Drool...

After sooo many months of development, it's finally here.  Public! We can write about it.  We can show it off.  Yes!!!!!

Over the next few days developers, testers and program managers in the Outlook Mobile team will write about features they worked on here.  But lets do some high-level overview here.

So what's so cool about Windows Mobile 6?  Well, it's not a comprehensive list but some of the things I like about WM6 are:

• New look and feel, new icons, new sound ... little things amuse me :).
• It's faster! 
• More secure.  More cryptography.  You can read and compose rights-managed mails (IRM).  You can also open rights managed Office documents.  It's awesome. 
• Ready for this?  You can read HTML Mail! Yup, rich emails with images, tables, formats and much more! 
• Comes with Windows Live (was that too much to ask).  Hotmail, MSN Messenger, Spaces...it's all in here!  You can chat with multiple people at the same time.
• Keyboard Shortcuts in Messaging: It seems lame, but it's super useful.  Press-and-hold a shortcut key and boom, the action happens. 
• You can also set Out of Office messages on your exchange server using the phone.  I actually use it every time I am away (yes yes, I have a bad memory and forget to set my OOF message on the desktop before I leave).
• Exchange e-mail search!  You can search your emails stored on the server from your device. 
• Quickly fetch e-mail messages from the server, instead of having to do a full sync (like in Windows Mobile 5).  Emails now show this useful statusbar showing what's happening.  The status bar actually goes away when there's no update to show to maximize real estate. 
• You can finally flag e-mail messages and sync that with the server.  Makes e-mail management really easy.  No more marking the email as unread to remember to action on it on the desktop later.  Just flag it!
• The infamous IMAP namespace issue is ... drumroll ... fixed!  That's right.  Fixed!!!!  We had so many questions about it that I had to post an apology.  But it's fixed. 
• What else did we fix?  Oh ya, multiple accounts in Messaging sync just fine.  Schedule sync works!  And the reply-all bug y'all complained so much about (well, at least some of you did) is also taken care of.  See, we do listen! 
• Call history is now linked to contacts, so it gives you context.  Open a contact and see when else you communicated with that contact.  Missed a call?  Now instead of just seeing the number you missed, open the contact and communicate however you want (other phone numbers, SMS, IM...). 
• The calendar app has this fancy ribbon thing that summarizes the day.  It's more useful than it seems.  I'll let Calendar folks talk about their stuff in a later post. 
• Works magically with Windows Vista.
• .NET CF 2.0 and Mobile SQL Server!
• Support for storage card encryption and storage card wipe.

...and a ton more.  This is the list off the top of my head of stuff that *I* enjoy.

So where are some screenshots, you ask?  Fair question.  In my excitement I don't want to hold this post for screenshots.  They'll follow.