<b>Kudos and unboxing</b>

Well, well, well, finally made it back, with the long anticipated wait for the arrival of the precious egg known as the Palm Pre. But before I jump into that, I need to address something, MY MANNERS, WHERE ARE MY MANNERS? Lord knows that my grandmother would flip over in her grave if I didn't stop and thank the powers that be who allowed all this to happen. My first kudos and thanks go out to Sprint, whom I've been a long time customer of, since 1998. We've been through the good the bad and the ugly, but you have always been fair to me and have always worked with me. When ever a problem popped up that I couldn't handle, you'd reduce my bill and change my plan so I could stay your loyal and always faithful customer. Thanks Sprint!

The next organization is Palm. Kudos and more kudos to you Palm for finally listening to me when I requested a larger screen so that people like me whose eyesight diminishes over time and who need the zoom feature to work, I mean, REALLY WORK!!! Hahaha, so thank you so much, Palm, for this beautiful egg you dropped on the planet. (I don't mean, at this point to do an "I told you so", BUT! if you had listened to me a few years ago when I called in about my idea of a bigger screen, you might have beat Mac's iPhone and YOU would have been the #1 phone on the planet. But that's neither here nor there now, cause we're getting ready to change all that.) Thank you so much Palm for finally stepping up to the plate and hitting this one out of the park.

Now I've saved the best for last, and that's CNET. You may not realize this but I come to you for everything, I mean, EVERYTHING! Want to buy a refrigerator, dishwasher or any major appliance, I come to you. If I want to purchase any electronics under the sun, I come to you. I love your reviews, I love how we can compare the products right next to each other and I especially love all the videos you provide us consumers so that, before we buy, we have been thoroughly educated about the products. If my friends or family members say they're going to buy something, I'll send them to you, to check it out and compare with others like it. A BIG SHOUT OUT AND PRAISE TO YOU, CNET, GLAD YOU'RE ON OUR SIDE. (Also, if I hadn't been on your site researching the Palm Pro, which I just brought, I won't have known about Test Driving the Palm Pre and getting one for free) So thanks, CNET, for being who you are. Now, oh, wait a minute, almost forgot, a hhhuuuggghhh shout out goes to CBS Interactive, for putting all of this together. You've done a great job guys and we all really appreciate it. Ok, now my grandmother can flip back over in her grave and I can get on with my story. Hahahaha.

To start off with, I was told this precious cargo would be delivered by FedEx, so, each sound I heard each day, day after day, was followed with a quick dash to the door with camera in hand, hands sweating, heart pounding and trying to beat the dog to the door, NEVER HAPPENED! Huh, what's going on here? Finally, Monday, evening, LATE Monday evening, the door bell ring, Penny (my dog) beat me to the door, I was slow moving because I knew FedEx usually comes in the morning to our house and not in the evening. I flung open the door and there stood the UPS man, huumm, I wasn't expecting anything from UPS, I signed for the small box, wondering what it was, I didn't order anything, and didn't see who it came from. Lord knows I was hoping it wasn't a bomb or some other terrorist type thing so I sat in my chair and proceeded to open the box vvveeerrrryyy carefully, told Penny "stay back in case anything jumps out at us," hhhuummm, styro peanuts, digged deeper and low and behold, there it was the precious little thing I've been waiting for. Wow, I was so let down, because I wanted a grand fan fair, pictures, lights, jumping up and down, singing, dancing, in great excitement. Well, that never happened, talking about a balloon popper. I guess it was for the best because I probably would have scared the poor UPS man half to death. He already looked like he'd been in a train wreck and had lost his best friend with the dog dying so his day really didn't need to end up like that, with some wild crazy woman loosing her mind over a little brown box that he just delivered. So now we'll move on to the good part.

Ta da, the egg has landed, it's here and now what am I going to do with it. Hhhuuummm, I know, OPEN THE BOX! look around, check out all the things that came with it and then turn it on. Ok, turn it on, hum, well, where do you turn it on? It is truly a beautiful little thing, smooth lines; everything blends right into itself, nice, BUT WHERE DO YOU TURN IT ON?? Ok, my first known philosophy is to push buttons, I only see one button in the lower middle and I know that's not the turn on button, saw that on Cnet. Checked the sides, no button there, checked the top, ah ha, there's a slider thing so I pushed that and of course it didn't work. Now it's time to get out the instructions that say "GET STARTED", that should work. Went to page 6, the overview (what everything is) found it at last! #18, at the very top right next to #17, the little slider thing called ringer switch. Hahahahaha, never saw that one coming. Thought it was going to be like all the other phones where you just push the little red button and the thing turns on and off. Interesting!!! At this time my brain started racing with everything I wanted to do, like input my info, set up e-mail accounts, etc, etc., so I decided to turn it off and charge it up over night, to full capacity, so when I started setting everything up, I don't have to shut it down to charge the battery. So back to the Get Started book I go. Ok, the charge portal is #12, slick and smooth blends right into the side, never would have thought that was the charger portal, so I started picking at it with my finger nail, nothing moved or opened. I pushed it, still nothing. I told my husband, "I'm getting my knife to try and pry it open (at this age you have to keep a knife on you)". "Hold on, before you get the knife, let me try it", that was my husband speaking. So, he pushed, picked, turned it up side down, pushed and picked again. He looked back at the book and saw what it looked like open so he went at it again. NOTHING! At this time a friend of ours was visiting, she's 25 yrs old, so I said "give it to the 25 year old maybe she could do something with it". Remember we're 57. So we passed it on to her, she looked at it, looked at the book, with one flick of her finger nail right under the charger door, it opened. Go figure, give it to a 25 year old and they opened it, what a blessing for youth. I'm going to bed now, that was enough excitement for one night.

