iPhone post-activation bliss

i had a terrible experience getting the iphone to activate.  it turns out it was a defective unit and i got in touch with a manager at the at&t store that sold me the iphone the day before, and he agreed to waive the 10% restocking fee and replace my unit.  that was after 5 hours of pain and 3 trips to at&t.  worst case i would have had to send the phone to apple for a warranty repair, even after never successfully being able to activate it!  so one word of advice, if you are considering buying an iphone, you're probably better off doing it at an apple store, which was the conventional wisdom i knew before.  i just never expected it to be an issue still in october, so i ignored what i had heard.  the brand new replacement unit i received worked perfectly out of the box.

now that i've been an iphone user for 5 days, i'm really smitten with it.  it's been great to have on several occasions to kill time where i was forced to wait.  i know have lots of music and several podcasts always with me and a good browser experience and push yahoo mail.  i'm also encouraged by the announcement to open the platform to developers.

i still have had a couple of minor pain points.  i don't like being limited to 200 text messages with the default rate plans.  how silly.  unlimited data, but limited text messages?  i'm just going to start encouraging everyone to send me email instead.  i've had one or 2 instances where the phone has become unresponsive to my screen taps momentarily, but it's too early to say what that was all about.  overall, i'm extremely happy now that i'm up and running.