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Until now I have always been an Android user, we have had a few android phones with my current one being a samsung galaxy note and my wife's a samsung galaxy s3 and It was always pretty decent OS with the first phones and even my galaxy note when I first got it with android 4.1, but since I upgraded to 4.2 everything wen't downhill.

It now runs ok with nothing installed, but as soon as I install some apps, it runs like crap and I have had to install memory and battery booster apps to kill everything regulalry and keep it running as it constantly runs out of memory. The battery will barely even last a day now, it used to last at least 2 days on standby before Android 4.2, so android 4.2 has more than halved the battery life.

If I actually dare use it for gps or playing a game, it will be dead within an hour usually, even with just basic use (email, facebook, twitter) it will be dead by dinner time. It constantly needs restarting or all apps to be closed to get any responsiveness back from it, which is rubbish. what is the point in a phone that you cannot actually use or the battery will run out?

In order to actually use it I have to have a portable charger with me at all times, or have it plugged into my car charger. As I need my device primarily for work when away from the office, this is no good at all.

I am also annoyed by the fact that I cannot actually use the entire 16GB RAM that it came with. This is divided into 2GB system RAM and the rest is USB storage. Can you install anything onto the USB storage? no, that would actually be useful wouldn't it, most apps will only install to the system memory, which fills up pretty quickly and then makes the phone unusable. So in order to install more than a few apps you have to buy an SD card and then move as many apps as possible to that, but 
even Samsung themselves do not seem to understand how this works, I spent countless hours on the phone to their support trying to explain this issue, but they insisted that the 16GB was all the same memory, there was not 2 different types of storage so shouldn't be an issue, sigh! I even tried O2 support, but they could not get past the fact it was called "USB storage" and so just insisted I must have connected an external USB device.
I have had the phone replaced 3 times, and I have seen many such similar complaints on forums about the battery life decreasing by up to 75% since android 4.2, and my wife's phone is not much better, so this is clearly not a hardware issue with my specific phone, just a general problem with android, android just seems to get worse with every release.  Needless to say I was fed up and ready for a change. 

I have no interest in iPhones, I tried it before, never liked it, sent it back the next day. So I decided to give windows Phone a try. I had just ordered a Nokia Lumia 625 for a staff member anyway, so decided to keep it for a couple of weeks and try it out myself first.

It certainly does take some getting used to, the interface is very simple and childlike compared to android, which initially I found very annoying and frustrating. I also found it very annoying that I could not quickly access notifications and settings as I could with the android, and this became a show stopper for me as it quickly got very annoying having to go hunting for those settings when I wanted to change them and not having a quick access list of notifications.
I tried the phone for a week but still wasn't liking it, but before I gave up I decided to go and post on some forums about my qualms and see if there was any solution. After all I was an adamant Windows 8 hater as well, but then windows 8.1 changed that and I am using it right now to type this.
I got a mixed response on the forums, mostly just hateful and obnoxious responses from one Windows phone fanboy claiming I was complaining about nothing, but a couple of more helpful guys suggested I wait for windows Phone 8.1 which would solve my complaints. So I sent the Lumia 625 off to the destined staff member and waited for Windows Phone 8.1.

A couple of weeks later O2 released the Nokia Lumia 930, with windows Phone 8.1, so I decided to take another punt and use my upgrade to get this phone. I have to say that 8.1 really made the difference for me and has solved my complaints, it now has a pull down task bar with quick access to 4 buttons, these can be changed but by default are set to WIFI, BlueTooth, Camera and Rotation lock. You also have a link to ALL SETTINGS and underneath all your notifications, just like Android.

For more info checkout this article 10 New Features in Windows Phone 8.1 Quick Settings

Apps

One of the top compalints I have read about Windows Phone is lack of apps, but I really have not found this to be a problem myself and from what I have read neither have others who have actually used a Windows Phone rather than reviewed it purely as a non user and simply based their opinion on number of available apps.
Currently the Windows Phone Store has over 300,000 apps, now this may pale in comparison compared to the 1 million+ apps in the Android store and 900k+ in Apple iStore, but this is still hardly a small number and to date I have been able to find every app I needed or a suitable alternative. 
If you are simply going to compare numbers, then you should consider how many of those 1million apps in the android store are just total crapware, and having been an Android user for several years I can attest to how much crap there is.
For every app or game you find, there are dozens of ripsoffs/copies/similar apps/games, and while i'm sure Windows Phone store will end up the same way, currently it isn't, so you have far less crap to wade through to find quality apps.

