As many of you know, I got a new job recently. Being editor-in-chief of PCMag comes with some great perks. Prison letters now go directly to my mailbox, and my building ID card lets me into the basement storage room filled with Ziff Davis Smart Business for the New Economy beer cosies from 2000. (My old boss, Lance Ulanoff, took his robot collection with him, but that is okay. Those bots were kind of creepy.)
It also comes with a company cell phone so I can be reachable 24/7 just in case I need to manage an urgent editorial crisis. Thing is, they want to give me his company-issued BlackBerry Bold and are literally willing to pay me to take it. Even with a few years of Lance's face-grease on it, it is a free phone. And yet, I am going to pass.
Few writers have made as big a spectacle of the small matter of choosing a cell phone. First, I cursed the iPhone and pledged my love for the Palm Treo. Then I ditched the Treo and spent two years with the BlackBerry before returning to Palm again when it launched the WebOS. Now, of course,
To most people, turning away a free cell phone may seem crazy, but I have my reasons. First of all, I already have a phone, and a two-year contract that will run for another year or so. I can read both my work email and my personal mail on it. The Blackberry would have better battery life, but I am willing to trade that for the awesome Web browser and tons of apps.
And I am willing to take work calls on it. My boss has the number, as do the key members of my editorial team and business contacts I actually know. If you don't know my cell phone number, send me an email. Why mess with a good system?
Sure I could cancel the contract and suck up the fee, but I have had the number for 10 years. I ain't giving that up. And yes, numbers are portable, but I saw what Lance went through when he tried to untangle his work phone from his personal one. It was ugly.
And then there is the money. I pay about $80 per month for an unlimited Sprint plan, or $960 a year. That is a serious chunk of change, but I am used to paying it. I don't have a landline anymore, so my total telecom bill is actually lower than it was five years ago. Sprint includes unlimited data and texts, so there is no penalty to keeping my phone.
There is a technical term for what is happening here: It is called the "consumerfication of IT," and it pisses off a lot of IT people. Some of this is just the nightmare of having to support a hundred different types of phones and platforms. Figuring out how to set up Exchange email on a BlackBerry is one thing, but setting it up on Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7, and WebOS is something different. (Five things at least.)
The consumerfication of IT can be really dangerous. Many consumers barely understand how to configure their Facebook privacy settings, and yet they don't think twice about saving a company P&L in their Dropbox shared folder so they can read it at home. While the security threats are real and supporting different platforms is a hassle, the era of locked-down systems is over. The modern professional needs to be able to access Facebook at work, install Dropbox on a notebook, and, yes, get email on their personal phone.
One life, one phone.
Of course, if Ziff Davis wants to reimburse me for my monthly cell phone bill, I am totally cool with that. More than cool, really. I will even sit through a lecture from IT on why I need to password protect the phone. But do I want Lance's old BlackBerry?
Not if you gave me $960 a year.