Recently, I found myself with the end of our cell phone contract in sight, so I started looking around at other plans with other carriers and other phones. For the last three years, I've had a RIM "Crack"—um, I mean Black—Berry, and while it was fun and handy at first, over the last year or so, I've felt like the thing was a tiny albatross hanging from my neck.

Sure, it was nice to be able to call up your e-mail any time you wanted to, but in the end, if you have one of these devices, you are forever tethered to the inbox. There are some days when I have a couple hundred e-mails to read and answer and for the fluffier more personal stuff a BlackBerry is a quick remedy for someone constantly on the go.

My CrackBerry (heretofore referred to as "C.B.") was handy in that I didn't have to lug a ginormous laptop with me when I traveled (a laptop I no longer had, since I had gifted it to my son his first year in college). While my model C.B. was rather old, I could get to most of the websites I was interested in, like Mapquest and my social networking sites of choice.

On the non-productive side, the games and the alarm clock were great. (I need a game when I'm trapped in a doctor's office with no magazine and a person can never have too many alarms going off at 6a.m.)  I could write myself notes. I never used the calendar feature but it was there.

My initial disenchantment with the C.B. may have stemmed from the fact that I was unable to access many websites because of software problems. As more online sites improved with flashy graphics, Javascript (whatever that is), and other fancy doo-dads, my old C.B. couldn't keep up. Toward the end, it became an exercise in futility to try to get online.

As I looked over the choices in new phones and smart phones, it was apparent that the newer RIM devices far outshine my prehistoric C.B. The QWERTY keyboards are laid out key for key (mine I had to share two letters to each key) and the wireless connections are lightning quick. The images appear beautifully vivid and there are now GPS and multimedia capabilities we could only dream of three years ago. The new C.B.s are slim, sleek and lightweight. I can see why people want them.