On Thu, 16 Feb 2012, Jeremy MountainJohnson wrote: > Most people say I should get an iPhone or an Android phone; > unfortunately I don't want one. I tried a similar smart phone a couple > years back, the Linux based Palm Pre, and found it to be over kill, a > big distraction, and a waste of money (factoring in the device and > monthly plan). I bought a Palm Pre when it came out in June 2009. It's a pretty good device, but I wasn't blown away. I still have it. My carrier is Sprint. I'm paying something like $75/month, including taxes, etc. That's $900 per year and quite excessive, I think. I also think the Sprint people have done a lousy job with some aspects -- previous Palm phones (e.g., Treo 600) could do a lot of things that were lost with Palm Pre, such as syncing *everything* with a computer, and I think Sprint is to blame for the undesirable changes (I have to back up to their "cloud," but not everything is backed up). I do have a question: Suppose I drop my plan. What can I then do with this Palm Pre? It does have Linux inside and I've been able to use that to copy files out of the device. It has WiFi. But what exactly stops working if I drop my plan? Do apps fail even if I'm using WiFi instead of Sprint networking? Do any of you have any experience with this? Mike