With the release of the much awaited Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has reached yet another major milestone in their history, and by the looks of it, the new product will definitely be a success in the mobile operating systems world, just like Windows 7 became the fastest selling OS for desktop PCs.

With excellent support for everything from video playback and games to Web surfing and document editing, Windows Phone 7 has everything it needs to please its users. But the most important addition is the new and improved apps marketplace, which takes after Apple’s and Android’s versions, and that’s a good thing. There are already over 5000 apps on the marketplace, with many more to come in the following months.

Developers have already noted that creating apps for WP7 is easier than even for Android, which is pretty amazing considering the latter is an open source OS and is based on a desktop OS that is almost three decades old. Microsoft has done a great job at creating and supporting the SDK, and that’s exactly what they needed to do, because no developers would’ve jumped this fast on a bandwagon if the SDK and other tools were buggy, hard to use or incomplete.

As Windows Phone 7 is heavily marketed as an enterprise-ready OS, there are bound to be a lot of useful apps to manage tasks, time and money. Regular consumers won’t care for more complicated tools, that’s why I made a short list of the best productivity apps for Windows that anyone would find useful, regardless of their profession.

Notesly. This is a very simple and useful note taking app. You can use the keyboard or simply draw or handwrite any notes you need and save them for later use. The interface is clean and there’s nothing distracting you – it’s like writing on a clear piece of paper.

WinMilk Task Manager. WinMilk Task Manager is, as you might’ve guessed, a task manager and schedule planner that works with your Remember the Milk online account. If you have an account there, you’ll definitely like this app. But even as a standalone, it’s pretty good for managing your time and To Do lists, and you get all the features you need to do it quickly and effectively.

To Do Today. The aptly named To Do Today is an amazingly easy to use To Do list manager, which makes it much more effective than any of the other complicated solutions. With a clean interface and clearly defined shortcuts, you’ll have no problems managing your daily activities and accomplishing them in record times.

Smart Shopping. Smart Shopping is a great tool that lets you create shopping lists and organize your items by isle, store, category and other factors. This way you can plan what and where you need to buy well in advance, and have reminders tell you when you need to do it. Your old lists are auto-saved for later copying and reviewing, and you can tag stores and items, add notes, and do other useful things.

HomePipe. This is a very nice app that lets you open any files from your desktop PC using a Wifi connection. This way, you can stream movies and music, open and edit documents, even large ones, on your phone without having to use its resources. And best of all, you pay nothing for these capabilities, as the app is completely free.

If you need any other productivity apps for your Windows Phone 7 device, you should really get onto the new apps marketplace, which is light years away from the old Windows Mobile one, with improved search and much better apps categories and of course, apps themselves. You’ll find over 5 thousand great apps there that will help you not only manage your time and life, but also do a lot of other things.