I was one of those nerds! I equally loved it and loathed it. Some very cool software available, but as a cellphone-like experience, it was neither one thing nor the other. Most of the time I had a feature-phone as a daily-driver alongside the clunky early Windows stuff. Wasn't a bad compromise as I didn't want or need the power of Pocket PC/Windows Mobile 24/7, but it was however a fairly expensive one!

People also forget that using a stylus with a touchscreen made it a pretty crappy phone, and they weren't ergonomic to hold up to your face with a lot of the larger PDA-like ones. The Windows devices with sliding keyboards were pretty decent as a compromise in terms of size and features though. But boy were they expensive in the UK at the time as they were generally imports from the USA.