I'm sitting in my favorite corner of my living room - by the window on my black leather couch. On my left is my new 65,000-color T-mobile Sidekick. It is displaying the following message: "Waiting for Activation". I'm getting 4 bars of signal - the highest you can get. Sometimes it goes down to two bars and once it went down to one bar. All while sitting in the same place. Hmmm... I wonder why that is? Anyway, the directions say that activation takes up to 48 hours. That sucks! They also say that it usually takes only 1 to 3 hours. So, I'm sitting here with my Powerbook writing in my blog about the experience.
I went to CompUSA last night to buy it - I was wavering back and forth and finally left my house at 8:30 pm - they close at 9. I rushed out the door and made it over there by 8:50 pm. They had two left in stock and it took till about 9:00 pm for one of the store guys to find one in the back.
It being 9 pm, he didn't want to sign me up and said it would take about an hour. I raised an eyebrow and said fine. He eventually got rescued by another more senior guy who suggested I come back tomorrow (today) when their cell phone guy was there. So I went over around 3 pm today and bought myself a Sidekick.
I was considering going to a movie after my purchase when I left the house, but by the time I had the box in my hands, it was clear that the thing to do was to go directly home and start charging it and getting it activated. Couldn't quite do that, though, since between CompUSA and home is a Peet's Coffee and I'm hooked on their Mocha Freddos.
I went into Peet's and saw a couple folks I know - they wanted to see what was in the box I was carrying - I brought it in so I could study the manual while drinking my Freddo. Fat chance! Three more guys started hovering around. One of them suggested that I plug it in so that we could see the screen. He found an outlet across the room and bingo we were checking out the interface. Very cool! I need to photograph this thing ASAP. Maybe right now. Just a minute!
Not too bad a pic considering I'm holding the Sidekick with my left hand and taking the picture with my right - not easy, but I knew you would want to see this little guy for yourself. The text is much clearer - very sharp - than it looks here. You notice the keys light up nicely. I'm very impressed. When I first started it up, bells chimed sweetly, the scroll wheel on the right turned green and it was love at first sight. I'm hoping the cell signal in my local hangouts will be good. If not, I may need to be practical and return it within the 14-day return period. I can already tell that won't be easy. Wish me luck!