I’ve had a tough time with my laptop addiction since going back to a part-time office job.

For a few years I’ve heard about the CrackBerries so I thought I should get one. Since the Storm was building on the horizon, I waited for its release. What a disappointment since it was recalled for software problems before the release date and the touch screen keyboard was impossibly small (which has been an ongoing BlackBerry problem). However, once I played with the touch screens in the store, I couldn’t tolerate the mouse-like BlackBerry. The world had changed and I wasn’t going back.

What’s a poor girl to do if she’s not willing to give up her Verizon coverage in the Washington DC Metro system? I’d have to forgo a new phone until technology improved and ignore all the iphone people. My husband found out that he could upgrade his phone and my sixth-grade son could be added to our plan now with a free phone. I could change my mind at any time in the future without a problem.

Fellow blogger Jennifer Deseo at the Silver Spring Penguin told me that the Samsung Omnia 910 was due to be released and it had wifi (which the Storm does not). [If you live in Montgomery County, MD, you should be reading the Penguin.] Friends, Tim and Heather, happened to be in the Verizon store to get a free phone for their sixth grader and they pointed out the Omnia after I mentioned it. Heather bought one. Still on the fence, we set up our plan without upgrading my phone. At the last possible moment, I threw all caution to the wind and bought the Omnia.

When it comes to new technology, my philosophy is to let everyone else pay the expensive prices and work out the bugs. This was a major change in my consumer profile, but the Omnia 910 is as close to a laptop in my pocket as I could get.

As an event planner, my Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are my up-to-the-minute memory. The ability to update on-the-go was a major plus for the Omnia, which has the Office Suite: Excel, Word, and Powerpoint mobile. The Omnia has a small stylus dangling from its side for working on these documents. If you don’t have razor sharp fingernails like me, you will have an easier time with it. Since I never had a Palm, I was working out my stylus envy.

You can visit the Samsung website and watch cool videos that explain all the features of the Omnia. No program is more than two screen touches away. Zooming in and out is as easy as tapping the screen twice. The camera and video is 5 pixels which is as good as my current camera, so I won’t have to take it with me when blogging anymore.

As a blogger, I have full access to gmail, google maps, google calendar and other features which I don’t use. You can use blogger.com to write and add a picture or video to a blog, but not your own. Google will create a new blog and you have to get home and post it to your blog on the laptop. At least some of the work can be done in the field but I haven’t tried it yet.

The touch screen keyboard is big enough for my fingers and has a vibrate setting that helps with typing. Of course, the screen orientation has a motion detector. There’s video and picture messaging and the ability to visually see your voice mail without going into your account. You can watch tv and movies, as well as listen to the radio. When web browsing, five tabs can be open at one time and the device is geared toward keeping you in touch with all your social networking sites. There’s music, weather, and metric conversions. You can take notes during a phone conversation. This morning it fit in my tiny little jacket pocket.

Since I’m a klutz , I’ve already dropped my Omnia three times without a problem. My old cell was a Samsung and honestly, I think you could play baseball with it.

Most of a night’s sleep was lost playing with the Omnia and I still haven’t figured out everything it can do. As close as I could get to sleeping with it under my pillow, the darn thing woke me up when it was fully charged. Unfortunately, the battery ran low after about seven hours. For me, that’s not long enough, so we’ll have to see how it goes this week.

No matter, life’s been upgraded.