Last Thursday, July 10…”iPhone Eve,” I tossed my sleeping bag and tent into the ol’ rig and set off to camp out. No, I wasn’t camping out for the iPhone, I was literally camping out — trees, lake, bugs — the whole nine yards. I had a previous commitment that turned out to be on the same weekend as the V2 release, and couldn’t join in on all the hoopla for the new version when it came out.

Last year I was one of the first couple of people in our town to get an iPhone. I brought down my RV and we played Halo and Guitar Hero all night long, got in the local paper, had friends bringing down food and drinks — really made a party out of it. This year, nada. My camp out buddies from last year went down at 5 am the day of, got in a then-short line, and walked out with iPhones.

During a lull in the camp out this year, I headed into a fairly large town around noon, only to find out that this years iPhone was actually a bigger seller than last years. Apple has reported that it’s sold 1 million iPhones over the weekend, whereas last year it took 74 days to accomplish the same goal. I could have told you that…because there are NO phones to be had around here. Checking in daily since I got back from my trip…ugh:

They had black 8gb iPhones available yesterday, but I’m fairly set on the white 16gb model, so here I sit, in an iPhone 3G void. All is not lost though, I have been enjoying the V2 update for the V1 iPhone mentioned in the previous post. I still have the beta version, and I think it’s acting a little funky, but downloading and playing around with stuff from the iPhone App Store is keeping me entertained while I wait.

Anyone else still waiting, waiting, waiting?

If you’re hankering for a little bit of that V2 iPhone lovin’, you can get some of it a little early today. Old and crusty V1 iPhones can be flashed by using the V2 iPhone Firmware updater found here. (iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw)

You’ll also need to have iTunes 7.7 installed on your machine, which is available via Software Update on your mac.

That’s a picture of my V1 iPhone cruising through the App Store this morning. The entire process took about half an hour to download 7.7, download the firmware update, back up my old system, and install the firmware.

Update at your own risk, TweakOSX is not responsible for any bricking you may run into.

With just a couple of days left until you can officially get your hands on the the 3G iPhone, or V2 iPhone, many people are deciding what to do with their ‘old’ version, if you were an early adopter.

While some people have been standing in line for a couple days already, many more will just stroll on in after the official release and pick one up old school style. Regardless of which way you go, you still have some time to decide what to do with your old iPhone. Here are the top three (if not obvious) things to do with your V1 iPhone.

1. Sell It – Duh. Get rid of it, either as a good deal to a buddy or client, or by listing it on Ebay while they’re still hot. Unlocked V1 iPhones are still getting between $350-450 online. Many people ask why anyone would pay that much on Ebay for an old and crusty outdated version when the new one will be less than the current going rate? Two words: no contract. People would rather pay a few bucks more to have a phone they can use on T-mobile, or even AT&T, without signing their lives away for the next two years.

2. Keep It In The Family – If you’ve got a wife, kid, brother, sister, mother, father, or anyone else that you’ve been wanting to bring into the Mac Family, the 1st gen iPhone may be just the ticket. Of course that little gift comes with a monthly recurring expense that someone will have to pony up for, but again, if someone already has an AT&T account, or you unlock the phone, they can bail on that cost at any time if they decide they hate it.

3. Put a Fresh Coat of Paint On It – Not literally, (although the ColorWare finishes are a tempting option,) but by upgrading the firmware when V2 comes out with the new iPhones. If Walt Mossberg is to be believed, you may just be better off waiting for a bit until the next, next version of the firmware comes out for the V2 iPhone. Although he likes some of the new features, and the 3G network, he points out that battery life suffers, and the new pricing is slightly higher than before. Updating your old V1 iPhone with the new firmware will give you many of the benefits of the new model, without having to give up battery life.

There are many other options for what to do with your V1 iPhone model…what do you plan on doing with yours?

So now that the boxed versions of MobileMe are available from Apple, and from other resellers like Amazon, I figured I’d better see what that actually means for .Mac users like myself that haven’t really been paying too much attention.

Fortunately, if you haven’t been following along, you can get up to speed fairly quickly with the Apple .Mac To MobileMe Transition FAQ on Apple’s website. This document should answer most of your upgrade questions if you’re a current user.

Bottom line — if you’re currently a .Mac user, you get the service upgrade without having to do anything. A couple of other decent items to note:

• Your .Mac subscription will be automatically upgraded to MobileMe at no additional cost.
• Individual subscription storage doubles from 10GB to 20GB.
• You may continue to use your current mac.com email address to send and receive email just as you do today. If you have any email aliases at mac.com, they will also continue to work.
• All of your existing iDisk files will be available on MobileMe iDisk.

And a couple of things you should be aware of

• As part of this transition to MobileMe, some features are being discontinued: Web access to bookmarks (bookmark sync between your Macs and/or PCs is still supported), iCards, .Mac slides, and support for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther sync.
• iPhone users: You will need to update to software version 2.0 or later to enable push mail, push contacts, push calendar, and push bookmarks. This software update will be available when MobileMe launches.

All this and much more at the Apple .Mac To MobileMe Transition FAQ on Apple’s website.