Whatever system you choose there are always going to be good and bad points, you simply have to decide which outweighs the others. For me the current negatives of Android far outweigh the negatives of Windows Phone.

Here are the things I like about my Nokia Lumia 930

• Good solid phone
  Most phone reviews I read tend focus on form over functionality and will rate phones on how thin and curvy they are rather than how they perform, which I find totally backwards and also pointless, as most phones basically look the same these days.
  The problem with most phone's is that they are all fighting to be as thin and light as possible. This results in phones that feel flimsy and are easy to break, and frankly I find this to be a pointless battle as phones are already thin and light enough at the sacrifice of  battery life.
  The Nokia Lumia 930 is 9.8mm thick, so it is hardly chunky, it is however very square and does not have the curved edges of most phones, as a result it feels more solid and doesn;t feel like it will slip out of my hand, and I haven't really felt the need to buy a case for it.
   
• Better battery
  The (obvious) problem with ultra thin phones is that the batteries do not have sufficient power, and this will not improve any time soon as there have been no advances in battery technology to keep up with the devices that use them, so the thinner phones get, the quciker they run out of power.
  The Lumia 930 has a 2420mAh battery, which is pretty decent and more than most phones I have looked at, no doubt due the fact that Nokia made the smart move to go for  functionality over form, and as mentioned above has not sacrificed battery capacity to make the phone 1mm thinner.
  After I got this phone I tested to see how long the phone would last in standby with zero usage. It lasted 3 days and still had battery left, so is considerably better than my galaxy note/Android.
  In day to day use I am only using 50% of the battery by bedtime, and I can get get 3-4 hours of game playing before I get a low battery warning.
• Greasy finger proof
  This is one annoying thing with every phone I have owned, as soon as you touch them, the back cover immediately gets covered in greasy finger marks. The Lumia doesn't suffer from this problem, or maybe it simply isn't notiable due to the garish colors.
• The garish color
  This was something I thought I wouldn't like originally, mine is bright green, not exactly my favourite color. However this has turned out to be quite useful, I often leave my phone lying around the house and have to go hunting for it usually cannot see it even when it is right in front of me as they tend to be black and just merge in with everything around them. I don't really have this problem now with a bright green phone :-) as long as I remember to put it face down.
• Camera features
  The Lumia 930 has a dedicated camera button which instantly launches the camera app, something sorely misisng from most phones, and best of all it works even when the phone is locked and password protected.
  I could never do this with my Android, as the only way to have instant access to the camera from the lock screen was to disable the password and make the phone insecure, which is really not a good idea when your phone has access to your facebook, email, twitter etc. As a result I often missed out on photo opportunities of my kids because by the time I gave got my phone out, turned it on, entered the password, started the camera app, it was too late.
• Feels more like a business device
  I use my phone more for work than play, and I must say that Windows phone feels far more suited to this arena and I feel this is probably the niche where Windows phone may take off, especially considering that most business users are windows users and will (eventually) be using Windows 8.1 or its successor on their desktop PC.
  The interface is slick and simple and uncluttered, and the way the live tiles auto update is simple yet useful. If you are coming from Android then it may take a couple of weeks for it to grow on you, but I got there eventually and I really didn't like the metro interface to begin with.
• Simple Interface
  While the simple tile interfaces was annoying at the start and is not perfect, it eventually grew on me. It is so simple to use that it is certainly the phone you would want to give to a non technical person like your parents for example, who would likley have a much easier time getting to grips with it and using the tiles than they would with an Android or iPhone, and because of that it would be much easier to support.
• Wireless Charging
  It comes with an inductive charger, not unique I know, but it is the first device I have owned which supports inductive charging and it is ace. Although the charger does seem a little tempremental and requires the phone to be in a specific position, so by the time I have finally found the charging posiiton I could have plugged it in instead. 
  I can certainly see myself getting a charging pad and using only inductive devices in the future.

