Standing On Boxes

Okay, not really. But the 4th of July is tomorrow – a Wednesday and it feels odd to take off a day from work in the middle of the week.
I don’t have any real plans for the day…

Someone figured out how to sign an iPhone up for a pre-pay plan with AT&T (Not sure of the terminology). $40/month (approximately half the minutes of the 2 year/$60 plan but basically the same (aka unlimited data). You just have to pay in advance every month (in some auto-pay kind of way (credit/debit/checking account).
The key point being — you aren’t locked into an AT&T plan for 2 years. You can cancel at any time. Even before you use it.
Drawbacks (as I see them):

• The phone is still only useful as a phone with some kind of AT&T/Cingular calling plan.
• What happens if you cancel? The iPhone has to be activated initially but it works as a wireless “internet tablet” after that. The concern is — will future software updates work if your non-Plan’ed iPhone doesn’t have a current calling planof some sort?

I’m tempted… it would be expensive still but without the 2 year lock in?
However… I then went and looked at national AT&T coverage… AT&T has almost no/weak coverage up where my mother lives and other places I might travel and need a phone. So I would have to keep another phone for those times if I wanted to use an iPhone as a phone.
We’ll see if I can hold out until the Fall… maybe Apple will come out with something less phone-like but with all the other features.