[rfox]

I'm an old Palm OS user and I'm new to WinMo so I hope all you experts will be patient with me!

I'm still deciding on which PPC device to get but I know I definitely want Windows Mobile mainly because I want something that has a large developer community so there are tons of apps I can add to my device.

With my Palm, adding and removing programs and files is really easy. There's a desktop quick install utility very simply lets you add whatever files you want either directly to the device or to the memory card. It will automatically install itself to the right directory on the device. I only have to look at making sure a Palm app runs for my OS version and the display resolution.

I've been reading up as much as I can about WM, and I'm finding it may not be as simple as that I think because there are so many different PPC devices and not all WM apps will work, which then means I can't just get any WM device I want, but I have to get a popular one. For example, I see a lot of app development at the xda-developers site, but it looks like they are for HTC devices.
So does that mean HTC apps will only work on HTC machines? And I have to look for apps made only for my device?

And I've looked over some of rstoyguy's tutorials here, and it doesn't look like it's simple to add files to your device? You have to hack the ROM in some way? I can't just add/install apps? I have to customize the ROM to add them?
The main reason I wanted to get a WM device in the first place is because I thought I there were all these 3rd party WM apps already that I can use.

So there's this business with custom ROMs, the core OS (WinMO), and the GUI layer on top of that. I guess I can't just look at an app that says it's for WM 6 and assume it will work? Do I also have to make sure it's for my device's GUI layer, and then hack the ROM, and I still have to worry about registry edits like in full Windows OS's? And to uninstall, I have to do all that in reverse?

And I think I know the answer already, but will WM 6.5 be backward compatible to run 6.1 apps? I'm thinking not, but maybe it will be?

I'm a fairly technical person, so I can pick up on all this stuff, but truthfully I would really prefer something much easier to customize, and I'm big on customizing things to work exactly how I want them to, so software compatibility is a big issue for me.

Thanks for you input in clearing this up for me.
I did try searching through the forum first, but most threads are more specific.
So please point me to a link if I've missed something.