[aldamon]

I gave TF3D a few weeks with my Sprint TP2, but I finally disabled it yesterday. I'm a new WM user, so the fact the today screen was either missing entirely or, with modification, buried in a separate tab drove me nuts. I was used to having this information on screen at all times with Palm/2Day on my Treo 650. Without this information, the home screen in TF3D was basically useless. It's just a big clock and a couple appointments. So much wasted space. I also didn't care for how choppy the scrolling could be in TF3D. I was constantly scrolling too fast or stopping on the wrong icons with both horizontal and vertical scrolling. Further aggravations included the ridiculous envelope preview of E-mail (even with clear envelope mod) that wouldn't mark messages as read, a top-level settings screen that was 85% settings I would hardly ever change, and virtually no customization (besides removing half the tabs I'd never use).

Today I gave SPB Mobile Shell (3.5) a try and it's exactly what I was looking for. I immediately ditched the Lifestyle layout and went directly to the clean Business layout with a black background. Everything I need to see or use on a regular basis is now immediately accessible on one screen without a bunch of pretty scrolling. I have a 4-day forecast, a link to a TF3D-like scrollable program list (that's actually smooth instead of choppy), a link directly to the top-level settings menu, a clickable analog clock to set quick alarms, large status icons for messaging, the day's agenda, a quick link to Opera, a link to the camera, and the two most common contacts I dial (my wife and home), a link to all contacts, and several other SPB links for more interesting functionality that I probably won't use. The standard Start menu is still accessible. I'm sure the power users will laugh at me because I haven't even gotten started with widgets yet, but I'm happy for now.