New to HTC pro touch

[guyrelax]

Ok I apologize in advance if these questions are answered elsewhere but I would appreciate it if someone could help me out. I just bought an HTC pro through sprint on 1/10/09, I'm fairly tech savvy but very new to these new style mobile PC type phones.

The issues i'm having are:

1) phone is sluggish at times when I try to access things
2) phone hangs up my call the second I get a low battery warning. I cannot imagine how a phone that can do so many things can't at least give me a 5 minute warning of low battery before dropping my call. I've already gotten more dropped calls in 3 days than I have in 2 yrs with cingular. I do now know if its the phone or the sprint service.) I do not know what upgrades are recommended, what this phone is really capable of, and which upgrades I definitely should or should not apply.

The few threads I've read are complete gibberish to me and I have no clue what the hell they are talking about. Flashing, hard-spl, gsm rom, etc etc

I know most forum advice = "read and learn" but if anyone can explain the basics to me or point me to a thread that does, I thank you in advance.