I've Been Assimilated

OK - so I've been assimilated into the Borg collective... of iPhone users.

Yes, I know!

I decided to replace my phone (and have wanted to for 6 months). I'd been holding out for the Android stuff - but it looks like that's not going to happen in 2009 - and I'm not waiting 6 more months for the latest and greatest.

At some point, you just have to go for something.

I went to the local Apple store across the street from my office. Now, I WAS going to go into an AT&T store - but my colleagues who did - had to order their phone with a 10-14 day waiting period (or as soon as Apple decided to ship anything to them).

So, I decided to just jump to the mothership - and see what happened. It turns out - no line! I asked if they had phones - and they did - just no 8GB models (which I didn't want anyway). So I got one of the last 2 in stock (that didn't have a "will call" sticker on it).

The twentysomething guy that helped me (looked right out of the I'm a Mac commercial - scruffy beard included) - was efficient, and the transaction went smoothly. Asked for my phone number, last 4 of social and billing zip code. Then tapped a few times (on a Symbolic handset - NOT an iPhone!) - swiped the credit card, had me sign - that's it.

Oh, and one more thing - unbox the phone - hook up to an in-store computer and do a little activate trick (no GUI, just iTunes) - took about 30 seconds.

In about 10 minutes - the whole thing was done. I could make and receive calls, text message, the whole nine yards.

The bad news is that I will have to manually type in all my contacts - since there's no way to get my old stuff into the new stuff - and I don't use Outlook (*shutter*) and I'm not on a Mac.

But that's OK - I'll have to see how quickly I can get up to speed on that whole virtual keyboard thingie.... we'll see...