I pretty much handle the networking design and implementation for a county in Ohio along with several private companies of varying size. County agencies are pretty much locked-in by their software vendors. Windows is the standard for workstation software. There is not an option for Linux or Mac. People get to know the system they have at work and take that knowledge home with them. When they get a computer for home....it's going to be Windows. The software that solves a need drives the workstation OS.

As a consultant I pretty much oversee what goes on in multiple organizations. I deal with about 160 workstations and laptops. I have 25 servers: 1 IBM, 3 Linux, and 21 Windows. I have 3 assistants in 3 locations, only one of which is dedicated full time to IT. I have sat at each workstation at one time or another. If the person that uses the workstation has a computer at home, it is a Windows computer. One guy has a son that likes Linux so the home computer dual boots. The son's best friend works at Microsoft in Redmond. Of all my non-IT friends and acquaintances, 3 have Macs with the rest owning PC's (20 - 30).

I did say there was a possible bias. I said there wasn't even a hint at a third option. When someone asks me to pick A or to pick B I do consider the source. If I believe there is a possibility of C being a good fit I do offer that as something to consider. One of my client staff just got an iPhone to replace his work Blackberry. When I asked why he chose the iPhone his response was the iPhone icons looked a lot like his Blackberry icons. This is after he tried my Windows Phone and a co-workers HTC Thunderbolt. This particular client is now allowing people to replace their work BlackBerry's with their choice of smartphone as long as the phone is under $100. So I now support about 10 BlackBerry's, 3 Androids, 1 iPhone, with 1 Windows Phone on order. I have owned my own Windows Phone for a year now.

I limited my phone app remarks to productivity software due to time restraints on my part. I'm going live with a new Exchange server next Wednesday. This is the client with the above mentioned smartphones. Today I'm switching the last workstations running Eudora over to Outlook. One is 2 feet away from me in the server room a little east of Columbus, OH. One is just north of Orlando, and one is in Pittsburgh. The day of the conversion we'll be dealing with a couple laptops and smartphones on a job site in Louisiana, a laptop and smartphone in Alabama. A laptop and smartphone in South Carolina. There will be several laptops and smartphones somewhere east of the Mississippi. We'll know for sure where they'll be on Tuesday.

After owning my Windows Phone for a year I don't hesitate to recommend it. It is so easy to use it was a non-event when I got it. I have 2 GoDaddy POP accounts, a Time-Warner POP account, a 1and1 POP account, an Exchange account, and finally my original AOL account from the mid-nineties. They all set up without a hitch. I purchased an 80 GB Zune when they came out, so my 3200+ track song collection now resides on my Windows Phone. Because I have Zune on my laptop and often listen to my music library while working, my Windows Phone automatically syncs to my laptop when I plug the phone into the USB port to charge. I've used OneNote on my laptop since 2003. All my OneNote notebooks are on SkyDrive and thus are available to my Windows Phone. Same thing with a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and Word documents.

I do have the Kindle app, the Adobe Reader app, and several other useful apps installed.

When I take a picture with the phone it automatically syncs to SkyDrive for backup purposes.

I'd like to know what useful task can't be performed on the Windows Phone that can be done on either an Android or iPhone?

I stand by my sheep comment.
3: Do most of your friends have iPhones and other iOS devices, or do they have Android smartphones? - I try not to hang out with sheep. Most of my friends actually think. They realize that a device that may be a good fit for their neighbor may not be a good fit for them.

If you had said: Do most of your friends have iOS or Android devices that provide solutions to issues you also have? or something to that effect it would have made more sense to me. When I purchased my first car in high school (early seventies) most of my friends had big iron Fords, Chevy's, and Dodge's. My first car was a Fiat 850 Spyder. My parent's driveway was not big enough for a full size car. In addition I valued frugality. This was about a year before the first gas shortage. I did not let my peers decide what I needed.

Donovan, I apologize for not covering all the points you brought up. Again, I'm swamped at work and have been bouncing back and forth between this forum, tech support calls, setting up a new laptop, and minding the store in general.