what I don't like so far

• Lack of google integration
  I am deeply embedded in the Google eco system, my company uses Google apps and so do I, and I have become very accustomed to all my photos being automatically uploaded to Google+, which is no longer possible, at least not natively.
  Windows Phone will instead upload your photos to OneDrive, which is understandable as it is a Microsoft eco system, but this does mean more work via your PC if you then want to store and share those images on G+
• Calendar
  I really don't much care for the built in calendar. It is very hard to read, at least for me as I am very long sighted, even with the system font size increased I cannot read the daily events without opening them. 
• Color scheme
  You have no granular control over this, you can choose a base colour for your system, which becomes the default tile color and affects background and text color, and it is just impossible to read text  in places where the colors clash.
  The simple tile approach doesn't work for everything.
• Sound management
  On my android I was able to set reminders and alerts to play continuously until I acknowledged them. I have not been able to do this on windows phone, which means if I do not hear the one time ding or beep to tell me there is an event or text message, I miss it.
• No extendibility
  The lumia 930 is a closed phone, you cannot get at the battery or add more memory with an SD card.
  Although to be fair, it does have 32GB onboard + 2GB system RAM, which is the same as I had on my android  with an SD card, so I think I am unlikely to ever exceed this anyway.
  My experience with adding bigger batteries to phones was also not a positive one and i ended up switching back to the default battery, so I am probably not misisng out on anything there either. But this may be an issue for some with this phone.
• NFC is not implemented properly
  I never had cause to use NFC until recently, when I purchased a Yubikey neo to use with LastPass, only to discover that it won't work because Microsoft have done a non standard implementation of NFC.

Tablets seems to be the the popular Christmas present this year, and like everyone else I have decided to buy one for my kids, but of course I did not want to buy a premium model for their limited usage especially considering how bad they are at looking after stuff (they are all under 10), so have been looking at the various budget models.  
I spent a time looking at the various budget models (I was initially looking at spending no more than £100) but was finding that in most cases they all had dreadful screen resolution and low spec CPU, and there doesn't seem to be any budget tablet bigger than 7" is really  that is worth considering if you want to play games or watch video at any decent quality. Most budget models are really not good for mych else than basic web browsing, chatting, social media devices and I think a lot of people are going to be very disapointed if they bought these low spec tablets.
I narrowed my choice down to the Tesco Hudl, The Scroll 7D (by Storage options) and the Barnes and Noble Nook HD.

Tesco clearly saw this cash cow when they planned to launch the Hudl,  which is the latest budget tablet to hit the market, and which seems to have been selling like the proverbial hot cake and for good reason, it seems to have the edge on other budget models on both price and spec and comes with naked Android so is not tied in by any vendor customisations. Tesco have added some Tesco direct links and apps and that is about it, the colour options is also something others don't have.
The other big plus for the Hudl is that you can use your Tesco club card points and any other money off vouchers you may have, not only that but they will double up all your club card points (on vouchers above £5) . This made it a no brainer for me as I had £39.50 worth of club card points (which doubled up to £74.50), plus a £20 money off voucher (which they seem to giving away with every shop right now), as a result got the Hudl for less than £25, so it was worth buying at least one of them for this price regardless.

It comes in 4 colours (red, purple, blue and black) and In my first attempt to buy one all were sold out, and for the last week even Tesco direct has been sold out of all the colour models with only the black version available anywhere, which shows you how popular it has been. The thing is that if your going to use a case the colour is pretty irrelevant, so I just got the black one.

The only tablet I have used previously is my wife's Google Nexus 7, other than playing with others in the shop, but so far I have been pretty impressed with the performance. The build quality seems solid, doesn;t feel cheap at all, even box it comes in is pretty slick, it is light and has all the ports I need. A micro USB for charging and connecting to the PC, micro HDMI for connecting up to your TV, a front and rear camera and headphones port. It comes with a decent 16GB (compared to 8GB on most other budget models) and you can also expand memory to 48GB using a  micro SD card. The rear of the case while solid and easy to grip does however seem very susceptible to greasy finger marks which don't wipe off very easily.

