Every day people contact us to change their software from one device type to another, Palm to Pocket PC, Pocket PC to Smartphone, Smartphone to Palm, etc. I’m curious to know what drives this switch. What single thing, or combination of things, makes people drop a perfectly usable, high-dollar device and buy a different one?
I started out PDA-dom with a Palm Kyocera 6035, but when I spent more time banging it on the desk in frustration than actually using it, I started looking at other devices. I looked very hard at the Pocket PC phones, but the ones with the functionality I wanted were outside my price range (I will only pay so much for something I can lose or trash so easily!). The interface for the Windows-Powered Smartphones gives me hives, so they weren’t even in the running, and that brought me right back to Palm. Surprisingly, to me at least, the Treo suits my needs pretty well.
So what makes people switch to a completely different operating system? Is it the promise of “better, cooler, faster”? Is it “I hate this device, so that one has to be better”? How much of your device choice is based on actual functionality of the device (“gotta have a phone and a thumb keyboard”), and how much is purely personal preference (“the Pocket PC is so easy to use, but the Palm is so alien!”)?