the darkside

Oh God. I have done it. I have crossed over into the darkside again and I’m not sure that I will ever be brought back. After my long weekend in New York hanging out with all these business obsessed American/Austrian banker, financial, CEO, celebrity-types I have given in to my technophile weaknesses and purchased another Blackberry.

I sat around all weekend watching everyone obsessively check and re-check their Blackberrys. To the extent that I was completely and totally annoyed. Yes, annoyed because unless you have something to fiddle with 24/7 then you feel a little left out and out of touch with the world. I don’t even know who the hell I care enough about to need to have my email delivered in realtime to me, but the fact that I was the only kid in the playground without a shiny, cool lunchbox grated on my nerves.

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Then I started to reminisce about the good old times I used to have with my Blackberry in Spain. Ahh, the joys, the tears, the laughter. It all came back to me. My love affair with the crackberry.

And since I am completely and totally obsessive when it comes to purchasing gadgets – I get it in my head and I spend hours and hours researching and drooling over it like it was some dirty gadget porn – I then had the daunting task of trying to figure out which Blackberry I wanted.

The obvious mobile professional choice is the 8700g. It has the full QWERTY keyboard that everyone loves. But I find it a bit large for my taste (that’s what she said). Plus I want something slightly more stylish and a little less financial district anal looking. The next one that I looked at was the 7130g. Much smaller and very similar to the 7100v (the model that I previously owned). Cute and familiar – I like that. And finally there is the new Pearl 8100. The Pearl is the latest addition to the Blackberry family and is geared towards a more consumer oriented market than the other models. It has a camera and mp3 playing abilities. Sounds right up my alley…

At the end of the day I have not had so much luck with convergence devices. I don’t really use my phone as an mp3 player and I always carry my digital camera with me so was the Pearl what I wanted? Turns out not. I decided to go for the 7130g. One thing that pushed me in this direction was the fact that the Pearl lacks the sidescroll and esc keys that Blackberry’s are famous for. I didn’t feel like diddling around with their “pearl” dial in the center of the keyboard because in previous interfaces (such as Sony Ericsson phones) I found this experience to be somewhat annoying given the fact that I have such fat fingers.

The next issue that I was having is the fact that after the purchase of my stupid and useless PocketPC I-mate I am now stuck with a Vodafone contract that I have never once made a call from. Great. I also have a contract with T-mobile for the 3G data card. Basically I didn’t want to start up yet another contract on a phone number that I wasn’t going to use. So I decided to search Gumtree to see if I could find some unlocked Blackberry for a reasonable price. And I lucked out! Ended up scoring a brand new O2 7130g for a mere £150. Bargain!

Now I have to get the thing set up with O2 and I will be well on my way to becoming another Blackberry carrying, annoying droid like the rest of the world. I feel at least 1% more important already…