$2000 iPhone (was Re: iPhone Rate Plans are up)

[Scott Lewis]

> yes, some days I spend 174 minutes just calling into  
> meetings. ;-)   But for the last few years my minutes have come out  
> of a Sprint pool of minutes the whole company draws out of, so I'm  
> not sure how many minutes I use.  It must be well over 1000/mo  
> during business hours, much less during the typically free night/ 
> weekend.  We're going back to each person expensing their own phone  
> in the Fall, so in theory I could switch to Cingular/iPhone, but I  
> can't until they support at least ActiveSync or GoodLink.  My Treo  
> has 3 primary non-phone purposes:  mobile calendar/email, smart  
> pager, emergency modem and ssh.  Not uncommon business usage,  
> really, apart from ssh.  Apart from the ssh, any of those is a  
> dealbreaker, and I would want to hear from people that used it for  
> a while before I bought it , anyway.   Then there's that pesky 2-yr  
> contract, which is $200 buyout at least from Sprint, so if they  
> take too long for Outlook compatibility, I'll be stuck with that as  
> well.   However, I have two talkative college-aged kids and am  
> constantly researching plans -- the $60/mo seems totally reasonable.

I'm in a somewhat similar boat as you. I have a Motorola Q through  
the office, and I haven't found a Cisco concentrator compatible VPN  
client, so the iPhone's VPN choices are no better/worse (reports read  
it has built in support for PPTP and IPSEC, but I'm sure it's like  
the Mac in that it won't connect to a VPN 3000 concentrator). Since I  
can't find a client for the Q either (only the full PDA/touch screen  
WIndows Mobile phones seem to have available clients), I therefore  
don't care about VPN - it's a wash!

SSH would be KEY. This at least would mirror my capabilities now with  
the Q - I would be able to get into my firewall and VPN concentrator  
for terminal configurations, plus pop into my various routers.

Regarding the traditional use, while it won't be good enough to  
deploy a legion of iPhones to my employees, it'd be fine for me.

1) IMAP for email. Ok, so it's not push - but if I can set the client  
to check every 3 or 5 minutes it's just the same. Who cares if it's  
push or pull, as long as I get email QUICKLY.

2) Outlook Web Access for the rest. :) Seriously, I like the sync  
client for my Q, but don't like the expensive server software we had  
to pay for to get it. But I can sync once a day at work to get local  
contacts / calendar items into the phone, and use Safari to get the  
rest. NOBODY has mentioned this. The media just talks about turning  
on IMAP (like that replaces Outlook Syncing for people in Exchange  
environments). But thanks to OWA you can get access to everything  
else in real time, including public folders, group calendaring,  
contacts, tasks, etc. This solution stinks on other phones because of  
the weak web client. That leaves Outlook Mobile Access, which is a  
WAP disaster of an interface.

My proposal at work:

1) I'll buy the iPhone.
2) You'll cancel my phone.
3) I'll expense $90 a month until the iPhone is paid back to me.
4) You'll then save $90 a month that they pay for my phone service now.

I already have Cingular, and thanks to an aggressive family plan have  
plenty of minutes to spare, plus so many rollover minutes that each  
month some expire (after 12 months the rollover minutes disappear). I  
think at least count I had 3500.




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