The Cell Phone Question

The past:

In early December, I learned that a friend of mine had a Nokia 3390 cell phone. The 3390 is a GSM/GPRS phone with an infrared port. He had it on an AT&T next-generation plan. I immediately realized that I should be able to connect my Clie via IR to the cell phone and surf the web at 40-60 Kbps anywhere! As soon as I had a chance, I went home and looked on the web for how to connect a 3390 on an AT&T plan with GPRS to a Sony Clie. I didn't find that much but what I did find was in conflict about what phone number to dial to get GPRS. Some said *99***0#, others said *99***proxy, some said it depended on the username. I also found a page on Palm Inc's website detailing how to do it. When I tried a few, they didn't work. Then, a couple of weeks later, armed with more possibilities, I failed again. Then it was winter break so I didn't have a chance until Janary. Now, my friend doesn't bring in his phone and doesn't really cara about the possibility of surfing anywhere. Now, I have Nokia's manual and it says to dial *99# but I can't test it!

My original reason to pursue this idea was "Technology for Technology's sake" but then I found out that with rebates, the phone was free and the plan was $40 per month. I've been needing a cell phone and I realized that I could get this one and get even more bang for the buck.

The (almost) present:

Well, my friend's clie died and he got a Zire71. He made a point of demonstrating his "brand new" ability to me with absolutely no mention of the fact that I had pioneered this. So, I'm pretty pissed at him for being such a jerk about this but I'm moving on. I still have no cell phone but I may before school gets back.

The future:

Throughout the summer, I have been window shopping at Cingular, AT&T, Sprint PCS, and T-Mobile. I have discovered that Cingular and AT&T are worthless for unlimited data, which I'm pretty sure I'll need. Sprint is too expensive, minimum of $50. T-Mobile, on the other hand, looks like a winner. Their price has kept dropping from somwhere around $50 to $30 for 60 minutes/mo of voice and unlimited data! The sell the Sony Ericsson T300, which is a perfect phone for me, and they appear to be the perfect carrier. So, within the next 6 months, I'm probably going to get a T300 from them and connect it via IR to my CLIE. I will be in nirdvana with this combo. I might even splurge and get one of those add-on phones...