i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

I am not one to give anything rave reviews, so I anticipate the euphoria will wear off soon.? But, as of, still today, the Droid3 is the best toy I've ever had, I think.

...

Oh, that and a swiss army knife when I was 10.

But I am going to go with the Droid3.

Now, I did some advance testing to get an idea what I wanted in a smartphone.? I had two Blackberrys, after all -- and those were sort of a default, "I know this isn't what I want, but anyway" sort of thing.? The reason was, I needed phones with no cameras and I couldn't find anything equally capable AND not having a camera.

But this time out, went with the camera thing.? Or rather, two camera thing, when you consider it can take pictures frontwards and backwards.

I also tested-for-iphone.? That is, I have an iTouch iPod, which seemingly emulates the iPhone features without actually having a phone involved.

And, I tested-for-android, which is how I ended up with a Cricket Huawei.? Which was irritating enough I knew (a) I needed a phone with better sound quality; and (b) I needed a phone with a keyboard.

The swype system on the Cricket was really not-so-good.? Among other annoyances, it frequently somehow added typos to the dictionary and then informed me later that the "recently added" typo was "blocking" the word I really wanted.? Fixing these was a huge annoyance and I could not find a way to edit the entire dictionary at once.? I looked up how to do this, since the other option was to open a text file, type the erroneous word and delete it from swype.? Ridiculous.

Despite there allegedly being a way to edit the dictionary, I could not find the option anywhere, nor could I find it the way the instructions I found online said I would find the editor.

I then found another system that worked much better, but also came with the scary warning upon installation that the new program would be able to read all of my personal data as I input it and would be able to send that data to ... somewhere.

But all that is history.

Swype on the D3 works substantially better and i find that even though I now have a keyboard, i don't use it until I have some serious typing to do.

Now, I will acknowledge that as cell phones go, the D3 is big and heavy.? But, I. Don't. Care.? Because what I wanted was a super-big screen and a phone that did everything I wanted it to do.

The D3 is scary-awesome.? For me, the screen has just the right touch sensitivity, the features are intuitive.? And of course, the Android Market provides 1,989 versions of whatever app it is I think at the moment I need.? A widget keeps track of my data usage.? A widget shows me the time and weather.? The shortcut system is simple and makes sense.? The corporate enterprise email works well with MS exchange.

I only came up short on one thing -- and that is, my router was set to AES rather TPK or whatever.? It took me awhile to track down this particular solution.? Why was I getting a wifi connection and no service?? But that's fixed now.

The camera system is great -- I don't much mess with wallpaper and the like, but it's so easy to make a new one I keep putting custom desktop wallpapers on the D3 just because I can.? And, photos of my most frequent contacts.

It was easy to get an RDP connector and so I have my entire office Windows Server on the D3.? Well, I was actually able to do this on my Blackberry, but the screen size was too small to make it useable.? The D3 screen is huge and so my office computer actually becomes phone-remote useable.

The simple concept of How Much Computing Power is in this tiny machine is totally awesome.? Younger People can shrug it off, as they were born with a computer at hand -- but my first cell phone was as big as a briefcase.? And, my first computer also had a four inch screen, but when closed up, the machine itself looked pretty much like a sewing machine with the lid on it.? And weighed about the same, too.? Plus it had an entire 64k of memory and two floppy disk drives that would hold 192k apiece.

So, to figure that I am walking around with a computer on my belt that is 10,000 times more powerful than the ones on Voyager 1 & 2 (launched in 1977 and now in the outer reaches of the solar system), it's difficult to supress my amazement.? Even the more so when considering it actually does multiple useful things and replaces 300 or 400 lbs. of "other stuff" one might walk around with to accomplish the same tasks.? (eg., telephone, gps, camera, video camera, stopwatch, timer, computer, etc., etc.)