Whoa, how do you do ESN cloning???
Dan, its a rather complicated process, but simple once you get all the concepts involved. You and I should talk outside the forum if you're interested... I had written stuff about it on my
blog and phone-related message boards, only to get banned from the forums and receive letters asking me to take down such information from my public pages.
Bottom line- the process varies from phone to phone, but generally will require a data cable and proprietary software that can read the programming info of your phone, know your MSL, and be proficient in a binary editor. I've figured out how to do this for several different types of handsets, however some are far more difficult than others, and I've seen many people "brick" their phones by rushing into things.
However, the result is very rewarding- you are able to take certain Verizon or Alltel phones and bring them to Sprint by cloning a working Sprint ESN!! This, by the way is a grey area, however arguably legal. The problem is that it is VERY easy to use this information for illegal cellular fraud (having 2 phones on one account to save money on a second line, stealing someone else's service, privacy invasion, etc), which is why the info is so very often taboo.
Just be aware, this is not for the faint of heart: If fiddling around in hexadecimal or binary code sounds too overwhelming, I don't recommend attempting.
Anyway, at the risk of setting off yet another WM/Palm debate: I don't deny that WM in a phone isn't by far the most powerful OS in a phone. I just don't need my phone to be that customized at the expense of simplicity. I (and others, including Walter Mossberg) just find Palm OS to strike the perfect balance between a smart OS with thousands of programs, and a very stable and simple phone.
Hahaha.... you mean iphone-loving Walt? Yes, he prefers Palm to WM, but he also prefers Mac to PC- not that there's anything wrong with that, but people tend to "pick sides" at this sort of debate (he has said he prefers the iPhone to Palm as well, so go figure... sounds like someone who is anti-anything-microsoft).
I don't want to take this any more off-topic, but since you mentioned Walt, I'd like to point out that Mr. Mossberg is not well respected in the Mobile OS development community. He sees everything only at face-value, and has surprisingly little understanding of how things actually work. Engadget pointed out that during a review of the 3G iphone, Walt makes passing reference to the GPS antenna being "too small" to function as a proper GPS. This makes absolutely ZERO sense at all, as technically the size of the chip makes no difference. In fact, current location-based services work perfectly, giving you as exact a location fix as ANY gps. Walt seems to be referring to the lack of a turn-by-turn routing application, which doesn't exist yet because of licensing (rumor has it Apple and AT&T want to charge for such a service, and are developing one to be released soon for a subscription fee). This, as well as some other comments Walt has made, has made him something of a laughing stock to people in the mobile industry... So, don't bring him into this if you want to impress someone.
For anything more complicated I'm going to be using my laptop anyway.
Now when a WM device can truly replace a laptop (something that I doubt will happen anytime soon) that will be a true game changer, but until that point I'm quite happy with an old-school palm OS powered phone like I've been with for 7 years now.
Maybe I'm not understanding what you use your laptop for... my PPC always doubled as my laptop. Back when I was in Kollel and working part time, I'd be able to make changes to someone's website directly from my PPC in the Beis Medresh. To this day my phone is still my mobile office, able to do almost all the things my laptop can do, except perhaps editing video content- which I could still do if I needed to via remote desktop on my home or office PC (and have on occasion).
I move to the laptop only because I want to have a larger screen and full keyboard.
What are you trying to do that you need a laptop for?
The Airave is totally absolutely positively awesome, but due to its GPS chip it only started working in Cleveland this month.
I'll make a post on it soon.
Also just to point out, most VZW phones only operate on the CDMA 850MHz band, so they won't work on the Sprint (1900MHz) network even if Sprint let you activate them, and devices like the Airave would be totally useless for them.
That stinks about the GPS chip. There must be a bigger reason that the chip is embedded in the box tho... perhaps for triangulation / AGPS services?