I was rocking the command line in DOS on our home computer back in 1981 before anyone else on the block had one. I was coding Web pages back in 1995 before most people knew what the Web was. I bought my first digital camera more than 10 years ago when most people thought a Polaroid was the future of photography. I’m an “early adopter” and proud of it. That’s why I felt crazy embarrassed that it took me so long to jump on the smartphone express. In my defense, I was just waiting for the right time.

A few years ago, the virgin market was budding with experimental new devices and something called an iPhone while companies struggled to understand exactly what they were doing and what the market really wanted. I knew that I wouldn’t have to lug around my cell phone, my mp3 player, and my Palm Pilot for much longer; a single-device solution was on the horizon. And I was excited.

I can write till I’m blue in the face as to why buying an iPhone was never an option for me. I’m simply not their target market: I choose to build my own computers; I run Linux on my home box; I prefer a manual to an automatic transmission; I’m a tweaker and a hacker and a pirate; I want my devices to do what I want them to do, not what they want me to do; I am a power user. So when I heard that a line of smartphones was coming out based on Google’s free and open source Android operating system, I knew the time was nigh. But I didn’t take the plunge right away. I’m one of the few pragmatic early adopters out there. I had to research this investment to death before climbing aboard. This was last year and all I kept reading about was the rumor of a behemoth of a superphone being developed under shroud of mystery by a little company called HTC, supposedly codenamed the Bravo. Or the Passion. Or the Dragon. But in actuality, it was called the HTC Desire. And it turned out to be everything it was hyped up to be.