The camera's however are abysmal, they do not work at all under low light conditions, and you cannot even use the front web camera for video chat unless you are in a very brightly lit room, otherwise the other party will not be able to see you. I tested this in rooms where my phone camera worked fine and provided a good image, but with the hudl the picture was either black and you could see nothing at all or was too dark to be of any use
The front camera is really only good for taking low quality web pictures during the day, and preferably outside.
To be fair, a tablet is not intended to be a camera, and I would not expect very high quality anyway, but I would at least expect the front facing camera to be good enough to be used as a video chat webcam.

I downloaded a few 3D shooter/mine craft type games (as that is what my kids will be playing no doubt) and they played just fine with no noticeable lag or stutter, video's play just fine and I have no qualms with the video quality, and yes Candy crush works fine too
My only performance issue so far has been that the touch screen is not that responsive, it is fine for every day use, email, web, twitter, zoom, swipe etc, but with games where you have to use a virtual onscreen joystick it lacked responsiveness and made the games hard to play.

The other issue I have is that there is no "USB mass storage device" option when connecting it to your PC, this is a bit of a PITA for me as I have one specific app which I need to sync with my mobile devices, however this is probably not going to be an issue for most people, certainly not your kids as you can still connect it as an MTP device for transferring your media if required, plus you can connect to it over WIFI or via DLNA or Bluetooth.

Overall I can't really give any reason not to buy a Hudl as it is good value for money, for most every day use it certainly does the job, and for your kids it is perfect and if you have any club card points and vouchers to discount the price, I doubt you find anything of similar quality for that sort of price. So it is likely I am going to buy 3 more of these for the kids and I have vouchers to get £20 off each one too, so that will be only £99 each.

The Hudl cases that Tesco sell however are a different matter, they are not even Hudl specific cases, which seems like a really bad move on Tesco's part, instead they are generic cases, and not very good one's at that, as a result the elastic loops which hold the tablet in place cover the power button and volume switch and made them very hard to use. There is also no hole for the rear camera, which means you cannot use it without removing it from the case and to charge your Hudl you need to leave the case open to get at the micro USB port.
Considering the poor quality/generic nature, they are also rather expensive too at £15/£20 respectively for the plastic and leather versions. I would advise you to avoid these cases and instead have a look on amazon.co.uk where you will find better made to fit cases, with all the holes in the right places and also all under £10. I have ordered one for myself today and will be returning the generic case to Tesco for  refund. I will review the case here too when it arrives.

Price	£119
Screen	7 inch (diagonal) IPS LCD 1440 x 900 HD resolution 242ppi Scratch resistant, anti-smudge glass 10-point multi-touch screen
Processor & Performance	1.5GHz A9 Quad-core processor 1GB RAM Mali 400 Quad core GPU
Colour options
Dimensions	Height: 128.8 mm (5.07 inches) Width: 192.8 mm (7.59 inches) Depth: 9.85 mm (0.38 inches) Weight: 370g (0.81 pounds)
Storage	16GB internal storage (expandable via Micro-SD to 48GB total)
Cameras	2MP front facing fixed focus 3MP rear facing auto focus
Audio	2 x 1w stereo speakers Microphone 3.5mm headphone jack
Battery	Up to 9hrs of video playback (actual conditions may vary, dependent on video format and content, audio volume, screen brightness and processor load.)
Wireless	Dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.11 a/b/g/n Bluetooth 4.0 GPS
Ports	Micro-USB 2.0 port Micro-HDMI Micro-SDHC 3.5mm jack
Sensors	Gyroscope Accelerometer Compass
In the box	Hudl tablet DC charger, output power (5v=2A) 1m USB to Micro-USB cable Quick start guide

I have been using a product called SugarSync for a while to sync my documents between home and office and also share with other staff in my company. After I discovered that SygarSynchad been deleting files by itself and nor syncing files it should be  it had to go, so it was time to look for a new solution.
Being a Google Apps user I already make use of Google Docs and think it is great for online editing and sharing docs, so I thought I could just use this as a replacement for SugarSync. If I could upload all my files to Google Docs then I wouldn't need to sync them between my machines as well, however having to uploading thousands of files initially via the Google Docs interface and then download and upload them if I wanted to work on them locally would be a pain in tha ass, better if I could somehow map a drive to Google Docs and use it as cloud storage that would be great I thought, also Google Docs is limited to 1GB of disk space which isn't really enough.

