Five years ago, I owned a Pentium II 400MHz with 128MB RAM. Today, I own a Pentium IV 2.6GHz with 1GB RAM and a laptop with Pentium M 2.1GHz and 1.5GB RAM. Five years ago I had a huge 4GB hard drive. Today, I own five 120GB hard drives and a 160GB hard drive. Five years ago, I used a CD player for all my music needs. Today, I own an iPod and listen to everything on my computer. Five years ago, I was increasingly making my own CD mixes for my entertainment. Today, I download almost everything I want and have CDs and DVDs that I bought over a year ago just sitting around.

Times have changed. Every year comes out new technology, and every year I make at least one big technological change. In July of 2000, I bought a Qualcomm 2760 from Radio Shack and signed up for Sprint PCS. I wasn’t sure if I’d have the phone for more than a year since I could barely afford the monthly payments. But, as time went on and I used the phone more, I realized my needs had changed and using a cell phone was a necessity. To this day, I still use a Qualcomm 2760. Not the same exact phone I bought 5 years ago (I had to give it up last year because it was just falling apart) but one I bought off eBay last year for $15. But, I think the time has finally come that I need to spend the big bucks to upgrade. I can’t receive normal text messages. I can’t go online. I can’t turn my phone to vibrate. My battery life is only about an hour, if even that.

There comes a time when you have to realize and give in to the technology that overwhelms your life, and my time has come. I think my biggest fear about this change is that when I get the new phone I’ll be tempted to pay extra money for text messaging service, and possibly even Internet. Which raises my monthly bills. I already pay lots of money for other things, but the fact that I am so dependent on a cellular phone is scary. It’s my only means of vocal communication to the outside world which is not a PC. I do not directly pay for a landline and have no plans to anytime soon.

And now, I shall show you my lust.

PPC-6700

This beast allows you to do anything and everything. Not only can you connect to the phone network, you can take this phone and surf this web on your home wi-fi connection, just like a laptop! It has just about any feature I’ve ever wanted in a phone. Except for the price. It’s about $600. I’m almost willing to make that purchase because I know I’ll make it last for years. And I’m not willing to go with a cheaper phone with less features.

Merry Christmas to me… :o)