They Won My Business, Now Can They Keep It

A couple of weeks ago I treated myself and bought a Sony Ericsson w810i. It’s not available from carriers yet, but you can get it lots of places online. By far the best phone I’ve ever had. Great reception and sound quality, quad band + EDGE, 2M pixel camera, bluetooth modem for my Mac, and good UI.

So the question was what to do with all of that capability? I stopped in Cingular and asked what I had to add to my $60/mo phone service to use any of this. Things ranged from $20 to access Internet stuff from the phone, to $55 if I wanted to use it as a modem for my laptop (yikes!).

So I wandered over to a T-Mobile store. $39.99 for 1500 minutes/month (recent special) and $29.99 for unlimited use of the Internet, both from the phone and laptops, and full membership for using T-Mobile hotspots from my laptop.

Even though everyone told me to be worried about the coverage, I went ahead because the price was so compelling. So far reception has been worse than Cingular but not enough to upset my phone usage. I’ve gotten 180kbs of data to my laptop, which meets my needs. I’m in the 14 day trial period and have some trips coming up, so will report in at the end.