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In today's society, your cellular phone is much more than just a device for placing phone calls. It's a calculator, a calendar, a text communicator, an internet portal, and email client, a camera, an MP3 player, a GPS navigator, an organizer, a gaming device, a personal assistant, a source of annoying ring-tones, and impetus for noising and overbearing conversations, a distraction in movie theaters, a rude interruption at a romantic dinner, an embarrassing indication of your closet ABBA obsession at an important business meeting, a convenient excuse to get out of painfully boring small talk, a shoulder to cry on, an ear to bend, a friend, a lover, and a convenient way for the government to track your every move and listen in on your most intimate conversations

With all these features to take into account, attempting to purchase a cell phone can be a one way ticket to a humiliating nervous breakdown while a part-time teenage employee at the Cingular store tries to figure out if it was the discussion of "rollover minutes" or the suggestion that you buy a Bluetooth headset that sent you into your spiral of hysterical sobbing.

With over 200 independent service providers (probably) and close to 7500 individual cell phone models and styles on the market (I assume), you need to make sure you know exactly what you want before you enter the store, or else you'll be flooded with a sea of interchangeable faceplates and auxiliary car chargers. So do a little research, and see which features you definitely have to have in your phone before you even think about purchasing one.

And remember, if you don't make the correct decision on a cell phone, you might end up with one that can't run PowerPoint, and will only store the first 30 seconds of whatever song is on the top of the Billboard charts this week. And when your life gets to that point, you might as well go back to being a fetus and start all over.

When you walk into any cell phone store, the sales people will try and confuse you with talk of "service plans" and "overage" and other sorts of cell phone mumbo-jumbo. But don't be taken in by their hoo-hah; don't let them fool you. These kind of "technical" things are about as important as the price of milk in Dover (unless, of course, you live in Dover, and the price of milk in your home town is an issue of quite import, in which case, you can ignore that last metaphor). If the sales person you're speaking with insists on talking about "rates" and "roaming charges", kick him

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