A fading memory...

That's right. My Dash has certainly made the bulky, worthless Treo that much more of a memory, as I call, browse, connect to WiFi, text, and e-mail to my heart's content.
It hasn't been completely without problem - I did have to do a system upgrade, which took almost a day, but that pales in comparison to the DAYS I lost trying to get the Treo to perform what it was advertised to do.
So far, I love my new phone! It can do a lot and doesn't get as constipated and confused as the Treo.
And what will become of this blog?
Well, we shall see.
For now, I plan on posting to tell people what's up with the new phone and the new service, though it may not be all that new to me.
My only complaint to T-Mobile: service STILL has not changed at all in my parents' and my sister's neighborhoods. After 5 years, my signal is nearly non-existent there. On the weekends I can just forward calls to their house without paying anything. But I suppose I just need to get used to forwarding calls while there. It seems a small sacrifice for the monthly savings I am getting as a T-Mobile customer over the crappy charges I used to pay with Cingular/AT&T. They sure know how to stick it to the people!
VIVA T-MOBILE!

"It is finished..."

Yes, it's official. I have been released. I feel like Paris Hilton! Like James Brown!

FREEDOM!

I hear the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the back of my mind....
I want to march in the streets. I want to have a BBQ for all of my friends. I still want to climb up on an AT&T billboard and spray the word "Bulls***" across the "Fewest dropped calls of any network" quote. What a crock of crap. But you all know this already, if you've read one of my entries in here.

And now, after 24 months of serving my time, of tolerance and forced patience, I made the call yesterday, Sunday, 08 July 2007, to bring my phone number over to T-Mobile once again. It fully ported before I even hung up the phone with the T-Mobile rep, who was really a nice guy. Amazing. A 60-second transition, and all of my calls and texts and data were being enjoyed with my original number.

It's like a homecoming. The number was originally a T-Mobile number anyway. I just left because my midlife-crisis manager at T-Mobile was a toolbag and fired me wrongfully, so I left out of bitterness and also to support my great friend, Holly, in her position as a Retail Sales Rep with Cingular. Now we have both moved on - she's doing hair, and I'm with T-Mobile.
My new phone is GREAT! It does so much more than my Treo can. My Treo hasn't played an mp3 file in it's "RealPlayer" application in over a year. My new T-Mobile Dash (made by HTC) plays music AND videos in Windows Media Player.

Sure, it's no iPhone. But then again, this phone is for business - for checking e-mails, listening to the occasional tune, sending text messages, browsing the internet, and just staying connected to the world. It has WiFi, so it can browse at hotspots, at my house, or anywhere there's an open network. It has voice notes, voice dialing, and a great calendar/contact manager. It can handle multiple applications - and multiple calls, UNLIKE the Treo.

Poor Treo. What will be its fate?? Were it not for an offer from my buddy Garrett, its death would already have been ceremoniously planned.
Later this week, in front of witnesses, it would have been sacrificed under the front tire of my Ford Escape, slowly crushed and then violently flung against a cinder block wall - all captured on video to be posted to YouTube. BUT, crazy Garrett wants to add a lemon to his collection of Cingular phones. And in exchange for a $25 memory card for my new phone, he'd take it off my hands.
Decisions, decisions....

Part of me still wants that satisfaction of knowing that it's dead. That it will never freeze up again. Never drop another call. Never refuse to switch back from a call waiting call, or play a song. To never hear a broken up, constipated message tone when a text comes through. I'll almost miss it. ALMOST. But the new phone is slimmer, cuter, and much more practical. It can do everything the Treo promised and failed to deliver - and then some. So I'll have to decide its fate within the next 48 hours. Until then, it waits on Mobile Death Row.

I still have a lot to learn about the new phone - including how to shut it up when a message alert or phone call comes in. It embarrassed the hell out of me last Monday at Team Meeting when our business was interrupted by the boisterous theme to Hawaii Five-O. But this phone, at $23 after rebate, can only be better than it's predecessor. So, with the bar set amazingly low, this phone is sure to improve the quality of my life and get me back into the world of cellular sanity.

Goodbye, Treo.
You will not be missed.

P.S. Here is a photo of Treo's last tumble...as it fell onto the ground from Terri & Alicia's rental car in the parking lot of the country club at Adam's wedding. And yes, that is a cigarette butt next to it.

ONE WEEK LEFT!

That's right, everyone!
ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT OF THIS CONTRACT!

I've entered the final week of garbage service with these bastards. Yesterday I pulled the battery out twice, and today I had to do it in order to end a phone call. The phone refused to respond to my bluetooth headset comman, then failed to react to any touching of the screen and when I finally tried the hangup button, still no response. So I pulled the battery off and left it out for 10 seconds, then reset it.

Honestly, if AT&T/Cingular gave me an iPhone for free, and paid for my service for 1 year, I'd STILL LEAVE. Too many things have happened to confirm that this is the most evil and despotic mobile phone provider in the United States, so I will be moving on. I'm already getting a preview of how good it will feel to just do this. I can picture it right now: a day without a reset. A day of complete phone calls. A day where each call dialed goes through, rings, and sounds great. I remember those days from nearly 2 years ago, when I had T-Mobile service.

