Count me among those who are quite happy with iPhone 3G, thank you.

Well, it's been over a month now that I've had the iPhone in my hands to work with. I managed to get this right before I needed to run a 5 day conference for 21 people. What a great tool this is. I'm getting better with the keyboard. That is definitely one thing that takes some work to get used to.

I haven't had the crashes, bricking, or other issues that some have complained about. I've also not really loaded it up with a ton of stuff either. I'm quite happy with the use of my older video iPod for music use (and still use it for videos for my 6 year old).

Of course, I wasn't looking for the iPhone to replace iPods, laptops or anything other than my aging Motorola flip phone that was getting quite long in the tooth. The bonus was, I set up email to forward to a gmail account and that served me quite well for the week of the conference. In addition, I absolutely believe they've got it right with the visual voicemail. THANK YOU!

I've never been so up to date with my contacts, ever. Adding a phone number to an existing contact is a snap. Making a new contact after listening to their voicemail is also a snap. I used to have 10 numbers in my phone that I *meant* to add a name to, but it was such a hassle to add that information I never did manage to get around to that. The phone only held the latest 10 incoming, unidentified numbers so I inevitably lost some I meant to identify too. Not anymore! (-:

Sadly, Apple may be a victim of it's own growing appeal among non-macheads (I'm an admitted and longtime machead -- not a fanboy! I do not believe Steve walks on water and that he and/or Apple can do no wrong). I know this hunk of hardware has some issues — as does some of the software. I tend to keep my 3G off even though we have fairly strong coverage. It's my phone. I need some battery life out of it if I'm going to make and receive calls.

So far my husband and I have indeed found Google maps to be quite useful, in the field, as it were. I've never been a turn-by-turn user and don't really bemoan that lack. If there's stuff you need that the iPhone doesn't do, obviously it's not for you. Forget the marketing hype, the fanboyism and all that muck. Ultimately you need to pick what's going to work for you and fit into your budget. Just so happens that, already being in the Mac camp for computing, the current iPhone suits me just fine.