Why didn’t anyone tell me…

Yesterday I had to drive to work – a somewhat occasional occurrance. First of all I had to spend $55 on gas, which was new to me. As my friend pointed out, when was the last time I filled up? My estimate was more than 3 weeks ago. My daily commute is less than 10 miles roundtrip to the train station where I pick up a corporate shuttle. Back to my main point.

I looked at the passenger seat while I was running errands and noticed how much JUNK I had with me. How many little screens, how many little batteries. I had with me:

• Garmin iQue 3600, battery 10%
• Treo 650, battery 80%, SIM card dead.
• iPod 3g, 30gig, battery charged but only holds a charge for 20 minutes at best. It’s due for a new one, but it’s compatible with the car kit and I like it.
• iPod Photo, 40gig, my “daily carryabout” ipod if you prefer. A gift from a brother with flushing stock options one Christmas. Battery at 70%, in active use.
• Hyperdrive – a battery powered hard drive with built in card reader for emptying your camera without a laptop.

So, I looked at this pile – yes pile – of devices and decided it was time to think long and hard about what to do. I’d rather think about it once and get it over with so I can go back to life. Goodness knows it’s busy enough as it is. My checklist is this:

1. Reduce the number of gadgets, batteries, chargers, and bother in my life.
2. Get some video playback options.
3. Todo list with categories, dates, done/not done, preferably with attachable notes/documents.
4. Audible compatibility is required. Not too hard these days.
5. Minimize the amount of effort required to keep it in sync with the desktop. Hotsync is failing gloriously at this.
6. Don’t break the bank. I’m trying to pay things off as it is.
7. Optional: offline pdf and or text files
8. Optional: email/web
9. Optional: Dictionary app (I bought a nice one for my Palm)

Part 1: Should I?

This is probably the one I’m having MOST trouble with. My cell phone bill for both me and my wife is around $70 a month, which is voice only, long distance, no roaming. We don’t travel – we have 3 kids. If we do, then I’ll pay the roaming fee and treat it like a payphone. Not like there’s a shortage of land lines or something. But the fact is that I don’t use my cell phone for everything, but I do use it as a PDA and emergency contact point. But this is running me around $2 a day for what amounts to a PDA and emergency phone. I sit at a desk with a phone all day, and the only time I’m out of reach via landline is in the car. I have friends that can get away with an “offline PDA” and prepay phone plan for $10/mo. average. What posesses me to want a phone that would require an additional $.80 a day? Is it worth having 2 phone bills in my life at all? I still haven’t decided. I don’t mind having a local land line, but the addition of “extras” and long distance make it pure duplication. I know some people have gone fully cellular, but I like my DSL and I’m willing to keep the minimal land line if nothing else. But I could cut back to just that plus DSL and end up with $30 left to navigate the wireless spectrum with. Worth it to drop caller ID and long distance? To me yes. To my wife?

Part 2: Hardware.

There are a couple problems here. I want an iPhone. But the iPhone is an iPod nano with part of a PDA attached. I need a todo list. I live and die out of that list, and the iPhone doesn’t have one. There are lots of workarounds, some are unsupported, and others require constant online use which probably means you don’t get to sync to your desktop. But what I’m comparing it to is my existing Treo. The Treo really is a wonderful PDA and a miserable media player. So my options boil down to:

Downgrade:

Get a cheap phone, make the Garmin my PDA, and drop to prepaid voice only for 2 people. ~$20 a month.

Lateral:

Fix/replace the Treo and go with what I have. ~$60 a month.

Upgrade:

Sell Treo, Garmin, and iPod Photo, replacing with iPhone. Yes, I know this means no “true GPS” features, but it’d be enough for directions in a pinch. Selling those three items would cover the upfront expense, oddly. ~$80 a month. This seems to be the best option for getting rid of more batteries and devices. Yes, this only amounts to an additional $240 a year over what I have now, but we’re talking about $960 a year total versus the prepaid of maybe $200 if I have to refill more than minimum.

Extra credit:

Drop the home phone to just local service, 900 blocking, and DSL. Return ~$30 a month.

The difference?

Convenience. The babysitter can reach me wherever I am. I can let my wife know it’s National Roll Your Car Day and the bus will be late. I could (with data plan) get myself email without whipping out the laptop, or even carrying it with me. (“Email me your grocery list, dear.”) All this for $960 a year for 2 years and $400 up front!

Can you see why I’m holding back? However, in the interim, I’m only available via landline or “Could someone call my wife and tell her we’re stuck here?” Plus the iPhone makes it a nonissue to sync some pictures from Aperture to my phone, which is currently a 3 or 4 step process to my Treo. A nice addon all things told. So now it amounts to money and a missing todo list.

I guess we’ll see how long I can go without the phone. Three kids makes it hard to handle life without the immediate pickup to dad.