My Brain's Companion

For almost seven years, I owned a Motorola Startac mobile phone. Friends snickered about it being an "antique". It being my first mobile phone, I was thrilled with it until it stopped working after I dropped it on the ground too many times. During the years I owned the phone, many new models of mobile phones were coming out, but I didn't see any compelling reason to buy them. When my Startac finally died, I was left with little choice but to buy a new phone. I bought a Motorola mpx200.

It was only after I bought and used the Motorola mpx200 that I realized the seriousness of the problems I faced all those years without it. The mpx200, like many other phones (but not the Startac), has a calendar and will keep it synchronized with the calendar in Microsoft Outlook. It also has e-mail and will synchronize messages with Outlook. Using these features changed my life. The mpx200 is like an adjunct to my brain.

The problem I had for all those years was a memory and scheduling problem. I could not keep track of appointments and social events, because there was simply too much information that I either (a) needed while I was not at my computer or (b) discovered while not at my computer. But I didn't realize just how serious a problem the memory and scheduling was until I used the mpx200 and was able to see how different my life could be with my brain's "companion".

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