Some employees have come out to explain the purchasing process,
eligibility, and hand out plan cost fliers.

Somehow there was a group of people already in line before they opened
the mall doors and they are cordoned off to the right of the store
entrance. The rest of us who just got inside are in a sectioned-off
line on the left. The line has grown some more – there are maybe 20
people after me now.

So, I'm in line at the Rockingham Park mall now and they haven't
opened the mall doors yet so we're all outside still. My rough count
shows that there are about 75 people ahead of me. There is also an
AT&T store here as well, so not everyone in line is heading for the
Apple store.

By George, I’ve got it! My iPhone, that is. I waited in line for 2 hours at a local AT&T store (I thought an AT&T store would be less crazy than a local Apple store, and from what I’ve read, I was right) and picked up one of the last 8GB models they had. Luckily, I had no problems whatsoever activating it – within 3 minutes of plugging it into my Mac (I had downloaded iTunes 7.3 before I went to the store so I would be prepared to sync it immediately later), the SIM card in my Treo was deactivated and my iPhone was active. Syncing did take a long time the first time around, though I’m not sure exactly how much time since I left it alone after a few minutes and went to grab some dinner.

The iPhone is simply amazing and I absolutely love it so far. I’m getting some good use in and am working on my Treo 680 v. iPhone review each day. Already, I know that there a few things I miss from my Treo. One thing is searching for contacts via the keyboard – on the iPhone, you can only search by scrolling through all names directly or by using the alphabet shortcut visible on the right side. Another thing is to-do items. However, rumor has it that to-do’s may be in a software update when Leopard is released (along with an associated application on the Mac for Notes syncing). If this is the case, it looks like I’m going to be upgrading to Leopard sooner after it’s released rather than later.

I hope to have the review ready soon. Of course, I’m on vacation out of town this week, and I just realized as I was typing this that I forgot the memory card reader I need to transfer pictures from my digital camera to my Mac – damn Sony and their stupid Memory Stick media and proprietary camera plug! Why can’t they just use SD cards and regular USB ports? This is the last time I buy a Sony camera, I tell you. However, I have a friend here who has a nice new Nikon CoolPix S5000 that I might be able to borrow.