Thankfully all of these issues are easily solved.

Get More Storage

It turns out you can purchase additional disk space for Google Docs, although the option to do this is hard to find and simply does not exist on some Google Apps accounts.

Login to your Google Apps account and go to your Account Settings page.
On this page you should see your storage space and a "details" link which will take you to a page to buy more space, on my Google Apps for business account I have the link, but on my Google Apps FREE account the link is not there. HERE is the direct link in case you don't see it.

The additional storage prices are actually shockingly cheap, I doubt you will find a better deal anywhere.

20GB ($5 USD per year)
80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
200 GB ($50.00 USD per year)
400 GB ($100.00 USD per year)
1 TB ($256.00 USD per year)

Using your Google Apps storage

Access cloud storage like a local drive

Backup files, folders to Google Apps

Sync data across multiple computers

Secure your data with military grade encryption

Here are some productsI tried out which some or all of these features.

1. Memeo Connect for Google Apps

Memeo Connect is a desktop application available for both Mac and PC (XP and higher) which lets you view files on both your desktop and within Google Docs. In the software program, files and folders already online are downloaded to your computer. Local files not yet online can then be moved to the appropriate Google Docs folder via drag-and-drop. The service is relatively simple to use as it presents your documents in an easy-to-navigate window while also incorporating Google's online features like starred files and shared folders.

One major drawback to Memeo Connect is that there's no automatic synchronization option. That means you can't monitor a local folder or folders for new files or changes and then have those documents seamlessly synced to Google's online service. This feature should arrive in a future update, however, so don't let its lack of inclusion be a deal breaker for you if the service fulfils all your other needs.

For personal users of Google Docs, the biggest drawback to Memeo is that the service is only available to users of Google Apps Premier edition, a business-level version of the service which also offers calendaring, groups, Web site creation tools, and video sharing to corporate users for $50 per user per year. Memeo Connect itself costs an additional $9/year.

Memeo connect is also still in Beta and has bugs, when I tried it out I found my folders got duplicated and the hierarchy was not displayed correctly, sub-folders were displayed in the wrong parent folder etc, I also found it a bit odd that they charge for a beta product. Memeo did not work for me and was a complete #fail.

2. SyncDocs

Like the popular applications Dropbox and SugarSync, Syncdocs quietly uploads and downloads your files in the background. Whether you're editing an existing file or creating a new one, unlike Memeo, Syncdocs keeps a watchful eye on your folders and springs into action whenever a change is detected.

The setup process is very simple, with little more to do than clicking a few "next" buttons. You'll need a Google account, of course and Microsoft's .NET 3.5 Framework is also required, but Syncdocs will automatically perform the installation if your computer doesn't already have it.

Once Syncdocs is installed, you'll be asked to enter your username and password. Once your credentials have been verified by Google's server, any files you currently have stored on Google Docs will be downloaded to the folder Syncdocs creates on your hard drive (you can customize its location at any time). You'll also notice a new drive letter on your My Computer screen (usually G:) which provides quick access to your newly-attached Google Docs cloud storage.

If you collaborate with other users on your documents, Syncdocs can process revision history and keep files and folders others share with you synchronized as well. You can even tell the program to open supported file types stored on your computer (such as those in your My Documents folder) using Google Docs in your Web browser for viewing or editing. If you're trying to break completely free of desktop office applications, it's a feature that will certainly help you make the move.

Sadly SynDocs also did not deliver the goods for me, the G drive did not map to Google Docs and I was not able to access my files or upload/download or do anything useful with it. I did try contacting their support to resolve my issues, it took them days to reply to each email, and every response was shorter and less helpful than the last, I soon got fed up and uninstalled and moved on to Gladinet. #Fail.

