I'm getting ready to look for a new cell phone and I got lots of suggestions from my editorial on the topic. I have hated my phone from almost day 1, actually it was about day 31, so I was stuck with it. Not to mention that I ordered it from LetsTalk.com, which gave me good service, but it's a pain for me to mail things back. I'd rather express my displeasure in person 🙂

I've been with Cingular, as have Andy and Brian, so our minutes are free between each other. With the rollover minutes, I now have over 1000, it's a good way for us to run a business. The service wasn't great, a far step down from ATT and T-Mobile, who I recently had, but it's not bad. And it's at the new house. So far I've been out there with my Cingular Motorola v180, my wife's SideKick (T-Mobile), and the house inspector's Verizon and they all had service. Since we're a bit out there, I'm afraid to try Sprint. I'll probably stick with Cingular, but who knows.

I've mostly been a phone person, not much chat, text messaging, etc., on the phone, I carry a separate camera (Sony DSC-150, but I don't recommend Sony products anymore) and have few needs as far as the phone. Mostly I want good reception, loud volume, vibration, and easy PC synch. I'd like to be able to enter phone numbers and appts on the phone since I usually make them away from my computer. Dr, kid stuff, my wife's out of town schedule, etc. So I've been considering a keyboard phone. I had a Nokia 6600, which was cool and I'm looking at the new 6800's, which do most of what I want.

But I've had lots of people recommend the PDA phones and I'm tempted. The cool factor is nice and I wonder if I'd be able to send the newsletter or do any remote DBA functions with it. Not that I want to, but I have a few trips planned this year where I may not be able to log in with a computer, but a phone will probably work.

I've seen some people handle emergencies with their PDAs, dump logs, run backups, kill processes, etc., but I've never really had the need. I need a trip to a store to mess around a little and see what I think.