Battery life is pretty bad, but I pretty much keep it on a charger all day long now anyway, got used to knowing it's going to need a charge regularly, if I'm out and about for a while I'll use locale and power center to trim it down to only the basic needs.
I mostly just use the standard calendar, mail, messaging, remember the milk and a little irc and twitter. but I'm pretty regularly going in and purging applications with TasKill.
I'm in Fort Worth, you're pretty much a stones throw away from me.