Setup was a piece of cake. The box included a CD-ROM tutorial, but I knew most tech-savvy users wouldn't bother so I tossed it aside. It also had a very informative user manual (100-plus pages) and a "Quick Start Guide" (24 pages). But I'm not going to pore over all that when I have a shiny new toy in my hands. Finally I found the "just-right porridge" of the "Welcome Guide," a small pamphlet with big color pictures. Using only that and my community college education, I got started in under 10 minutes.

Voice quality was comparable to standard cell phones, which was sufficient to check in with the boss for the occasional, "Yeah, I'm working on that right now" (though two calls were dropped when I passed under bridges, a big giveaway when you're pretending to be in your office). Features like Caller ID even let me know ahead of time when the boss was calling. And while I listened to a few MP3s, I could still hear the ring of incoming calls, which paused the music only if I took the call.

Internet access was sadly underwhelming. Users will likely have broadband connections at work and home, so like me they could grow impatient with the Pocket PC's dial-up connection speeds. And most pictures on Web sites weren't viewable, which is important to me for reasons I won't go into. And the only game in the OS's games folder is solitaire. The message from T-Mobile seems clear: Get back to work.

I thought it would be fun to order hot dogs and beer online, like you can do from a site called . But at press time, the service was only available in three stadiums nationwide, and mine wasn't one of them. My other idea - listening to the game over the Internet - was nixed once I became more familiar with the connection speeds of the Pocket PC, which refused to be my accomplice in my more egregious efforts to abuse it for personal use.

The stuff I COULD do easily was check my e-mail and voice mail, call contacts with a single tap and synchronize my schedule with that of my office PC. In other words, get back to work.

Businesses should love this thing.