I was at an Apple store in Michigan this past weekend and the store was jammed packed, you would have thought they just released a new phone. These stores are always jammed packed for some strange (cult!?) reason. People love their Apples. I was in there looking again at a Mac Mini.

It is amazing the comments and opinions that people have regarding a device they have not touched personally. I must say that you can not touch this device without changing the way you think about everything you knew before. It does have some flaws; AT&T (Cingular) release only, No removable battery, No memory slot (and mobile backup solution); but what it does do is amazing!

The screen is the best picture I have ever seen. The touch keypad is quite easy to use. I was typing fast with two thumbs within minutes. Sure I made some mistakes until I realized that if I pressed "W" when I wanted "E", I could just slide my finger to the right and when the display confirmed the "E" was chosen I lifted my finger to accept. Easy as pie.

The only thing that drove me crazy was trying to "pinch" zoom from a Detroit to Cali global view on Google Maps to a satalite view of my house. I had to pinch so much that it would go crazy to zoom in so close. This is the only time I wish I just had a button to zoom in.

Everything else did what I expected. I would get one for my wife, if she would allow the purchase, but she said it is too much to spend on a phone for her. So if I win this then there she go.

Here is my review of the product/service

http://www.palmloyal.com/addons.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17924

Many people will argue that this is not as good as a "backup to SD" solution that has been around for so long. Well those work as long as you have the SD card, which you wouldn't have it you lost your device with the card in it. Nor would the SD card help, if it lost all of the data like my 1GB SD card did once. It would be a better solution if it backed up and restored additional information - at least the preferences information. Additionally I need to be able to restore what I need, not just everything. Security is at the forefront of anyone's minds. Remember Paris Hilton's information getting stolen, not from the device itself, but from the carrier's servers. If someone hacked Palm's servers, they would have a lot of information about it's customers. This would be an even bigger concern if it backed up everything like BackupBuddy.net's Professional service did - as more sensitive data may be transmitted OTA.