more with less

Now that I’ve had my new Centro a couple weeks… I find I’m back to using my “pda” as a pda more again. A couple of things that originally drew me to the LifeDrive (the storage, and the size) started becoming prohibitive for daily use.. or something. I stopped using it as a pda. Yea, I used it for shopping lists, occasional memos and such… but more and more the last few months it was just an eBook reader.

I think part of it was the lack of keyboard. With the Centro I’m realizing how much I missed being able to enter stuff with one hand. And while I’m still reading a lot (yes, even with the much smaller screen), I’m making use of the original planner features more again, keeping the address book up to date (my old phone was more current in many ways than my LifeDrive was), as well as memos and calendar and I’m making good use of some of the great new features.

The wi-fi on the LifeDrive was great.. There was even a couple spots in traffic on my way home that I knew I could grab open hot-spots to do a quick mail check or something. But with the Sprint network.. cripes… I think it’s faster than my LD’s wi-fi was. The biggest thing with that now is GoogleMaps. The live traffic updating has probably saved me at least an hour of drive time in the last couple weeks.

Now I found out WellsFargo has a banking site specifically for portable devices, so I transferred the bulk of my direct deposit today from checking to savings via the phone’s web. I watched some streaming videos at lunch yesterday. Taking quite a few quick snapshots with the camera and easily sending them off to others. Checked out the preview of MobiTV at lunch today. Oh, been making ringtones from MP3s, and more.

Yes, because of the online system I use for work I am still double entering stuff, but between the supefast hot-syncing, and the Centro’s keyboard…. I find myself not really minding. (I do need to find a way to link to my work schedule… too many phone numbers I only need for occasional reference to worry about the address book).