Welcome to 2007, dude

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Last week I said goodbye to my old cellphone. A Motorola v60i that I’d had for oh, 5 years or something. Back when they were free and everyone seemed to have one. Technology has jumped forward a few times since then, but having worked in a cell-coverage-free-location, it didn’t make much sense to keep up with it.

Anyway, time to take a leap:
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First time I’d switched cell providers, after having a phone for 10 years. Nice to be able to bring the number. Ordering took forever, since my billing address is a PO Box (we don’t have home delivery of email in Montara) a lot of e-commerce sites break. Street addresses don’t pass verification (since they aren’t real addresses to the USPS) and PO Boxes aren’t acceptable. So after trying to place my order (let’s set aside the long process of figuring out what the heck I’d want) I did an online chat with a rep who directed me to phone in. That took well over 30 minutes; they were nice, but what a pain.

A few days later, the phone arrives. The welcome kit that I was supposed to get by email hadn’t arrived. There’s absolutely no information in the package about how to activate it. Google helps me find a Cingular page, and of course it doesn’t work (“check back later!”). After a day, I call in. I spent about 30 minutes on the phone being passed to various reps who can’t seem to activate it and keep escalating to a higher lever of support. Hours later, the phone will make outcalls but not receive any incoming calls. They’re going to the old phone (this is known as mixed service, I think, as part of the porting process – I love the jargon). Another 30 minutes on the phone. Finally it’s all working.

Now I’m wearing my bluetooth earpiece (thanks, Plantronics for all the freebies) and looking like a douche. Meanwhile, basic activities like setting the ringer to vibrate, calling my voice mail, calling from my address book are all milestones on the steep learning curve (mixed metaphor alert). Not to mention things like syncing to the PC, surfing the web and someday figuring out how to read my email on this thing. It’s kinda fun, and it’s a GSM phone, which means I can buy another piece of hardware anywhere I want, and simply move a chip from inside this phone into that phone. This is a really revolutionary idea and it’s not in any ways new, but how come people don’t talk about this more. It’s incredible!

SMS ya later!

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