I prepared for a few days beforehand, browsing apps in the iTunes App Store, and grabbing a collection of apps that looked useful, so I could jump right in when I got the phone.  Finally, the day before Thanksgiving, the wife and I drove down to make our purchase.

We went to the Apple store first, but had to go to an AT&T store to make the actual purchase.  At the AT&T store, the line was almost non-existent, and the service quick.

Before we left the store, I had to have my music playing at least once.  There had been no chance to install my music, since I had just gotten the phone, but my perusal of the app store gave me an option.  I had purchased Simplify Media for $3.99.  With Simplify Media, I have a powerful tool for my music.  Installed on my home PC, the tool indexes my music collection and shares it with me, and up to 30 friends.  With it installed on two PCs, I can listen to music from one PC on the other, anywhere in the world.  The PC software and the service are all free.  The iPhone software is the only part I’ve found that costs anything.

Using Simplify Media, I was able to fire up some Jamiroquai in the store, as I paid for my phones. 

The phone itself is great.  Managing contacts is much better than my old Motorola, and it synchronizes to Microsoft Outlook (which occasionally has a use on my PC).  Call quality is good.  Signal strength in our apartment is at least as good as, and usually better than it was with my old carrier.  The speakerphone is a bit lacking, but there are ways around that.

I’m very happy with some of the apps I’ve chosen.  Last.fm, Simplify Media, and Pandora give me access to my music, and music I might like.  On top of that, I finally realized a dream of listening to my favorite Internet radio station, Radio Paradise, in my car.

Twitterlicious, and Twittelator are vying for position as my app to post to and read my Twitters. The map applet, along with Google Earth give me a nice GPS/Map capability.  Evernote gives me a way to keep important information with me when I’m on the road. There are apps for tracking Woot.com (Don’t know what it is?  Go there every day).  There are multiple apps for IMs, some allowing multiple tools to be used at once like Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, etc.  I have a couple recipe apps, apps for social networking sites, search tools, and much more.

On Sunday, I visited the NC History Museum.  As I walked around, I snapped photos with my phone.  As I was leaving, I loaded PixelPipe, selected the photos I had just taken, and uploaded them.  Before I drove away in my car, I had the photos on my Flickr, Kodak, and Facebook accounts.

Oddly enough, the least-used tool on the iPhone for me is the iPod capability.  I have an 80 Gig iPod Classic for my music already.  Instead, I have 4000 of my photos on the iPhone so that I can keep track of my collection, easily share them, and upload to Flickr if I like. 

I’m learning to make the iPhone work for me.  All in all, I’m extremely happy with my choice, and love having this new tool available to me every day.