iPhone and Yahoo. Yahoo!

It wasn't easy, but I'm okay with my iPhone now. After finally getting it to remember that it was a phone rather than a brick, I managed to manually push all of my music, podcasts, videos to it. I got my contact info to update, but I did lose my lists of favorites and recent calls. I got iGoogle onto it with no problem, but lost my notes. What did I want the handyman to fix? What was I thinking of buying my husband for his birthday?

I have lost forever the items I had put into the calendar. I don't have a Mac so I couldn't sync them to anything. Stupidly, I used it anyway. It seemed so convenient. I supposed I had grown to take my Calendar-in-the-Cloud for granted -- that is, the Yahoo Calendar I've used for close to a decade. Why would I give up on my Yahoo Calendar when it was right there all along. Just launch Safari and there it is. Luckily, it was waiting with everyone's birthdays intact when I returned. Now if I can just remember what time that dentist appointment is in February ...

I did have a little trouble with my Yahoo email after the "upgrade." I got mail for a day or two, but then updates stopped. I did the right thing and contacted Yahoo. I know enough about such things to list the equipment I was using. In less than 24 hours, probably less than 12, I had an email from the Yahoo Mobile support team that provided a clear explanation and set of instructions for correcting the problem (caused by the iPhone's inability to properly render a strong password). I had my email back within minutes. I can't imagine how long I would have waited had I tried to get an answer from Apple.

I considered MobileMe. For about 2 seconds. I don't use Outlook, so I don't care if it'll sync with that. Did I mention a decade of Yahoo Calendar? For free, each and every one of those years. I can pay to have Apple hold my Calendar-in-the-Cloud, or I can continue having Yahoo keep it for free. That took a lot of mental effort to work out.

I love my iPhone, but I think I'll stick with email and calendaring from my old provider.