Google Office
My last blog post was about my new PDA, the O2 XDA Exec, which runs Windows Mobile 2005. After a few experiments with different approaches to email using the XDA I've finally settled on using gmail's web interface. Why? Well, because of the volume of emails I receive (and yes, the bulk of it is spam) it takes too long (and is too expensive) to download emails when I'm away from home (there could literally be thousands of emails if it's been a few days since I last checked email on the phone). Using Gmail, I can instantly see the most recent emails and then scroll down to see older ones. Gmail has a special version of its web interface for use on mobile phones and PDAs so it's pretty quick. Since using this approach I've realised that Gmail is actually much easier and faster to use than Outlook on my laptop too, and because I do some of my development work on a linux desktop it makes sense to use it there as well. It doesn't take much of a leap to see that having an online word processor (see Google's acquisition of Writely) and online document storage (rumours abound about the "G" drive) would make life much easier for users who travel frequently and/or have multiple machines that they need to use. With this infrastructure in place I really would have little reason not to buy a MacBook Pro for my next laptop.