I went out and bought a BlackBerry 8330 (also known as the “Curve”) yesterday.
Coming from a Macaholic like myself, you may be wondering why. The answer is simple, really: AT&T sucks.
I would have waited, of course, to buy the contract-free iPhone. That would’ve put me back $600. Then, I would have had to pay the ETF (early termination fee) to Verizon. That’s another $200. All those iPhone accessories? $100, at least. And AT&T’s cheapest plan? Yeah, that’s $70.
The BlackBerry was $400. My activation fee was waived, and all I had to buy was a case ($7.99), an 8 GB microSD card ($30), and a software program to sync to my Mac. So let’s look at the costs, side by side:
iPhone: $970
Blackberry: $480 (est.)
Yes, the iPhone would have cost me almost $500 more. I’m the first one to admit that the iPhone interface is nicer and that it syncs wonderfully with my Macintoshes, but give me a break, people. (Also, there’s the itty bitty problem that AT&T’s service sucks where I live; no one in my condo complex owns an AT&T/Cingular phone because they don’t work inside our houses, and I live in the biggest city in Connecticut.)
There was another nice added bonus, too: John, my Verizon rep, gave me 8% off my base monthly bill (about $4.00 per month) and 12% off my BlackBerry e-mail/browsing package (about $3.60 per month). All I had to do was flash my Choate faculty/staff card. I do love me some serious discounts!
So now I’m chillin’ with my Berry…and I like it.
(By the way, the gas at B.J.’s was almost 20¢ less per gallon than the gas at the Shell station right next to the B.J.’s. For someone with a small car like me, that’s only about $2.50 less, but every little bit helps nowadays!)
