However, this entry is not about me airing my grievances against the Palm Treo 700p again. Instead, I’m pretty excited about getting a new mobile device this Wednesday when my new BlackBerry Tour 9630 is delivered! Verizon Wireless has been sending me special offers in the mail every couple of months for about a year or so. I went to the bricks and mortar store and asked them about one of the offers that seemed to be in contrast to my current contract with the wireless company. I was sent an offer for an early upgrade discount even though my “New Every Two” promotion doesn’t come due until March 2010. The guy at the brick and mortar store told me that when customers have excellent payment history, they are sometimes given special offers such as additional minutes that they can activate during a certain time period or the ability to upgrade their phones before their contracts expire.

I pay my Verizon Wireless bill as soon as it hits my inbox, so I guess I fall into the category of an excellent payer. Frankly, after paying my bill a few weeks early each billing period for the last few years it’s nice to have my service provider honor that commitment.

The early upgrade offer (which I could only use via the telephone sales department – couldn’t use it at the brick and mortar store) allowed me to pick up a BlackBerry Tour 9630 for the two year contract price of $149.99. For arguably the best BlackBerry device on the market, that’s a pretty decent price point. I’m going to spend the next few days reading the fan sites for BlackBerry users (one of my roommates says that CrackBerry.com is a good one). It’s pretty exciting to get a new device and to get one that is highly rated by most, if not all, of its users.

Once I get the new BlackBerry and use it for a little while, I’ll let you all know how it works!

Imagine that! The cellphone industry is publishing a report that suggests the education industry – one of the largest in the United States – should invest in smartphones for its students. Brilliant.

This reminds me of a situation that came up at my job last year. We were engaging in a contract with a lobbyist to advocate for more dollars to be spent on education facilities. One of the ideas that our boss at the time had was to generate an in-house report showing the need for more facility dollars and how our organization was well positioned to use those dollars most efficiently.

I almost jumped out of my skin.

Can you imagine being a legislator and having ABC Company come up to you and say, “We need more money for Project X. Here is a report showing the need for more money for Project X. Please note that ABC Company is the best organization to utilize extra dollars allocated to Project X.”

Talk about self-serving! Any legislator that is worth their skin would laugh off that report and – if they are really interested in whatever “Project X” happens to be – would commission an independent report. Luckily, through some arguments and some luck, my company partnered with a highly regarded university to create an independent report on the idea of more money for school facilities. It was a much better option than having us do a report in house that essentially says, “Give us money.”

Anyway, you can read the full text of the New York Times article, but trust me – it’s slightly ridiculous.

Earlier this week I received an e-mail from Verizon telling me that my “new every two” has kicked in. For the non-Verizon readers out there, this is a plan that the company has where after two years the customer has the option to get a $50 – $100 discount on a new phone. Now I have a decision to make – which new phone should I get? There’s no chance in hell that I’ll get one of those crappy smartphone/PDAs that caused me so much trouble. Let me state emphatically once again that the Palm Treo 700p is a complete disaster of a phone! Stay away from it!

Right now I use my 4+ year old LG VX8000 phone, which I really like. The camera phone is only 1.3 megapixels but it takes great pictures whenever I use it and the call quality is crystal clear. The speakerphone works perfectly as does the video recorder and voice recorder. In it’s old age (4+ years is more than a life time for cell phones these days) it has become a little stodgy and unresponsive at points, but it’s still better than that overpriced piece of crap Treo 700p.

Anyway, what I’ve learned is that I like the LG brand of phones and that I’d prefer to stick to their brand. The problem is that looking on Verizon’s website, I don’t really care for the LG phones which are being offered. There is one phone that is only a slight upgrade from the one that I currently use (I think it’s the VX8350 or something like that). I figured that if I get that phone, I can still keep my current phone on standby just in case the new one sucks. Plus, with the “New Every Two” discount, the new phone would be free. Can’t really say no to that deal, can you?

At some point this weekend I’m going to go for the new phone. I just hope that everything works out better than when I got the disaster Treo 700p “smartphone” two years ago. Of course, after the debacle that was the Treo 700p, I don’t think anything could be worse!

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