Don't Slip on This Peel

So the Peel is real.

I’m seriously thinking about buying one of these Sprint lovelies that will let me convert my 32 GB iPod Touch into something that resembles a smart phone. I’d like the ability to send my wife an e-mail or two or catch her on the phone (this device would let me make calls via Skype) while on the bus to and from work – Tuesday’s half-hour-late arrival home while she was at the bus stop waiting for me is a good reason why.

But I’m cheap.

It’s not the $80 outlay for the device, which slides right onto my iPod Touch. It’s the $30 a month for the 1 GB-limit data plan through Sprint to actually make the device work that’s making me balk. Now, as smartphones go, that’s a relatively reasonable monthly fee for what you get, but as we’re very used to not having a monthly charge for any telecommunications device outside our landline, I’m not sure I can justify the expense.

OK. I’m sure: I can’t justify it. It’s just not in the budget for the few times I might use the service. That’s $360 a year that could easily be funneled into something more constructive, such as paying down our mortgage or Michelle’s tuition – another installment of which we’ve got coming before the year is out.

Still, that’s just at half the monthly cost for an iPhone. Or any other fancy-pants smartphone. This could be may way in.

So I’ll put it in the maybe pile, the pile perhaps I can dig into if I eventually get at teaching gig at BYU-Idaho, part-time. If I kept the data use manageable, I could justify using a Peel to keep up on my teaching duties while on the bus, so I’ll keep that in mind. It would allow me to use dead time in a much more productive way, especially as the Peel also – theoretically – can act as a wi-fi router, so I could use my laptop to communicate with my students through this little device.

So we’ll see what happens.