iWent shopping for a new cell phone yesterday.  My Treo 650 finally sprung a leak.  Up to now, that phone was simply the best phone I ever owned.  In spite of the numerous times I dropped it though the years, it held up solid.  The tone was always clear, and I love the Palm OS.

So, iWent to the AT&T Wireless store in Homewood, IL.  Very nice people, although iSensed the clerk who waited on me was losing patience after a while.  In general, the clerks at that store don’t have a great reputation for good customer relations.  Nevertheless, the clerk who worked with me was great.

iArrived with a printout from ConsumerReports.org of the best Smart phones.  The Samsung Blackjack II was rated the CR Best Buy. However, the iPhone 3G was in the corner by the window, all booted up and ready for play.  iAsked the clerk if iCould see one.

While waiting for her to bring out the Blackjack, iDecided to take a look at the iPhone 3G.  At $299, it was just within my budget, but not really what iWanted to spend.

iWent online with it.  Very slick interface, and an extremely quick load.  Opening the web browser, iDecided to load my most complex site, which happens to be this one, eNews Park Forest.  iOpened up the QWERTY keypad and began to enter the URL: www.enewspf.com.

That’s when the problems began.

iStabbed keys with my finger, only to see the wrong letter load in the browser’s address bar.  It took a good 3 or 4 minutes just to type in that simple URL.  Once iDid so, iWas pleased to see my page loaded — the whole page — much more quickly than iExpected.  It looked slick but tiny in that little screen.  iEventually figured out how to see larger areas of the page so iCould actually navigate.

The clerk interrupted me.  iAsked about the iPhone, and was told there would be a wait of 10 to 21 days for it to come in.  That decided the matter for me, but iStill felt drawn to that strange little tablet.  Perhaps iCould wait?

iAsked if there was a chance iCould transfer my data from my Palm Treo 650 to the iPhone.  Not a chance, the clerk said.  iWould have to enter all of my data into iTunes, and then upload it to the iPhone.

iThink not.  After more than a decade of Palm Pilots and Palm smart phones, iHave more contacts than iCan count.  iCould not see myself taking a few days out of my life adding contacts and calendar dates to a completely different system.

Battery life?  Apple may be optimistic, but friends who either took the iPlunge and bought this train wreck don’t get much out of the battery.  Having that much Internet in the palm of your hand takes a toll on the battery.

Could the iPhone be the phone of the future?  Time Magazine loved it.  iDidn’t at all.

So, enough with all this iNonense.

I ended up with a Palm Centro.  I did look at the Samsung Blackjack II, but that thing was even larger and heavier than my Treo 650, and it looked, well, ugly.  Additionally, the Blackjack does not use the Palm OS, but a Windows system, and that would involve hours of my life transferring data.

When the deal was done, I ended up with a phone smaller and lighter than the 650 I was hauling around all these years, and I like it.  I don’t want the entire Internet in the palm of my hand.  I’ve said for years that I just don’t want to be that connected.  I need some “me” time, away from these fascinating machines.  And the deal was right.  After the mail-in rebate, my total out-of-pocket is just over $80, much less than the $400 I spent on the Treo a few years back.

It took 10 minutes tops to upgrade my Palm desktop software, synch the phone, and transfer my data to the new phone.

So, it’s back to Palm.  You can have the iPhone.

Or, you might want to try the iRack:

News today from Business Wire says that SC Magazine has named Webroot’s Spy Sweeper Enterprise 3.0 the best anti-spyware program of 2006.  That’s quite a distinction.  SC Magazine provides IT security professionals with in-depth and unbiased information through timely news, comprehensive analysis, cutting-edge features, contributions from thought leaders and the best, most extensive collection of product reviews in the business.  Read the entire release here.

It’s a simple tool to install.  Print the information from the screen, and, just in case you have a system melt-down, you’ll have all the information you need when you take your PC to the doctor.

Mossberg says it is possible to upgrade most new Windows PCs to Vista, but that “can be a tricky business…. It’s always better to buy a new PC that has been matched at the factory with the latest operating system. Waiting just another 90 days could save you a lot of upgrading aggravation.”

If you simply cannot wait and must have a new computer this December, Mossberg gives advice for those who are typical mainstream users, “not hard-core gamers or people doing intensive video production.”

Make sure your new PC has a sticker that says, “Vista Capable.”

But this sticker guarantees that it will work with only the stripped-down Home Basic version of Vista. If you want to be able to upgrade to the Home Premium version of Vista, which has the full user interface and other features, or to several other versions of Vista, look for a computer designated “Premium Ready.” Naturally, these latter machines will cost more.

Make sure the new box has at least 2 gigabytes memory. While Microsoft advises 512 megabytes for the stripped down version. If you want to run Vista with all the bells and whistles, go for 2 gigabytes. As far as the processor goes:

For stripped-down Vista, a processor running at 800 megahertz or faster should be sufficient, according to Microsoft. For full Vista, the speed rises to 1 gigahertz. For anything other than stripped-down Vista, I’d strongly suggest buying a so-called dual core processor, like Intel’s Core Duo or Core 2 Duo, which pack the equivalent of two chips into one.

Hard disk recommendation, for stripped-down Vista, 60 gigabytes should be sufficient. For the whole package? Mossberg recommends a 200 gigabyte drive.

If you are a Apple Macintosh person, Mossberg says go ahead and buy. The OS upgrade for the Mac, named Leopard, should not be as disruptive as the Windows Vista upgrade potentially will be. Plus, Leopard isn’t due out until spring, months after Vista’s scheduled release.

My first PC was a Dell with a 512 megabyte hard drive, and I was on top of the world when it arrived. I suspect those of us with XP will be fine for a couple of years, as Microsoft will not drop support for XP. However, sometime soon, it will be time for another switch.