When I left Bob Soto's back at the end of May 2004, I changed my phone number and switched my account from a pre-paid TDMA cell over to a post-paid GSM phone and made the leap to Windows Mobile on a Motorola MPx200 that I bought used on eBay for about $200. It was unlocked, so when I got it, I popped in another GSM SIM card to make sure it was, and it worked. the MPx200 was a tri-band phone and worked with Cayman's Cingular network as well as Cable & Wireless, but not with Digicel.

Over the next sixteen months I grew accustomed to Windows Mobile and liked how everything was laid out. The tight integration with Outlook was particularly snazzy, as changes I made on the phone would replicate back to my Outlook contacts on my laptop, and vice versa. It also had Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, MSN Mobile and Windows Media Player on it as well. What turned out to be teh suck was the battery life. I had to leave it in it's cradle every night or around 2 or 3 am it would start chirping at me and waking me up. Soon after I got the MPx200, I started eyeballing the MPx220, which was quad band and had Bluetooth as well, but there was something fishy with the OS on the 220, so it wasn't as easy to unlock.

Finally last January my boss got his hands on an unlocked MPx220, so I looked again on eBay and found for one $199 or so and had it sent down. It worked pretty good, once I got it switched from German to English. Bluetooth worked good for use with a headset, but trying to get the phone to sync with my laptop via Bluetooth and Activesync 4.1 was always a bit of a headache. I found myself syncing less and less. In September, right before I went home for Ork's wedding, I noticed a crack in the hinge. By the time I got to Vancouver, the piece of the hinge broke off and the phone actually worked better (as far as opening and closing) and then in November, I saw another crack forming in the piece that was left after the first one broke off. Then the battery life started suffering, and Windows would crash more frequently (seemed like every time I charged it, I had to reboot it) so I decided to start looking for a new phone.

Initially I was waiting to see if I could get my hands on one of the HTC PDA phones, preferably something with WiFi and a QWERTY keyboard running Windows Mobile 2005. I wanted to stick with Windows Mobile, because I had a copy of the Slingbox Mobile client that I wanted to try out, but didn't want to break the bank on C&W's awful PER KILOBYTE data charges. The T-Mobile MDA was my first choice, but I was also contemplating the Treo 750v, the T-Mobile Dash and the HTC TyTn, but they were all so bloody expensive that they weren't even worth looking for online.

I started my search right here locally on Cable & Wireless' website. I'd looked at their lineup a few times, but didn't like anything they carried. I don't particularly like Nokias, and I loathe the Motorola OS (including the dogshit OS and UI on the RAZR) so I immediately discounted them. That left me with LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. I whittled them all down and ended up looking at the Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman phone. I checked out the features, and then went looking for reviews and stuff. I checked out Howard Forums, Engadget Mobile, and epinions.

Cable & Wireless listed the phone for $439 without a contract and $409 with a post-paid contract (oooo what savings!) and that's just too ridiculously way high for a phone. If I was going to spend that much to begin with, (that's over $500 US) I could have got myself an HTC or even a Blackberry Pearl. I looked at eBay and they were selling for around $280US, but I didn't get a great feeling from many of the sellers, so I moved on and looked elsewhere. Tiger Direct started selling unlocked phones last year, so I checked their website out and it was going for $339 unlocked. That wasn't too much of a premium over eBay, and I had a lot more trust for Tiger Direct than I did for Mr Babbaganoush on eBay. On a whim, I checked out Cellhut and Wirelessimports just to cover my bases. $339 at Cellhut and $299 at wirelessimports. I nearly whipped out my credit card and bought it, but then I tempered my impulse. My phone was a pain in the ass, but it would last another month or so and maybe the iPhone would be released in January. If not, or if it did and the specs didn't make me salivate, then I could always get the W810i then.