I have to agree. I switched from a Windows Smartphone to the iPhone. While the iPhone has many benefits, and I'll keep it for personal and business use, its MS Outlook support needs improvement.

Besides the obvious lack of robust corporate e-mail server support, the rest of iPhone's Outlook support is weak. It can sync Calendar and Contact entries, but it can't sync To-Do tasks or Notes.

Also, if you edit a Contact entry on iPhone, a bug causes the contact's name to appear backwards in Outlook -- Steve Jobs will become filed as Jobs, Steve. Nothing you can do can fix this except to manually edit each affected contact on the PC.

Fortunately, these are all issues that Apple can address. Hopefully, they will realize that, besides being a phone, email is the primary purpose of Smartphones in the enterprise.

Apple did a great job of making iPhone work smoothly with Yahoo, Gmail and AOL mail, and they will be greatly rewarded if they put that effort into Enterprise email connectivity. Fortunately, Apple has been responsive with software updates, and perhaps this will happen.

On the positive side, the iPhone is a more durable and efficient phone than the Windows Smartphone I used. The iPhone's very fast and simple UI makes it easy to perform every task it supports. Where my Windows Smartphone crashed regularly, the iPhone has never crashed. Once the e-mail compatibility issues are worked out, enterprises should definitely consider it.

Wait just a minute Hugh.

If you are the VP of Info Systems aren't you also the guy who approved spending a small fortune to equip everyone with Blackberry's and Blackberry servers?

Wouldn't you look foolish if you were to now admit that you'd have been better off with iPhones for everyone? Isn't there a bit of covering thine own A__ going on here?

I think corporate security is a really phony argument. The KGB is not trying to break into your company. Take my word on that. iPhone and Pop3 would be just fine.

By not forking out big money for Blackberry servers your company would save big $$$. Yahoo mail would work perfectly. It's the right time to start phasing out Microsoft.

And iPhones are such a much better product. C'mon Hugh, stop trying to justify an earlier decision to go with Blackberry. In your heart you know that's a bogus argument. iPhones rule.

My opinion about iPhone totally coincides with Hugh’s experience. I bought an 8GB unit as b'day gift to my wife... but also spent enough time exploring it for my knowledge.

Definitely it lacks many required enterprise qualities...

Lack of secured email client, slow data speeds, inability to offer encrypted communication, absence of remote management tools, device encryption, inability to carry spare battery, and so on… it is geared much towards personal use. And they precisely targeted existing iPod customers and students to use You-Tube and podcast kind of technologies.

iPhone is equipped with a full browser “Safari” – yes it is good and faster compared to IE (Mobile version) – way much better than Blackberry browser.

On the other hand I am highly impressed with the UI – it is awesome and will become a milestone in the industry. A few email and phone related functions are extremely simple and very user friendly… blackberry stands no where in the close proximity to this easiness. They introduced a new direction… it is time for others, including Microsoft, to re-think their current methods.

I have converted the movie Fantastic 4 and watched it along with my 7yr old son during 2hr flight. But the conversion process is not friendly; I have used free tools and have no budget to spend more... let us wait to see them targeting enterprise customers.

I also bought the iPhone from UK after 1 month of its release. Put aside all the email, security and IT fucntionalities, I am upmost dissappointed with the basic telephony functionalities. The iPhone (with 1.1.2 version software) can't even forward SMS or send multiple recipients SMS. Isn't it obvious those features are so basic?

I am a big iPhone fan even though I am typically not an early adopter of new tech. Also, while I like Macs, I've always been put off by the issues of fitting into a PC world.

All that said, I love my iPhone. I was very worried about the screen getting scratched, but it is much, much more resistant than I expected.

Hugh had a number of things he would like to have seen included, and I would like to have seen something else: GPS-enabled mapping.