All righty then let's move on. Morning couldn't come soon enough; I jumped out of bed, ran through the normal things I do to start the day, then as soon as I was finished I ran over to the perfect egg, sitting there on its charger. Unplugged it sat down on the couch, pushed the invisible button on the top right hand corner and guess what, ta da, black screen then the word "PALM" showed up, now I'm waiting, waiting, waiting, about a minute passed. Then a blue screen pops up with two words, English/Espanol. Huh, glad I don't speak any other language than one of those two. Ok, so now I push English and we're off. Next screen, still blue, confirm English, wow good thing it asked me twice just in case I forgot what language I spoke, so I touched the green check mark. Round circle comes on screen rotating round and round with the words "setting language" at the top of the screen. Blue check mark pops up with the words phone activated and a bar at the bottom saying "Next", so I tap next. Now we're off to the races, we're on the terms & conditions page where you have to accept or agree. You're signing your life away here because you have to agree to the fact that you've read the terms and conditions and you understand the terms and conditions and by clicking "Accept" or using the service, you consent to these terms and conditions. "THE WHOLE WORLD HAS TERMS AND CONDITIONS, DOES ANYBODY REALLY READ THIS STUFF"? I figure if I want to use the phone, I'll just click accept, and so I did, hope I don't regret it later. Ok, now we're on the next page called Palm profile. Whew, this is more work than I had anticipated. Hhhuuumm, which button to tap, 1) Tell me more, 2) Create new profile, 3) sign in to my profile. Well, I haven't set up a profile on this phone, so I know it's not that one, maybe I should do 2) create a new profile, but really I need to know more so I'll go to #1) tell me more (that's so I can be sure, remember I am 57 so peat and repeat are truly my best friends). wait, everything just went black, what the world! Hold on till I figure out what to do.

Ok I'm back just had to tap the on/off button and everything popped back up. So now I'm waiting on an e-mail on how to transfer data to my phone. Stand by a minute; have to go read the e-mail.

I have now officially registered my Palm Pre. This is getting a little bit redundant so I'm going to pass on telling you a few things so you'll have something to look forward to when you get your Palm Pre. Wow, I've never had to go through so much just to activate a phone, it's almost like buying a car or something. Now we're on the location services page, with its full explanation as to, what it is and what it does, so I hit next. Lord, here we go again, another agreement from Google Mobile. If I want to do it, I'll have to agree. Moving on, next page, AUTO LOCATE, I enabled it, can change later if I want too. Am I ever going to get to the desktop?? Oops, spoke to soon, hopefully this is it.

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO USE THE PHONE. Well, this should be helpful. We're doing the gesture thing on how to move to the back pages, this should be interesting. Hold on a minute. As I try to swipe my finger in the area below the screen, it keeps saying I'm not in the right area, try again. So let's go again. Hahahaha, a phone that talks, it said "You've got it. Let's move on." Now I've got a phone telling me what to do. That's good; remember at 57 I need all the help I can get. So we're moving on, next... oops, if you hit the bottom page the wrong way a box pops up saying, "Emergency call, Call customer service, Cancel," have to be careful as to how you hit it.

Ok, now we're on the page that says All images, Messaging, Vacations and Wallpapers, so it's asking me to tap vacations...tapping....pictures pop up, now tap the highlighted picture, tapped it, nice enlarges pictures to full size of screen and when you turn it on it's side the picture gets bigger and takes up the whole screen in that direction. Really starting to like this phone. Now I have to use the finger swipe across the bottom to get back to the previous screen, let's see if I can get it the first go round. I GOT IT. Just figured out that it's the area right on the button, not the area on the screen, so what you're really doing is swiping the button to the left, why couldn't they just say that? Hhuumm, maybe they did and I just missed it. Ok, I'm tired of this. I'm going to check out now and rest my brain. When I get to the final destination, THE DESKTOP, I'll check back in, which will probably be tomorrow.

Ta ta for now.