Cool Tech

Emp. Peng.'s cell phone has never gotten terrific reception at home, but it has only been recently that the service started roaming in our living room. The oh-so-lovely folks at the Verizon Store with the handy computerized queuing system (which would work so much better if the inputs were not done by people who would have done Ellis Island clerks proud) suggested we might want to upgrade his phone if the software reset she performed failed to improve the situation. It didn't, so we did. While we upgraded the phone, we upgraded our carrier, too. Possibly, the carrier is just a lateral move. At any rate, it could hardly be worse.

On Wednesday, Apple dropped the price on the iPhone down to a slightly less insane level. And since we were in the market for both a new cell phone provider and a slightly belated birthday present to Emp. Peng., we went down to the Apple Store today and got what is by all indications the last 4GB iPhone in Ohio.

Once in a while, I come across technology that is so sci-fi, I have to double check that I wasn't zapped through time. Technology that is so sexy, so simultaneously ahead of its time and should have been invented earlier, that one just has to stop and think, "Wow." No, not the iPhone, although that is at least three different kinds of cool. I'm talking about what the sales folks at the Apple Store have. We went in, poked around the newest Apple offerings, and were pounced on in short order by a sales guy who is infinitely more helpful than the folks at the Verizon store. He fetched the iPhone from the back and helped Emp. Peng. pick out a case and a few other accessories. Then, he pulled out a doodad about the size of a brick from a holster on his belt and proceeded to scan the items and run Emp. Peng.'s card. He got the signature verification on the brick, and asked what I am sure is going to be the new millennium's "Paper or plastic?": Would you like your receipt printed or emailed to you?

That, I must say, is customer service. Forget going to the register. Each salesperson is a walking POS terminal, able to complete transactions from anywhere in the store. Printed or emailed? That, that is the future knocking on your glass-faced touch sensitive pocket computer and communicator.