SyncDocs in action

3. Gladinet Cloud Desktop

These days it’s possible to access many cloud storage providers outside of a web browser, and Gladinet Cloud Desktop supports several of them. The Starter Edition allows you to mount a variety of online providers – including Amazon S3, Windows Live Skydrive, Box.net and of course Google – as separate folders under a virtual network drive called, unsurprisingly, My Gladinet Cloud Storage.

After installation, the setup wizard takes you through registration and then lets you connect to each of your online accounts: click “Add My Cloud Storage Account” and follow the wizard through to connect to your chosen account(s). Note the final step of the wizard – all about syncing folders with other PCs you own – is a Pro feature only, so un-tick this unless you plan to upgrade later.

Once done, just keep adding accounts until you’re done, then click Finish, at which point you’ll be taken to the Gladinet Management Console where you can review your settings, add more providers or configure other aspects of the program, although most of these features – such as Backup and Restore, and Cloud Sync Folders – are restricted to Pro users only.

And that’s it: just click Start > Computer and you’ll see your new virtual drive – open this and you’ll see folders representing each cloud-based service, which you can drag to and drop from like any other folder on your PC. Note the Starter Edition will only allow you to transfer up to 1,000 files in any one go, but this should be ample for most people.

The Professional Edition, which costs $49.99 has no restrictions over file transfers, plus offers better performance and enhanced security as well as the additional features already mentioned.

This is the solution I am currently using as it worked as advertised right out of the box, and after contacting their support with a few questions I found them responsive and helpful, replying within a couple of hours each time.

The only issue I have found so far is a small bug if you use multiple monitors, the Gladinet menu that should show on your Mapped drive is stuck on one my monitors desktop and is inaccessible, but it is not a showstopper and doesn't make the software any less usable.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop in action

Despite spending 1 month playing silly buggers with Dell’s incompetent sales staff (another wonderful call centre in India) trying to actually order the thing due to constant problems on their website and their always apologetic “please give me another chance” excuses, I went against my better judgement and still went ahead and purchased the Dell XPS.
I had spent so long comparing laptops and their features, and the XPS really does give you the most bang for your buck. More memory and more useful ports than the competitors and a full 1080 HD display is what really swayed me, plus the fact that I could have custom artwork on the lid.

My primary use for this laptop is as a development machine, running IIS, MSSQL, MySQL, ColdFusion etc as well as a general office machine, I had no 3D gaming requirements.

Thankfully I can say that so far I have not been disappointed despite my reservations. The XPS runs windows 7 64bit super fast with its 6GB RAM and Core i5 CPU, it boots fast, searches are fast, programs launch fast and has no problems running all my server apps and development tools (Adobe Creative Suite) all at the same time, even Photoshop, so I really have no complaints on the speed and to boot it is also very quiet and so far does not get very hot either.

The Windows experience index is only 4.4 but this is down the the graphics, which as I said I don’t care about, however it runs Windows Aero just fine. Here are the other indexes, which are much better.

Processor 6.9
Memory 6.9
Graphics 4.4
Gaming Graphics 6.5
Hard Disk 5.9

All in all it is actually quite a bit better than my desktop PC which has a highest index of 5.9, even the gaming graphics surprisingly.

The screen is super bright, so bright that I rarely have it set above 1/3 brightness,  however the primary colours (CMYK) are also on the bright side, not sure whether this is due to the gamma or the contrast, I have tried to adjust them but cannot get it to look quite right. For every day use this is not a big problem, however I do sometimes do some Photoshop work, which is where is does matter as images don’t look quite how they should.

The sound on the XPS is also remarkably good, utilising a JBL sound system, my rock/metal music actually sounds how I expect it sound, rather than the horrid tinny sound you get from most laptops.

Battery life is nothing amazing, but for a laptop of this power it does report a surprising 2-3 hours (depending on power saving features you enable etc), and it does have a built in automatic “Dell power saver” mode that turns off all the aero and other high performance windows features while on battery. Although this mode seems to disable itself once you plug back into the power, meaning you have to manually enable it again.

If you are one of those people that finds your hand constantly brushing against the touchpad and moving the cursor when typing, which messes up whatever your typing, then you will appreciate the “disable touchpad” key on the keyboard which you can quickly toggle when typing.

