Honestly, while my experiences haven't been perfect, we’re actually happier with our Touch Pro 2 than we were with the Palm Centro!

Need to “Palmify” your Touch Pro 2 on the cheap?

• On the screen keyboard, there's a button on the left side that says XT9 on top and ABC on the bottom. If you don't want the "suggested" spellings, make sure the ABC is highlighted. We kept fighting it to do any data entry because passwords, software codes etc are not "real words" and it kept trying to "correct" the spelling. IT DROVE US NUTS. Plus, if you turn the XT9 off, you'll be able to search the contacts just like you did on the Palm...typing in the partial first or last name and it found all the matches.
  
• Use the programs tab in the Touch Flow 3d to display your favorite programs
  
• You've got to try the Change Screen utility (free!) - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=468488   This allows any program to rotate in any direction. I know this sounds a bit useless but what I did was switched it so that the screen could be "right side up" when the phone is "upside down" (USB charging cable at the top).
  
• Change Screen allowed us to get the $1.99 cradle - aka Business Card holder - http://www.officemax.com/office-furniture/desk-accessories-organizers/desk-accessories/card-holders/...
  
  <---note the phone is “upside down” because otherwise it would be hard to accommodate the USB cord.
  
  Now we can put the phone in my business card holder either vertically or horizontally. 
  
  We didn't want to use a standard cradle for several reasons -
  1) standard cradles don't accomodate my case
  
  2) standard cradles will allow data transfer and when we’re at work, the work computer will not allow data syncing so the device just drains the battery. We use an IGo cord which will charge only and won't transfer data. We prefer to plug in because listening to music will draw too much power and we don't like to be low at the end of the day
  
  3) standard cradles are just too expensive and need to be replaced with each different device.  We think our cradle will probably work for the next phone too.  :)
  
• Be sure to change your calendar to start in "Day" mode instead of Agenda mode. Unless you love that Agenda mode, that is.  We don't understand "agenda mode".

“Features” We Hate and How We Tried to Fix Them

• Ghost calling (phone calls whoever it feels like, whenever it feels like and often at the worst moment) - Once we removed EVERY button on the screen that would activate the phone or contact list, this problem stopped. Unfortunately, we had to keep the word "contacts" at the bottom of the screen - but only because we couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it (still searching for some registry hacks to fix this).
  
• Lack of hard button to silence/ignore the phone - still missing it 
  
• Lack of D Pad - !!!!! We’ve found two different solutions - this one uses the g sensor as a dpad http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=466002 (hated it and ripped it off immediately)  There's another that uses the volume up/down buttons as a dpad - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=552947 (have not tried)
  
• Slow - ok, my Touch Pro 2 seems a bit slow. We've tried running memmaid. We've tried Pocket Mechanic.  We even tried SKTools.  We suspect that all of them do something good for the phone, but none make it "perfect". We can live with the situation but sure would have been nicer if it was more efficient. 
  
• Lots of user intervention required to install programs - come on, do we really need to tell it every time that we want it to store to the MicroSD card and that it's ok with us that it's an unknown publisher???

Improvements the Touch Pro 2 has over the Palm Centro

• 3G - internet worth using!!!
• WiFi - Again...internet worth using!!!
• Pocket Player which has a today plugin so that we can control the player from the today screen. We like that because that means we can eyeball my calendar, the time and have all my programs handy while listening to my music and having the pause control ready to use. When we’re not at work, we have a free skin that makes the screen look like a shiny ipod.
  
• We love that everything we need is right there on the "today" screen. So the stuff we use 90% of the time are either on the Today screen or 1 click away. We thought we had my palm all set up, until we saw how we could see upcoming appts as well as apps, music and the time of day/day of the week. You wouldn't believe how many times we've forgotten a doctor's appt that's coming in 2 days - We usually remember because I get the reminder phone call! With the new calendar today plugin, We can see what's coming up soon. 
  
• Watching movies!!! Apparently, this was something we could have done on the palm, but didn't know about it. We need my "bigger" Touch Pro 2 screen for tv/movies.
  
• We love the active sync and the fact that the phone appears as a device in windows and can be managed as such. After awhile with the Palm, we kept paying more and more money to upgrade my PTunes so that it would work with Windows Media Player. After awhile, it would mess up and not sync. After we upgraded to Vista 64 bit, we could no longer hotsync via USB and that was the end of syncing PTunes with Windows Media Player. We can now usb sync once again (faster than bluetooth).
  
• We love my Sprite backup that allows you to hard reset and restore your device exactly like it was before!!!  We think you can be back to the way it was before in less than 5 mins! If you want this, get the special HTC upgrade pack - $20 for the backup AND the terminator (must buy from their website, not a place like handango). We love the concept of the terminator, but haven't had to use it, thank heavens. The terminator is supposed to allow you to remotely delete all the data on your device, in case it's lost. With the discount, we didn't have to think about whether we wanted to spend the money...the upgrade pack was less than the cost of the backup app alone. We hate when TMobile's solution to everything is "hard reset"...with Sprite we no longer have to fear!

Our Case

The black leather case is a PDAir case.  We admit that it’s a decent quality case.  However, we don’t recommend buying directly from PDAir.  If you do, your case will come from HONG KONG.   OMG…we had to wait 3 weeks for our case!!!   You can find the same case from a dealer in the US and get it faster.   The white plastic top is from a two piece plastic hard case.   Be careful, some of those cases actually require that you open/remove the case to slide the phone open.  OMG!   The one we got from Amazon does NOT require that you open the case to access the phone.  You snap one piece on the bottom and one piece on the top.  You can slide your phone open to type without removing the case.  :) 

Unfortunately, we had to remove the bottom piece so that the phone would fit in the PDAir case (which we needed for the belt clip).   We kept the top piece on the phone to further protect the screen and to prevent peeling of the clear screen protector.   Plus, we think it’s quite cute.  :)