I joined the current century!!

I finally broke down and bought a new phone. It was time. In a sea of uber-connected Twitter, Gmail, and Facebook mobile freaks, I believe I was the lone hold-out. My old phone was good for two things: Making actual phone calls and sending old school text messages. No music. No Youtube. No tweeting. It had a camera, but I can't say I used it all that frequently. I was, as my sister kindly put it, living in the stone age. Not that I was terribly bothered, though. For whatever reason, I just could never pull the trigger on a new smartphone.

But this past weekend, in a drunken, no-neighbors-in-site, euphoric haze, I gave in and upgraded. My carrier, Verizon, offers a "new every two" program, where they give you a $50 credit towards a new phone every two years. I had not upgraded in nearly three years. I checked the available phones online and found that they were offering the Palm Pre Plus for the bargain price of $49.99. With my credit, the phone was free. WOOT! Free is good, especially when you're hesitant to buy a new phone in the first place.

(A tip to Verizon folks...if you're in the market for a new phone, NEVER buy one in the store. Whatever you're looking for is almost always cheaper if you buy online. Verizon sometimes offers ludicrous online discounts of $100 or more for some phones. Yes, the instant gratification of holding new things in your hands is hard to resist, but if you can wait a day to have it shipped overnight, which they'll do for free, its always a better deal to buy online. My new Palm would have set me back $150 even after the discount had I purchased it in-store. You're welcome!)

Anyways, my gorgeous little phone arrived today. Ever since I picked it up, I've been confused. After spending nearly 40 minutes on the phone with customer support trying to get the thing programmed, I then had to set up a Palm profile, and sit through a five minute video demo/intro. There's nothing like outdated technology (and the Palm is outdated already) to make you feel like a total moron! Thank goodness for DJC who has managed to figure out more about my phone's inner workings in 30 minutes than I was able to work out all day. Awesome.

All in all, though, I'm very happy. I've got 16GB of flash memory to fill with all kinds of stuff, a Facebook app, Gmail, Google Maps and a bunch of other cool things to play with. In time, I will get more comfortable and feel less technically inept. Wonder if they have a Blogger app...