So, am seriously getting impatient for getting a new phone. But need advice from those of you with smartphones.

I've looked at the various options from the various companies, and can see advantages to all of them, really. So I'm wondering about the companies--I've had Sprint for eons, and have generally been happy enough with their service. But I haven't used data, only voice and texting.

Besides voice calls, I want texting and websurfing. I don't need corporate email (ours is some offbrand antiquated system anyway, so even if I wanted it, I might be SOL!). All the companies have various data plans, and I am v. confused. Who's got a recommendation? What's cheap? How much internet would I really use? (Some of the plans are by MB, and I"m like "How the hell do I know what I'd use?"--probably not a lot, as I'm usually near an actual computer, but...)

Plans by MB tend to be scary, in my opinion. It's very easy to accidentally go over and then they charge you a bajillion trillion dollars.

I just looked at Sprint's plans. I've heard good things about their data speed and capabilities, actually - I never considered them or Verizon because I like the idea of GSM phones with SIM cards, but that's a choice not too many people seem to care much about. It appears that the cheapest data plan ("Power Vision Access" or some rigmarole) would include unlimited browsing on your phone, and it's $15 a month. Not half bad! Much better than you can get on Cingular. Where they try to take your money is if you use the phone as a modem for your laptop - they want $40 a month for that.

T-Mobile is still cheaper, though. They have several plans that seem to offer the same thing, but the simple fact is that you can use the cheapest plan ($6.95 a month for "T-Zones T-Mobile Web") to do pretty much everything. Including using it as a bluetooth modem for your laptop, at pretty decent speeds. I do this regularly at school, when I'm trying to visit pages blocked by the educational censoring software on the wireless. T-Mobile, however, has the most complaints I've heard of any network in terms of service - their network is a less extensive than most. I don't have any trouble in NYC, but I certainly didn't get service at my house in Tupelo, MS, and ND had issues in L.A. as well. So that's something to consider.

As to the phone itself - I really like Treos. Blackberries usually come with their own data plan that might be more expensive ($20 a month on T-Mobile) but are pretty and have a nice interface. Windows Mobile pisses me off, but that's as much because they won't let you install software on them from a Mac as anything else. Sidekicks are cool, if a bit ghettofied (and also have their own T-Mobile plans). Basically, nothing is perfect, yet - I have hopes for the second or third-gen iPhone, personally, but that will be a while, and my Treo 680 will hopefully serve me until then.

I've heard bad things about Treo hardware reliability--the people I know here who have them liked them about 3 phones in, when they got one that was solid.

I lost a couple of 650s to hardware issues. But both of my 680s have been perfectly behaved - I only moved to number two because I dropped number one down a flight of concrete stairs, which is hardly the phone's fault.

Yeah, my girlfriend has a Treo through her work, and she said they've had lots of issues with the more recent ones (hers is an older version). But I do like the Treos. I'm tempted by the Sidekick, but a little sketched by T-Mobile's possible connectivity issues--granted, I usually travel only to big cities for work, but I need phone access when I do, so....

Probably wouldn't use the phone tethered--if I'm somewhere comfy enough to haul out the laptop, I'd probably go somewhere with wifi.

t edit: yeah, and is cingular just v. expensive? or is there a cheap plan? I get so confused by the proliferation of data plans available on their websites, but god knows I don't trust the people working at their stores...

I've heard bad things about Treo hardware reliability--the people I know here who have them liked them about 3 phones in, when they got one that was solid.

What finally drove me away from the land of Treos was the OS. The Palm OS just is not designed to multitask. I was getting pretty consistent lock ups and crashes if I was in my email or browser and the phone rang. Nothing like the phone locking up when I'm trying to answer a business call and then having to wait while the whole thing reboots before I can call back. Working freelance that was just not acceptable.

Interesting. Because I've heard people staying away from the Windows Mobile devices because their memory management was so poor--and it was around the multi-tasking.

The Palm OS just is not designed to multitask.

This is true. My hardware issues were entirely the result of buying my 650 cheap on eBay, but the 700p still freezes on a pretty regular basis, and will occasionally reboot itself for no discernable reason.

Skipping to the end...

ita - did you ever solve the Access problem? I'm so bummed I missed the whole discussion - the whole time I was reading it I was almost pounding my head on the table, thinking, "No, no, no; you can't do it that way...."

But now I have stuff to do, so I couldn't read the rest of the thread, hence the skipping....

Basically, in Access you can't test directly for equality in the Null case - you have to use the Is Null expression or the IsNull() function. Or the nz() function to set the Nulls to something else.

It boiled down to using a more complex expression, tommy. Insulted my basic taste in SQL, but no one developed SQL for me anyway.

It is making me second guess a few other queries I've written in my time, though.

eta: My next task on hand is to get more space on my C drive. As shipped, my computer had two partitions on the drive. I recently bought a second drive and moved everything off the data partition onto it. And then realised I couldn't merge the two logical partitions on the first drive.

I should have taken time out and addressed that properly then, but instead I reformatted the second partition and used it as an additional "Program Files" installation location.

But now C is full anyway.

I'm guessing that merging C and J (don't ask) would be more trouble than its worth. Whatever happens I'll need to make an image of C, right? Which means purchasing a partition managing tool.

Ghost is what I'm familiar with. Are there any reasons not to go with what I know, albeit with years-old knowledge?