but it’s not even close to being a t-shirt or a rock. At least the headband was made of cloth like a t-shirt and could be worn by rock stars. Nearly all of the 36 results on the “best match” page involved rings.

I decided to give Amazon a try with the same search, and sure enough, I actually found t-shirts with the Rock Band logo.

I then gave the Newegg Mall another chance. I have a 6 year old daughter who loves the color pink, so I decided to look for pink drum sticks. They’re easily found on Amazon by searching for “pink drum sticks.”

The Newegg Mall was not quite as accurate. The first “best match” result was this:

None of the first 36 results were drum sticks, pink or otherwise.

I know what some of you are thinking. I’m searching for things the Newegg Mall doesn’t carry and I’m somehow wrong to expect that the Mall should carry everything I want. However, that’s BS. When a store does not have something I’m searching for, the store should simply tell me that.

This is how that simple process works. I searched for “mobius monkey salad” on the Newegg Mall and it gave me 58 irrelevant results. Amazon, however, said my search “did not match any products.”

I then tried “clarified righteous sweater.” The Newegg Mall gave me 167 irrelevant results. Once again, Amazon politely informed me that my search “did not match any products.”

When I’m shopping for something, the emphasis is on the “thing.” I certainly do not want to be distracted with crap I do not want to buy. And I don’t want to waste my time hunting through irrelevant results given to me when the store is not even selling the product I want. If you aren’t selling what I searched for, tell me that. Don’t waste my time.

Accordingly, narrow results are very important to me, and I imagine, to customers in general. Burying what the customer wants in an obnoxious mix of bad search results is not a good way to run an online retail business. The vast majority of people will try it and then leave when they can’t find what they want. And if they get ridiculous results like I got, they’ll never come back. The only reason I’ll go back is because of the amazing goodwill Newegg has earned with me. I’m sure Newegg will eventually get their search engine working correctly. If not, my guess is that the mall will close up shop.

This weekend I had the opportunity of seeing the Speed Racer Movie. The visual style of the movie is quite spectacular, becoming even more impressive if you see this movie in a theater that has a digital projector. This movie is directly aimed a children, but it’s still quite accessible to adults. I have to say that while watching the movie I kept wanting it to be more grittier somehow; don’t get me wrong, the movie is quite fun, but I just kept wanting it to be more violent. One thing I have to say is that the theater were I saw the movie was quite empty. The Iron Man movie had a lot more people in it.

To help you make a decision to go see this movie, you can see the first seven minutes below:

Do yourself a favour and go see this movie in a theater with a digital projector. If you were a fan of the cartoon, you will like it a lot. However, it has been reported that the movie hasn’t done well this weekend.