After spending nearly two months with iPhone in hand, I think it is safe to say I can’t imagine ever going back to my Palm-iPod-RAZR world. Really. My daily routine, online research, how I deal with email... it all changed. This is my iPhone life.

In the old days, oh so many weeks ago, I carted around a Palm Tungsten E handheld, an iPod nano, and a Motorola RAZR cell phone. Sure there are newer PDAs, but Palm never gave me a compelling reason to upgrade my bare-bones handheld organizer. The RAZR? At least it offered Bluetooth sync support. Too bad that’s about the only nice thing I can think to say about it.

The iPhone does a fantastic job of blending all of these individual devices into a single unit that just works. Was it really that hard to come up with something like this? Based on the Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola products I’ve played with, apparently it is.

Although email on the go is great, I’ve had a few headaches along the way. I was using POP for all of my various accounts. Only one computer, everything in one place. It made sense at the time. I tried going with POP on my iPhone as well... for a while.

My advice: Switch to IMAP. Your email looks the same on your computer, your iPhone, or any other IMAP-compatible email device. What you do on one device appears on the others. With POP, I had a double workload. Deal with messages on my iPhone while I was out and about, then deal with them again on my MacBook Pro when I got back to my desk.

As I work to clear out now-outdated email rules from Mail, I’m approaching what TMO’s president and Mac Geek Gab host Dave Hamilton calls "email nirvana." Nirvana sounds great to me.

Unfortunately, my email nirvana does have a minor blemish. Mail on my iPhone crashes a lot when I send messages. Like close to half the time. Messages always make it out on the second try, but geez, I want a little more stability out of my email client.

I’m totally digging Safari on my iPhone. Internet-based research anywhere has completely changed how I look information up. For example, I went to see Fido at the Starz Film Center recently with some friends. Two questions came up after the movie: Was Tom Maxwell in Squirrel Nut Zippers, and what other movies was the actress that played the mom in? Question one returned a "yes" answer, and question two revealed that Carrie-Anne Moss has been in lots of movies including The Matrix. Yeah... It was that Carrie-Anne Moss.

That’s how my information world works now. Instant knowledge at my finger tips. Once we have some Flash action going on in Safari, I’ll be in Web nirvana, too.

Giving up my Palm PDA meant that I had to rely on the iPhone’s built-in calendar application. For the most part, it works pretty well for me. My appointments always sync correctly with my Mac, which is more than I can say for my Palm. The end dates for recurring events used to ocassionally shift by a day and show as a conflict during syncs. No more. I finally feel comfortable that the schedule I see when I’m on the go is correct.

What’s missing? How about a week view. Oh, and how about To-Do’s? I certainly hope Apple is working on those hot and heavy. Including schedule information on the iPhone without To-Do’s is like going on a hot date with Jessica Alba, but forgetting to pick her up. This is exactly why sniffing glue is a bad idea.

Since both of these nit-picks are about applications, they are things Apple should be able to fix. My guess is there have been enough user complaints that Apple may be working at least on the To-Do thing.

This is the first iPod I’ve owned that supports video playback. Now those video podcasts I tried to watch on my MacBook Pro between appointments -- but never got around to -- really do get viewed. I always end up with some downtime during the week when I’m away from my desk. Now I get to watch Channel Frederator and Happy Tree Friends every week.

I know some people aren’t pleased with the phone in the iPhone, but I really like it. I can hear the people I’m talking to, they can hear me, and I can actually tell when my phone is ringing -- even when it is in my pocket. Maybe the phone in the pocket thing isn’t a big deal for some, but I missed more calls than I answered when I used my RAZR. I couldn’t ever feel it vibrating, and the ringer sound seemed to blend in with the ambient noise just a bit too much for my liking.

For the first time ever I’m accessing contacts on my phone without thinking about doing things that would be more pleasurable like ironing my hands or eating glass. The contacts interface on the iPhone is easy to use and blends with the phone functions in a way that enhances my productivity instead of hampering it.

Yes, the iPhone has a few missing elements, but what I need can be added or fixed through software updates. The benefits I get from combining and carrying a single device far outweighs what I gave up from the before-time when I carried three.

In fact, the iPhone is so liberating for me that I can now consider leaving my MacBook Pro behind on some trips. Next week I’ll be spending a few days at Graph Expo 2007 in Chicago. No MacBook Pro, just my iPhone. We’ll see how my iPhone life holds up to that.