For anyone considering the purchase of this (or another) Virgin Mobile phone, do not be influenced by the identical negative reviews posted for several Virgin Mobile phones by someone calling himself "lookout guy." I cannot comment on the month to month plans, having only been a pay-as-you-go by-the-minute guy since I got my Virgin Mobile phone over two years ago. I can tell you that lookout guy is totally WRONG in terms of any "hidden fee" in terms of the by-the-minute service offered by Virgin Mobile. There is NO $1.50/day fee; if there was, no one would choose this option because it would end up costing more than a monthly plan. (Duh.) I can confirm that you only pay for the minutes you use. If you don't use your phone for days (even weeks) at a time, you pay nothing. The ONLY charge for having access to a Virgin Mobile phone on the by-the-minute plan is the minimum top-up charge (supposedly $20 every three months but after you become a customer you can get it down to $15 every three months if you choose auto top-up with a credit card). So if you NEVER use your phone, that's what it costs. Of course, you would simply end up accruing money in your account to be debited when you do finally use your phone. As long as you use your phone minimally (for emergencies and for very brief, occasional conversations only), you'll pay only $5-$6.66/month. I oughta know -- my balance keeps growing and growing because I rarely use my phone; if I were being charged a $1.50/day "access charge" I would know it.Only you can decide if a pay-as-you-go plan such as this is suitable for you, but here's the quick math: if you know you will use your phone at least five minutes per day almost every day, then this plan isn't for you as it would cost you $37.50/month for only 150 minutes of use based on 25 cents/minute. If, like me, you are likely to have many days where you don't use the phone at all and other days where you use only a few minutes (with rare days that you use over 10 minutes), then this plan will be a bargain. (I used to be a Sprint PCS customer and ended up paying, on average, $1/minute for my calls because of my minimal phone use -- in other words, over four times as much as my Virgin Mobile minutes cost at their highest rate.)Edit on 5/12/06:Now on to this phone, which I just purchased earlier this week: I definitely like this upgrade to my K7 Rave phone. The color screen is nice and the entire phone looks sharp. Swapping phones was easy, though I didn't get the text message from Virgin indicating that my new phone was active as the customer service rep indicated. Instead I just tried the phone out after a few hours and discovered that it had, in fact, been activated.Reception seems pretty much the same as my other Virgin Mobile phone (good but not excellent).I'm enjoying the Virgin Mobile X-Tras and have downloaded a few files for wallpapers/screensavers as well as some ringtones from my favorite Comedy Central shows. These downloads aren't cheap (10 cents per day just to access Virgin X-Tras and then typically $2-$3 per item downloaded), but I had so much money built up in my account that I figured I could splurge for a little while.