Cell Services?

[Matt Nicholson]

So, while not a Linux question exactly, you guys are the crowd I am most
interested to hear feedback from:

I'm currently on Verizon, though, its my parents plan (they were nice enough
to keep me on through college) though now that I've been on my own for about
a year and the contract is up, its time for me to get my own, probably
getting a family plan with my girl friend (she has cingular/AT&T).

I'm not really a big fan of Verizon, not because of the service (I've never
had problems, I mean, no one has perfect coverage, right), mainly because of
the way they try to make you use only their services/subscriptions, and
generally seem to limit what you can do on the device you OWN. While its in
no way a requirement, a bonus feature for me with my new provider would be
some minimal (not official, of course) linux/open access support (IE, not
having to boot into Windows just to put a ring tone on with proprietary
software).

I have an old iPod mini that has been on its death bed for about a year, so
I am debating going for some "Music Phone", or just going with a regular
phone and waiting on the next gen iPods that might come out this fall....4GB
of storage for music is my minimum limit if I went that route, and the
battery on the phone would have to handle about 3 hours a day of listening
(not including talk time)

So, really I;m looking for input. What do you use? Any problems? Anything
really nice happen you want to tell me about? What about free (beer or
speech) applications etc? Any comments on the whole "Music Phone" idea?

Also, I'm not looking for data plans. Work got me a Q with unlimited data,
but very limited minutes, so my personal phone doesn't need to be a smart
phone, and I don't really care about one data vetwork vs. another.

Any an all input is welcome.

And sorry for leaving the linux topic. Like I said, I would take advice from
thii crown more serious than the cell providers/review websites etc, since I
think we generally care about the same things: Good service and at least
some open access/standards access methods for data etc.

Thanks everyone.

Matt Nicholson

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