We have been scoping the market for a half decent carrier of late, and high and low we searched without success. Had to weigh all options and some carriers offered an attractive package with roll-over minutes, but then the rest of the family is with another carrier that doesn’t offer much in the way of "bang-for-the-buck", "value-for-money" – what have you. Rissa and I finally found the carrier that makes most sense for us, and it’s AT&T. We finally started a family plan with them on the first of this month. By the way of phones we had the natural first choice of an iPhone. But that is a tad out of our price range right now, both in terms of initial and subscription costs. With AT&T making a data plan mandatory for an iPhone, the monthly costs for us as a family would be $129.99 a month. Way too expensive I am afraid.

So I decided to go for a Samsung Blackjack II, a Windows 6 based Mobile, similar in design to a blackberry. So far my experience with the device has been highly positive. My initial worry had been whether it would sync with my Mac. Missing Sync from Markspace came to my rescue with that. It works only with my Macbook Pro. It refuses to work with my Hackintosh installation, crashing my OSX each time. To be quite frank though, it has been rather difficult adjusting to a WM6 based mobile after having owned an iPhone for so long. Oh well, some things I do miss (touch & intuitive interface, native integration with Mac, the apps), and some absolutely not (the keyboard, worrying over the screen and scratching it, abysmal battery life).

But I have a phone at long last!