The T-Mobile Dash was the first smartphone I had ever held in my hands. I had the privilege of such an experience because my friend Philip decided to splurge on one. Shortly after having played aroundwith one, I made the jump as well. Although Philip (if memory serves correctly) moved on to the Sidekick, I tried my hand at the T-Mobile Wing. Finding the keyboard too hard to get used to, I moved on to a Palm Treo 750 on AT&T. And after finding AT&T’s data pricing, as well as their expensive minimum minutes package, I was turned back to T-Mobile, whose plans are much more budget friendly. I got a BlackBerry Curve 8320. From there, I upgraded to the BlackBerry Curve 8900, namely for its GPS functionality.

I currently pay $30 a month for BlackBerry Enterprise access through T-Mobile. I also pay $8.99 a month for a BlackBerry addon for my hosted Exchange account. My contract ends in 20 months. So that’s $39 a month for having my emails delivered to my device instantly. For 20 months of that, I’d be paying $780.

I started thinking about how much I really needed my BlackBerry and the instantaneous delivery of email. I came to realize that BES is costing me an arm and a leg. Thing is, I don’t even really send out all that many emails: I would say 98% of the time I’m just reading them. I had my iPod Touch next to me while I was thinking about the whole ordeal at 4 ‘o clock in the morning. I swiped to unlock and a couple of seconds later the same New York Times newsletter that just arrived on my BlackBerry arrived on my iPod Touch. Of course I had configured it to work with my Exchange account and had it hooked up to the Wi-Fi. Anyway, I tapped on the email and found that the reading experience was more pleasant on a larger screen. That’s when it hit me that I could simply buy an iPhone. I would be reducing my gadget clutter by combining my smartphone and MP3 player into one device. Absolute genius.Of course, it would be quite a waste of my BlackBerry. Afterall, it’s only been two months,threetops, that I’ve had it. I couldn’t very well justify the purchase. So, as all humans are very good at, I sought a way to make it alright to buy an iPhone.You see, if I could unlock the iPhone to work on T-Mobile, I would be able to take advantage of the cheaper Unlimited Web. That would be only $10 a month. I could also cancel the BlackBerry add-on package on my email service. So that totals up to $29 of savings per month.

Saving nearly $30 a month, for a total of 20 months, that’s $600. Assuming I sell my BlackBerry Curve 8900 for $300, and also my iPod Touch for $170 (average ending prices on eBay), that means that I could have up to $1070 in my pocket. With that taken into consideration, I could afford to purchase an unlocked iPhone 3G S!

And I did. For a bargain too: $649.54. That means that I am saving roughly $420 a month, and that means I’m saving $21 a month! The funny thing is I actually enjoyed doing all of this math in Excel. And to think I teased Monica for such things…

The main problem now is my uncertainty of whether or not these T-Mobile data plans are going to be compatible with the iPhone. Reminds me of the good old days of hacking the T-Mobile Dash to work with T-Zones (that apparently expired $5.99 data plan).

Now, how do I justify my MacBook Air purchase…..? Well, I did win it on eBay for quite a bargain: only $1678, which comes out to about $270 worth of savings over retail price plus tax. Not only that, but I got free shipping. Now all I have to do is wait until September comes by so that I can get Mac OS X 10.6. That would round out the package, considering the new OS has support for Microsoft Exchange. Oh, I just remembered that part of the reason for my MacBook Air purchase was to save on energy costs: my Blackbird 002 is a monstrous machine. The damn thing heats up the room by five degrees or so, and really it’s overkill for what I do most of the time: reading, writing, and listening to music.

Can’t wait to play with my new toys.