For many years I have been too stingy to have a cell phone on a contract. I don't make a great deal of use of a cell phone and there doesn't seam to be any low use plans. About $40 per month is as cheap as it gets. So I have been using Pay as You Go. For the most part Cingular/AT&T but also with a period on Virgin Mobile (made me feel old). With Pay as You Go I spend on average $20 every 2 months and that is it, no additional fees, taxes, etc. Pretty good deal.

Since the iPhone was released and now the iPhone 3G I've had some serious tech envy. It looks like a great device. Especially attractive is the new app store and the thought of writing a few apps myself. But the thought of signing a 2 year contract and paying $70/month on top of the price of the phone just makes it a non-starter for me.

However I just read this excellent article on Life Hacker.
Forget the iPhone--The iPod Touch is Good Enough. That article is full of great uses of a plain old cell phone. It also mentions the fact that 95% of the iPhone apps work fine on the iPod Touch as they do not make use of the features it does not have.

Now I have iPod Touch envy instead.