So now it's my job today to research phones online, to look for store ads, and to try and decide which phone to buy and for how little I can get it. Sheryl, who worked with me back in the day at T-Mobile, is moving to a San Francisco store starting Monday, but has agreed to meet me at her new store tomorrow sometime to activate a phone (or two) and hook me up with a sweet deal.

I have to send a thank you letter to AT&T for the service I did get from Holly Meager and Katie,the wonderful rep last night who bailed me out of texting overage of $50 on my current billing cycle and switched me to an unlimited texting plan for the remaineder of the month. I plan on writing in the letter that if they'd had more people like Holly and Katie, perhaps my frustration with their mediocre service and horrible equipment wouldn't have turned into hatred and caused me to trash their service in front of every Realtor and friend and acquaintance I've spoken with for the last 12 months. And it MIGHT - and I say MIGHT - have caused me to consider switching to a better phone and sticking with their service for another year.

NAW!

The countdown begins....

The Twelve Days of Emancipation

I feel like I should write a poem. But then I stop and realize that I've spent far too much time already on all of this - from the exchanges to the data recovery to the daily resets to the lost messages to the blog to the website name to the plotting of my phone's death. So I'm not going to take the time to write a poem to the tune of "Twelve Days of Christmas". Because it's gonna feel like Christmas in just 12 short days when I can finally leave "the New AT&T" and their craptacular service.

So many people have said, "Wow, I'm so surprised you've had so many problems. My Cingular service has been great!" - usually followed by a giggle or a satisfied laugh which makes me want to shove my Treo 650 down their throat. Well, that's nice. Good for you. Bring your phone to my house and stay here for a few days, and then see if you still love "the New AT&T". There is absolutely nothing new about them. Same crappy customer care with HOURS (come on, people, it's 2007 - 24hour customer care is here to stay), closed after 9pm and all day on Sundays, and the same "sign a 2 year agreement but we'll only give you a one year warranty" scam that many other carriers use. So what is NEW about them? Just the logo, the name, and the rebuilding of the monstrous monopoly which the government will have to eventually break up again anyway. What a waste of OUR time and money.

OK, I feel better now. And in 12 days, this blog will have to take a new form somehow. I've toyed with a few ideas, but would love to hear yours if you have any. So drop me a line! And tell me what OTHER service you'd recommend and why. And please, no stories of satisfaction about AT&T/Cingular. It's way too late for that. :-)

Failed post and the loss of my entire phone book

Yep - believe it or not, this little Treo erased my entire address/phone book yesterday. For a few hours I had no way of sending SMS or calling people unless I remembered their phone numbers off the top of my head.
YAY for this phone. So, an hour of work and 4 or 5 resets later, I recovered it. The sync software for this phone was designed either by a 1st grader or by a team of DMV workers. It's as efficient as a Soviet nuclear reactor. The marriage of Cingular and PalmOne is like the marriage of Brittney Spears and Jason Alexander in Vegas - truly meant to last.
Are we getting the point, people?

SIX WEEKS AND COUNTING - until my sentence with Cingular is over and I can move on with my life. I can already hear the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in my head........

So many resets since the last entry

So on average I reset my phone twice a day - that is, I take the battery cover off, remove the battery, and then replace it to restart the phone, much like you would restart a crappy computer which becomes frozen.

I've failed to mention in my previous blogs that I have not been able to use the "RealOne player*" on the phone in about 4 months. For some reason it suddenly started refusing to work. When I open up RealOne it just freezes the entire phone. There's no playlist, no song, no menu options are selectable. Just a frozen screen. Nothing will get the phone out of this state except for removing the battery. All buttons stop responding. Not even popping out the memory card and putting it back in will bring up anything. Gotta love it.

So I guess the conclusion is that a Treo 650 with RealOne player and Cingular service is about as effective as Ray Charles trying to play tennis with a mop.

*If you use RealPlayer on your computer, here's a valuable piece of advice: REMOVE IT and do a google search for Real Player Enterprise. This is a MUCH safer, less-bloated version of the RealPlayer which will not install extra spyware, malware, or other garbage on your system. It's a basic version of RealPlayer. Another alternative: "RealAlternative" player, which can be downloaded HERE.

Catching up with all of the resets...

Since my last post, I'd estimate I've reset my phone a minimum of 30-40 times.
Just today I ended a call, trying to place a call to my voicemail. The phone screen showed a "standby" mode - as if I was NOT making a phone call, though I could hear the voicemail prompts and the first message a friend left me.
When it came to pushing a button to save or delete the message, the keypad made a tone in my ear, but not a tone that the voicemail system recognized (remember, I wasn't on a call!). Somehow I think that Cingular will still be sure to charge me for those minutes, though...
Anyway, I had to pull the battery OUT of the phone to end the call, since no buttons would work.
Oh how I hate my Treo......