update: iPhone, Win7, Aion, etc

Nutshell news: I bought an iPhone, I’m still loving Win7 but miss Linux flexibility, I played the Aion beta this weekend but not as long as I initially wanted, but that’s fine.

I decided the Nokia E71x is a great little smartphone if you use IMAP for your Email, and general overall support for the phone is decent. Unfortunately, the “Mail for Exchange” client didn’t work well for me, and I wonder if there’s something funky with the Exchange server at work because I had trouble using two separate apps to sync my work mail on the Nokia, and also had issues with work Email on the Blackjack II which prompted me to ‘upgrade’ to the Nokia.

So I went to an AT&T store, and asked them to exchange the phone. Oops, sorry, been more than 30 days, you’ll have to pay full retail price for a new phone because you’re not eligible for extending your two-year contract for another 21 months. Oh, and we’re out of stock for the iPhone you asked for. The rest of the conversation went something like:

Assistant Manager: You could try another AT&T store, see if they have any in stock.
Me: I don’t really know the area, can you check for me?
AM: (sighs) Yeah.
(searches and types enough on his keyboard to make me wonder if he was writing a blog article about the guy who went past his 30-day exchange period etc)
AM: The Beverly store has lots in stock.
Me: Okay, where’s that?
AM: On Beverly. Do you need the address?
Me: Considering I don’t know where on “Beverly”, yes, I need the address.

I get to the Beverly store, and took me 10 minutes to realize there’s a “sign in here” sign that isn’t close enough to the door for me to realize there’s a waiting list of about 8 people in front of me that are tying up sales reps.

An hour later, I got Brett (very friendly guy, super service) to find a 32GB iPhone 3GS for me, bought a neat dark red “luxe” shell from iFrogz, upsell me on the upgraded warranty, and sell me an overpriced car charger.

Oh, the best part. I didn’t have to pay full retail price after all. Turns out there’s a nifty little loophole in AT&T’s terms.

For $9.99, I can “add” a new line on my existing account. After telling him my wife was complaining about me adding a new line which would require her to memorize a new phone number when I’ve had this old number for like 7 years, he switched my old number to the new phone, and put some random 310-area code number on the Nokia. New data plan (business class, unlimited data plan, (hooyay for expense reports). New year 2-year contract with the iPhone saved me $400 on the retail price.

So now I can just cancel my Nokia line, which will charge me the $175 cancellation fee, which means I’m still ahead $225 on the retail cost of the iPhone.

And I’ve spent about $20 on apps and a few catchy tunes (like Natasha Beddingfield’s Pocketful of Sunshine).

The drag, I’ve come to realize after a little bit of Google searching, is that I can’t develop any apps for my iPhone without having Mac hardware. Bleh. Apple needs to release some Windows/Linux tools to develop iPhone apps on other platforms. Restricting it to Apple-only hardware seems ridiculous. Anyone got a used Mac Mini for sale?

Aion closed beta was fun. I got a Scout/Ranger to level 11, a Priest to level 6 and a Warrior to level 5. I think I enjoy the pure warrior class, to be honest. Usually I’m a ranged-DPS kind of guy, but the Ranger class seems overly complex. Found a bug in the game, dutifully reported it to NCSoft, and put the game away. Too bad the open beta doesn’t start up for a while.

I still have to move a bunch of sites from my old hosting provider. That’ll probably happen this weekend so I don’t get charged another $114/month. Although part of me wants to hold in until October which means my one year lease-to-own contract will be up, and I can go pick up the computer from them and cancel my plan… Decisions.