My first post on here and I'm brand new to Android as well and I'm coming from a Palm Pre (among a LONG list of other smartphones sans iPhone). I just got my Hero in a trade for my TP2 that was just collecting dust (since I gave up on WM bugs and wanted something that just worked without tweaking the hell out of it) about a week before the 2.1 update came out so I was still running 1.5 I believe.
When I first got the Hero, my first impressions where that Android was killer and I wished I would've switched over sooner, it's like the best of everything all rolled into one OS but the battery life was just killing me, it was absolutely dismal. I take my phone off the charger at 7AM to head into the office and then the phone just basically sits on my desk unused for the most part until 5:30PM, well at about 2PM everyday the thing would be at about 30% left with NO use at all (with every setting that could potentially suck juice set to off) and I'd have to throw it on the car charger on the way home just so I'd have some juice left in it by the time I got home. I was ready to just sell or trade the darn thing because I didn't want to put an extended on it and double the size of the phone.
Right when I was about to throw it on CraigsList and maybe try out the Moment, the 2.1 update came out so I thought I'd upgrade just to get it over with and to see how it was and all I can say is holy crap, mainly on the SERIOUS improvement in battery life and overall efficiency of the OS. All I can say is that there's no way I'm trading this thing now unless it's in a partial trade for an EVO just so I don't have to blow my upgrade. But since I've upgraded to 2.1, my phone is still at 90% or higher by the time I leave the office, I don't have to use task killers now and I have most of my auto update settings still on with the exception of e-mail. What an improvement! I'm now completely sold on Android and I can't wait to dig in and see what this beast can do and I look forward to learning and contributing here