Sometime in September, the American and Canadian dollar reached a parity. Of course, a “par-party” was in order. This involves traveling down to the States with your friends and purchasing whatever unnecessary product that your heart desires at a reasonable discount. The discount is based on the fact that most stores have not adjusted their prices to coincide with the dollar parity.

And so, the only thing that I could justify the effort for, was of course the “iPhone, uPhone, we all phone for iPhone!” Umm… sorry about that. Not sure where that came from. Anyway, with our dashboard GPS pointed towards the nearest mall in Buffalo, we headed down to the border.

My friend was looking to acquire an Phone too, but he was also down there to get a World Phone from Verizon. I only mention this because he explained to me the fantastic deal on unlimited data and voice roaming across North America and many other participating countries. This just made me realize first hand how bad we have it up here (in a phone plan sense).

But, I wasn’t about to let that destroy my excitement for my new phone-like device. The cashier at the iStore seemed to almost know what I was planning to do with it. She rang it through without a smile or “thank you, come again!” It wasn’t until we were on our way back that I received an email from Apple that included my receipt as an attachment. I thought this was really cool, but at the same time, that meant that Apple knew exactly where I was from and what I was purchasing. It probably showed up on the cashier’s display and she just put 2 and 2 together.

After we arrived back, the unpacking process began. Not quite as lengthly of a procedure as some of Apple’s other products, but still nicely done. The phone sits in a plastic cradle and even the underside of the lid is padded with foam.

Now the unlocking process can begin. Ironically enough, I was having issues with the jailbreaking software that was available at the time for mac. Either the software would think that I was running iTunes version 0.0.0.0 or the other software would just stall while completing any particular task. Fortunately, everything seemed to work with the semi-stetchy apps running on my friend’s Vista laptop. Reluctantly, I let him break my new toy out of jail.

A couple test SMS’d curse words and a test phone call proved that the operation was a success. Rogers’ service works just as it would with any other phone. They’re data plans top off at 10megs but if you are smart and stick to wifi’s for most of your “heavy” data, then you should be fine. An email addict will probably have a better experience with a Blackberry (same users probably prefer Outlook over Mail for many of the same reasons).

It’s honestly hard to describe how much I have been enjoying this thing. For a very long time now, I’ve attempted over and over again to combine my virtual data into one place. A HP iPaq PocketPC worked for a while but quickly became too large and clunky for what it was used for. Gmail helped immensely to rid my email transportation woes. But my contacts were still spread about all over the place and my calendar never felt like it was there when I needed it (and syncing that was just a pain). Anyway, this single device solves all that and tosses in my music library (really, I don’t have THAT much music), and adds many of the features of a simple laptop (oh and it phones people and stuff).

Being able to click on a phone number in a company’s contact page and jump straight to the phone call with said company just feels cool. Lots of people will say that there are many other devices out there that do almost everything that the iPhone does but seriously, it’s all about the details. It seems like Apple went through every use-case imaginable. For those who love the little things, then this is it. If you don’t, then that’s probably why you own a Camry/Civic instead of something like a 911. Face it, you just aren’t going to get it.

Ok, that may have been a little harsh and really I don’t mean it (seriously, I could be lucky to afford a Civic). However, the bottom line is that I love this little toy and I will enjoy it until the next shiny thing comes along… :-P

PS. WordPress is telling me that this is post #100 :)