Ahhhhh....I am in PIM nirvana. Well, maybe not nirvana. I would still like to a web-based service that would permit over the air synchronization of my PIM data. But at least I'm not in the PIM purgatory I have been in since my personal Blackberry lost a lot of its usefulness when I was forced onto a company Blackberry (which I hate...,more on that in another Blog Post).

So for a couple of months I have been flustered by how exactly I should be managing my PIM (a somewhat redundant phrase, since PIM stands for Personal Information Management). I am a PIM fanatic. At all times I use some application for my calendar and schedule, to-do task lists, tons of contacts, and personal digital notes for everything these other items can not handle. Before I got on the smartphone bandwagon, I always did this with a PDA. Now that I have joined the smartphone ranks, life is much easier...that is when all of my associated hardware is in sync.

Five months ago, my hardware got out of sync. I was forced to start using a company Blackberry instead of my personal one. This drove me back to my old condition of having two PIM devices, one with business data on it that I absolutely refuse to place my personal data on, and then my personal device (which is always more swank than whatever my job buys for me.

The problem was further exacerbated by my transition last year to running PC's on different operating systems. Right now I run two desktops on WindowsXP, a laptop on Vista, a MacBook on OS X (Tiger), a laptop on Ubuntu LINUX (where I am currently tapping out this article), and a UMPC running XP, In addition to the force to a company Blackberry, I was forced onto a company laptop. Previously, I was able to carry both my MacBook and my UMPC (which I used as my work laptop). The new company laptop for work is of such a size that carrying two laptops in my carry-on is no longer practical, so I can not always carry my UMPC or MacBook, which I had been using to synchronize my personal Blackberry.

So recently, if you tracked all of the hemming and hawing I did trying to make a decision on a solution, I transitioned off of the personal Blackberry (which was not getting much use out of the data plan that was costing me $45 a month) to an iPhone.

You've heard me say it here before...the iPhone (obviously) seamlessly integrates with or matches well with all of my other Apple products; my MacBook, my iPod (5G), and my iPod Shuffle (2G). I also plan on picking up an iPod Touch later this year for watching video on the airplane (without having to explain to the non-tech savvy stewardess why it's ok for me to use my iPhone while it's in Airplane Mode).

Anyway, PIM problem solved. Let me talk about my new PIM tools before I talk directly about the iPhone. I've converted over to iCal for my calendar. I still like and prefer data entry in Outlook, but for visual awareness after data entry is complete, iCal wins out. I'm on Address Book for contacts management now. It's an even break between that and Outlook. I still like the tiled business card view in Outlook, where all of the pertinent contact information for every contact is visible. But I do prefer the grouping methodology of Address Book. This solves one of my key problems on my personal cell phone, which is that previously all of my contacts were in one list, whereas I prefer to have some filtering between business contacts and personal contacts.

iCal somehow does to-do'd, but with my constant jumping from computer to computer, I have not recently been on the MacBook for a dedicated amount of time to figure this out. In the interim, I am using a Task Widget on my iPhone for any to-do's that are not tied to a calendar event. Mail is fine on the iPhone, but I'm not a huge fan of it on the Mac and definitely prefer Outlook. The way Mail sorts email visually does not allow for quick assessment or ID of pertinent subjects or senders.

While I am sure that you have read several reveiws of the iPhone, I prefer to contribute articles that reflect real-world use of a device as a non-review piece of equipment. My iPhone is not an optional piece of kit that a company or a magazine bought for me to review. Once my review is complete it's not going back to a store, and if I don't like it, there is no reporter's pool of gear for me to go swap it out with.

I justified the cost of the iPhone by...well, who am I kidding. When have I ever justified the cost for anything? But for those considering buying one who are not slaved to less practical philosophies like mine, I will enumerate some numbers that occurred to be while making the purchasing decision.

The data plan I was paying for the Blackberry (an unlimited plan that did not include text messageing; that was $5.99 extra per month for 50 inbound or outbound messages) was $45 a month. My iPhone data plan is $20 a month. I am trying to, and in the case of my last set of phones did, keep my phones for the full length of my two year contract. So if you look at a $25 monthly savings over 24 months, that adds up to $600 over the projected life cycle of the phone over staying on a Blackberry. In addition to that, I use the iPhone for so much more than I ever used my Blackberry for, including: synchronization with selected tunes from my iTunes database as well as vidoes from the same. I also use a bevy of iPhone specific web-apps which immensely increases the utility of the phone. Further, even the functions that are simply continuations of tasks I used to execut on my Blackberry, I actually use more. It is now much more frequent that I use my mobile email capability and text messaging to keep in touch with friends and family. One of the key reasons that I purchased the iPhone, regardless of how hokey a reason it is, is that it makes me more social, and God knows I could use more of that in my life.