Learn to love your free Windows Phone 7 devices, Microsoftees

OK, Microsoft employees: Strap on your bibs, because you’re about to get a heaping helping of Microsoft-brand dog food. The company has announced that it’s going to foist on, er, gift to you a free phone running Windows Phone 7.

Now, just as you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, you should avoid looking a gift phone in the earpiece (or is the equine equivalent the microphone?). The platform has received some bad press for some of its dated, lackluster features, but rather than focusing on the negative, celebrate all the silver linings.

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For example, the platform won’t support multitasking, meaning you can run only one app at a time. If you’re the kind who needs to jump quickly between your browser, Excel, Word, and Outlook as you polish up a report that you need to email to your boss, you might think, “Gosh, that’s inconvenient.” Just embrace the opportunity to relax, focus on one task at a time, and do IT slowly.

Further reducing the stress associated with jumping between apps, your new device lacks cut-and-paste functionality. In most circles, that would be regarded as a must-have feature, especially for a device intended to support productivity applications. Well, consider this an opportunity to work on your recollection and data-entry skills as you, say, commit to memory figures from an Excel sheet, then close it and open a Word doc to key in those figures.

Continuing the productivity vein, the Windows Phone 7 platform doesn’t have a distractingly elegant eye-catching UI. Rather it has boxes, all the same — like rows of cubicles in a busy office environment! If that doesn’t scream, “Business phone!” I don’t know what does.

More good news: You may not have to deal with an overwhelming choice of applications the way Android and iPhone users do. Just 34 percent of developers are interested in cranking out code for Windows Phone 7, according to a recent survey by Accelerator, a company that makes cross-platform development tools. It’s true that figure did increase from 13 percent earlier in the year, so maybe an avalanche of apps is forthcoming once the platform really takes off.

One other benefit to this freebie: Your boss (or boss’s boss or boss’s boss’s boss, aka Steve Ballmer) won’t feign crushing your device beneath his feet the way he’s done to your fellow employees’ iPhones. I’m no career expert like Bob Lewis, but my take on this sort of body language is that he’s not pleased to see employees using a rival company’s device. Consider your new Windows Phone 7 device as job insurance and wield it at meetings. You can go back to using your iPhone or Android during your off-work hours.

This article, “Learn to love your free Windows Phone 7 devices, Microsoftees,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog.