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To keep a balanced approach along with the previous article here’s five reasons why you shouldn’t own a smartphone.

1. Too complicated, wasting too much time

A lot of people are avoiding smart phones (and other complicated pieces of technology) simply because they’re afraid they will not be able to figure them out. They are certainly right, these phones are complicated, requiring time and patience to understand and get used to the process. This could be time consuming and some people just aren’t comfortable with this.

2. You look too busy when typing away, people don’t think you’re paying attention

We’re all part of our social environment. If you spend most of your time looking at your Blackberry than you are making an eye contact, people would stop any kind of contacts with you at all. Knowing that some avoid using smartphones to prevent loosing other people’s attention.

3. You prefer your smartphone to real world face-to-face contact

This is somewhat similar with the previous reason, but in fact – just the opposite. Why would you waste time on sending e-mails back and forth if you could just meet for 15 minutes and solve all the issues. In fact, from my own experience, a 30 minute meeting can resolve enough issues to save you about 6 – 8 hours of writing e-mails.

4. Battery life makes you go crazy

Smartphones are hungry beasts. If you used to recharging your phone once a week (light use) or once every three-four days (heavy use) – forget it. Almost every smartphone even with moderate use requires recharging every night. It could hold its juice for over 24 hours, of course, but would you want to be stuck in the boring meeting next day and don’t have enough power to check your e-mail while you’re at it?

5. Your data gets lost with your phone

That’s the most dreaded thing of all. We tend to sidestep required security locks in the names of efficiency and easiness of use. Just imagine if all the data you have on your phone is in some dirty sticky hands. To avoid that altogether is alone a good reason not to have a smart phone at all.

Having worked as desktop support technician for quite some time I’ve seen my share of dead hardware. But what happened yesterday just blows my mind. My workhorse laptop had decided to have a sabbatical for the few days, so its main hard drive got that notorious “click of death” sound. What was even worse is that the secondary hard drive (where all the data stored – exactly in expectation that two drives can’t die at the same time) was dead too. Lost about a month worth of work (since last backups) and about three months worth of e-mails (no biggie, everything important is saved in three Gmail accounts).

While definitely not having a best evening of my life I’ve called Lenovo and asked for a replacement hard drive. However, the second hard drive would still need to be ordered separately, as it wasn’t in the original configuration. Since I also own a very small X61s, I have decided to treat myself to a little better option. I ordered 30GB MLC solid state hard drive for X61s, while the hard drive that’s in there now will become a secondary in my main laptop.

Of course, it isn’t the fastest nor the best drive out there, but I am just not ready to spend $600 for a hard drive. Going with a cheaper drive would not yield an ultimate speed boost, but should help with productivity.

So far I am running fine after half a dozen tweaks and adjustments for Windows XP to get more “solid-state friendly”. There’s usually plenty of resources available, depending on the make and model of the SSD. However, the following have been observed:

• reading is lightning fast. Ditch paging file – and system boots and shuts down in less then 30 seconds.
• writing is slow. Get rid of writing, set up a RAM drive or secondary HDD for browser/system caching or page file.
• no more worry about shaking. I used to be worried about opening laptop on the bus – no more!
• extended battery life. Depending on your usage and initial battery state you may get some boost in battery life. My X61s reports an extra hour on 9-cell battery.
• less heat, less noise. There are no moving parts, so there’s not much to get the noise from. Might get a little hot, but I hear fan starting a lot less now.

Overall, I can state that I am very happy with the replacement. Recently I’ve added more memory to my laptop (so that I am running 3GB under Windows XP SP3 32-bit), then gave up 1 gig for RAM drive for paging and cache.

Using cheap SSD in servers, desktops or general purpose laptops isn’t, probably, worth a hassle, but for my “on-the-run” checking e-mails/logs/sites it is more then adequate.

Last couple of years I spent writing a lot about smart phones – likes of Samsung BlackJack, HTC Tilt, Blackberry and even iPhone. Time has come to combine all the thoughts into bullet points, so here I present you – five reasons why you should own a smartphone.

1. You will look more professional

Yes, whether you like it or not, a person with a complicated phone looks smart. That’s one of the reasons they call it a “smartphone”. Another reason is that your phone (like most of your accessories) tell the onlookers something about you. Smartphone tells them you like to keep things in order. True or not, this brings us to

2. Smartphone makes it easier to organize your life

Just compare an address book on your regular cell phone and smart phone. Not only it is easier to type someone’s e-mail or phone on a regular alpha-numeric keyboard (though downsized) than it is on a 11-key phone pad, it is also easier to retrieve this information, view it on a larger and more convenient screen. And when it comes to managing tasks or notes – it usually takes about couple of years to find and memorize a location of task manager or note keeper. With smartp hone all these options are one or two button clicks away.

3. Smartphones are a breeze when it comes to syncronizing them with your PC

Be it a Blackberry, Windows Mobile phone or even iPhone – the amount of effort needed to backup or sync your data with your PC is next to zero. Plug it in, click Sync (if even that) – you’re done. With regular cell phone – good luck figuring out which cable and software would work with your specific model.

4. More ways to get in touch

Long gone are the days when you had to keep ringing until someone picks up. With SMS, e-mails and mobile messengers if you own a smartphone – you are just a couple of keystrokes away from your friends or colleagues. Even if they can’t respond now, they’re sure to read that message, e-mail or IM – and get back to you as soon as they can. That is, of course, if they do own a comparable smartphone.

5. More ways to have fun when you have a spare time

Imagine you are on that never-ending line at the airport check-in, overcrowded downtown NYC Starbucks or just waiting for someone to show up for the meeting. With all the news, RSS channels, online music, movies and downloadable games – no line is too long. Imagine, some people are actually reading books off their smartphones (myself included) and feel good about it. My 40 minute bus ride to lower Manhattan could not be more entertainig with all the reading I’ve got.

As you can see, even the dull corporate Blackberry could be tons of fun. Come think of all the cool Samsungs, LGs or shiny HTCs coming up this year – the fun just never ends.