Goodbye to an Era

Today I used my Sony clie personal entertainment organizer for the last time. My mother bought it for me for Christmas way back in 2001 and I have been using it ever since. That's a pretty good life for an electronic devise that has basically gone the way of the VCR since the advent of smart phones.

Up until my clie, I had been using a paper system to keep organized. You know, one of those gigantic binder-type things that had a calendar, an address book, sections for to-do lists, and even places to hold business cards. It was very heavy. And my clie was comparatively light.

When I purchased my clie, I could sync it to my computer with a usb cord. I didn't do this very often because it was a bit of a hassle. Sometime around 2005 or 2006 my clie started refusing to sync. I figured the software it came with was no longer compatible with my new computer or something along those lines, and I didn't worry about it very much. As I said, I didn't sync it very often, and it hadn't caused me any problems. Probably because I was very good at keeping it charged.

Until, in February 2009, when I took it to Egypt with me. I'm not even sure why I brought it--I didn't turn it on once during the trip. So I was shocked when I arrived back in the US and the battery had died. I guess I had never fully tested the battery life. And presumably that life had been getting shorter and shorter without me noticing it. I got home, plugged it in, and let it charge.

Then I turned it on.

And there was nothing. None of my contacts. None of my upcoming events and activities. And probably, worst of all, NO BOOK LIST. This was when panic set in.

I have a very good memory, but what if I forgot something? Something important? Like my wedding anniversary!

My husband and I were able to recall most, or possible all, of the events we had lined up for the next month or so. We figured we could just call people for addresses, and we even did a pretty good job of recreating my book list (my husband is secretly a super-hero).

I started paying attention to how often I had to charge my clie. I noticed it was about every 2-3 days. I also noticed that it seemed to take a really long time to charge. I went out and bought a standard, book-style address book that we have been dutifully filling. And I decided to go back to a more-or-less paper system of keeping track of activities. I had a very nice spiral notepad/journal and I taped calendar pages to it (yes, this does sound totally lame, but it's actually a system that works very well for me). I can keep all of my lists of random things (from who we're going to send Christmas cards to, to our plan for paying off our non-mortgage debt) in one place.

I had been co-using this system along with my clie...just to see how the transition went (I am thoroughly anal-retentive). So far, so good. Which is why I decided to retire my clie. Now it will sit in a drawer, probably until we decide to move again, at which time I'll figure out the best way to dispose of it and any other miscellaneous electronic flotsam we've acquired (I'm not sure what's in it, but I'm pretty sure that like cell phones, it doesn't belong in the landfill).

However, I've also had my eye on the Blackberry Storm.