I did have to contact Dell support once, to find out how to adjust the LCD contrast etc and also because I thought they had printed my custom lid design upside down. Thankfully the support was considerably better than their pre-sales fiasco and non existent customer services. They quickly told me where to find the LCD settings (an icon in the system tray DOH!) and told me to send them a picture of the lid and if it was indeed upside down then they would send an engineer out to replace it. After checking the photos on the Dell site It turned out that the image was supposed to be upside down.

The Android 2.2 update for the Streak has had many people screaming with impatience and moaning about every extra day they had to wait for it. Me I was quite happy to wait, the phone came with Android 1.6 and I had no qualms with it, a few niggles maybe but nothing major. I then updated to 2.1 a few months ago and found that I had more issues and it wasn't really an improvement so I was sceptical about 2.2, but if you haven't yet made the leap you can find the list of changes here.

Well finally last month my Android 2.2 update announced itself to me, but this time I decided to do a backup as when I did the 2.1 update I lost all my data as it was a clean install. This time round Dell have made it impossible to avoid the backup warning/suggestion as the update takes you through a step by step wizard and tell you to download the backup software, sadly this is however where the problems started.

To backup or not to backup, that is the question.
I downloaded the backup software, but then was stuck, there was no continue or next button, no instructions on what to do next at all. I eventually discovered have to hit back and go to the previous screen to do step 2. DOH! I bet I am not the only one who got confused by this.

So I ran the backup software but it kept telling me to insert an SD card, WFT! I of course had an SD card plugged in and it was working as I could see it from my PC.

So off I went to the forums and found someone with the same issue who said he had just gone ahead and done the update and all his data had been intact, so I thought screw it, I will risk it. I tried the backup one last time and bizarrely it worked, did my 2.2 update, and low and behold everything remained intact, this however was to be short lived.

You didn't want your contacts anymore right ?

The first time I went to make a call I discovered all my contacts phone numbers had vanished, all I had was email addresses. After some investigation it turns out that the Facebook app is set to sync your contacts with Facebook by default (regards how you had it set before), which overwrites all your existing contacts, so be warned, turn this option OFF before your phone has a chance to sync. This is a royal pain, but at least you can just re-sync your phone with your PC and get your contacts back right ? WRONG!!

No more Outlook Sync.

It also turns out that the DEL PC Suite software is no longer compatible with Android 2.2, so you have to download and install the new Dell Mobile Sync by Nero instead. I could not get this to download from the Dell site, all you get is some download manager which kept telling me there was nothing to download. I finally found a link to a direct download on the nero site and got the software that way.

However after installing I was shocked to discover that this new software only sync's photos, music and video, there is no option at all for syncing with outlook, so there was no way to get my contacts and calendar over to my phone, oh how fricking wonderful, what a useless piece of software. What idiot at Dell thought this was a good idea, whoever you are you are a total A**hole.

So I had to find another way to sync my contacts.

Luckily I subscribe to Plaxo, which provided my solution. Plaxo will sync with Google Gmail/Apps and so will Android. So you basically just use Google as the connector. Obviously because I already use both Plaxo and Google Mail this was not a big deal for me, however for others this would not be an ideal solution. If this solution is an option for you, then here is how to do it, you will need a Plaxo premium account. If you do not use plaxo then you can find tools out there to sync Outlook with Google, e.g.
- Google Calendar sync.

- Google Apps sync for Outlook

Sync with Plaxo

Login to your Plaxo account , and go to Plaxo Premium and click Google Sync and follow the instructions.

Now on your phone, go to Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> select your gmail account -> choose which options to sync (mail, contacts, calendar)

If you get stuck with anything try the Andoid forums. The Dell forums probably wont be much help as they mainly full of people with issues and no-one with answers and Dell do not bother reading their own forums or responding to anyone.

Let me end by saying that I do still like the Dell Streak and think it is a great Tablet/Phone, but Dell have made some big cockups with the rollout of all the updates by the looks of it and their support seems to be non existent. I have emailed them a couple of times and so far no reply at all.