In the last decade, mobile phones have been the only constant in my tech gadget collection. As I rolled into 2000, I didn’t own a personal computer, rather using one from work for all my personal digital items, which didn’t include photos or music, just a couple dozen simple word documents and spreadsheets. I didn’t have a digital camera. I didn’t have a printer, fax machine, or home scanner, or the two terabytes of network attached storage I currently have, something that, if it even had been available, which it wasn’t, would have cost something like $30K across no fewer several dozen drives.

I used Thomas Brother’s book of maps to go from business meeting to business meeting as a technology analyst, or called and asked for directions from the person I visited (I seemed to get by just fine, as I recall). I was a fan of email, a heavy user of my Hotmail account, with less than a couple dozen friends who actually used, or even knew about, email. I had yet to stumble upon my first enthusiastic form of social networking, dating sites, but occasionally I explored articles on The Well.

I had just given up my pager from my previous job, and was fairly fond of my Palm Pilot, which I found incredibly useful for downloading news once a day so I could read during meetings. I had been using my first mobile phone for two years, the Nokia 5120, a brick about the size of a cordless home phone today, with a one inch screen. Like many people, I used this phone as a secondary device to my landlines.

I kept this phone until at least late 2001, when I got the sleeker, but still very basic. Ditching brand loyalty around 2004 due to Nokia’s inability to adopt flip phone form factors, I broke down and agreed to get a Motorola 551, an ugly soap bar shape, the best feature being a charm holder (I am nothing if not female).

Then I made the glamorous upgrade to the Motorola RAZR V3 around, which I still believe to be one of the nicest non-smart phones ever made. By this time, I was using my mobile phone in lieu of my landlines all the time, and had made the behavioral shift to allowing myself to be constantly reachable, constantly connected—by voice at least. The end of the sacred era of unreachability had hit me and everyone else by the mid 2000s. It’s remarkable to me how quickly society accepted this always on mentality. I have yet to decide if this benefits us, or not.

By 2007, I was given my first smart phone, a Palm 680. In less than 10 months, I upgraded to the Palm Centro. In less than 8 months, I upgraded Palm Treo Pro (which I still use for global travel). And in less than 6 months, I upgraded to the Palm Pre, which I still have, although if history suggests anything, I am due for an upgrade.

Ever since I found out about smart phones, I wanted to be constantly connected. Not fond, to this day, of being reachable, I was fascinated by being able to reach, not just people, but vast stores of information via the web, any time, and in virtually any place. News. Wikipedia. Shopping. Review sites. Social networking. And yes, email, which I have on constantly and actually often react to in real time, ashamed of my own obsession.

I still text, more so than ever. I use applications, and have more on the go utility on my phone than on my laptop, with a host of translators, converters, weather applications, games, social networking apps and more. I use my phone for GPS more often than my crotchety old Garmin, take most on my non-SLR photos with it, and am almost never more than a foot away from it. I don’t see this love affair ending in the coming decade.