So my wife and I switched over to AT&T and both got the 3Gs when it came out. A big driving factor for switching was my wife's difficulties getting her Verizon Blackberry Pearl to sync properly between her Macbook at home and PC at work. I was interested in getting a smartphone too and the iPhone and Android G1 where the only two I would consider, so iPhone it was.
This created a problem for me though since I'm primarily a Gentoo Linux user. My machines at home run Gentoo as do my machines at work. I do have a Macbook Pro at work, but I didn't want to be syncing my personal iPhone with my work laptop. This led me to do lots of research on how to sync at home. Although I do have a copy of XP, I didn't want to be rebooting my computer any time I wanted to sync my phone. so that left me with virtualizing Windows.
I found lots of hints in posts on Ubuntu, VMWare, and other forums but nothing completely worked for me. I struggled through this over a couple of days and finally came up with a workable solution. My solution works under Gentoo Linux with either VMWare Server 2 or Sun VirtualBox 2. It may work on other flavors of Linux as well, but ymmv. I have documented my work on the Gentoo Wiki in hopes that it will help others in my situation. The only thing I haven't tested yet is the ability to update the phone software. I've seen other people say it's not possible to do in a VM since the phone disconnects/reconnects from the USB bus during this process. I have figured out how to allow the iPhone to automatically connect to the USB within the VM though, so hopefully that will provide a workaround.
This created a problem for me though since I'm primarily a Gentoo Linux user. My machines at home run Gentoo as do my machines at work. I do have a Macbook Pro at work, but I didn't want to be syncing my personal iPhone with my work laptop. This led me to do lots of research on how to sync at home. Although I do have a copy of XP, I didn't want to be rebooting my computer any time I wanted to sync my phone. so that left me with virtualizing Windows.
I found lots of hints in posts on Ubuntu, VMWare, and other forums but nothing completely worked for me. I struggled through this over a couple of days and finally came up with a workable solution. My solution works under Gentoo Linux with either VMWare Server 2 or Sun VirtualBox 2. It may work on other flavors of Linux as well, but ymmv. I have documented my work on the Gentoo Wiki in hopes that it will help others in my situation. The only thing I haven't tested yet is the ability to update the phone software. I've seen other people say it's not possible to do in a VM since the phone disconnects/reconnects from the USB bus during this process. I have figured out how to allow the iPhone to automatically connect to the USB within the VM though, so hopefully that will provide a workaround.