It never occurred to me that I might buy a non-Nokia phone, but there are several ways.

With Nokia, I would click the "Synchronise with OE" option. I don't actually use OE, but that saves all your contacts as vCards which are a standard contact format supported by Microsoft, Apple, Thunderbird, Nokia, Sony, Siemens et al. If you save your contacts in this format, they're pretty safe. Some people send them by email to make it click-easy to add them to your directory.

CSV is also an option, although it requires some care.

Of course, you could still use the "transfer to sim" option - but that truncates names, creates duplicate entries and loses any additional info such as email, birthday, company name etc... Fine if you just have a few friends on there, but very annoying if you have a lot of business contacts. I could easily end up with hundreds of people on my phone, and I really need to know who they are and be able to find them.

My current phone doesn't have Bluetooth, so I can't synchronise it with my computer anyway.

I seem to recall when we tried to sync Batman's phone to the Mac (to get a photo off it, I think), it didn't like it and we gave up. As I don't actively use a PC (although I have one sitting next to me), I suppose I shall have to rely on a paper backup for the future - or trim out most of the unused contacts.

I had to buy a new (and very cheap) phone in a rush a few months back (Don't blame me, blame the french!) and chose my current one from the £20 selection because it had blue-tooth so, I thought, I could sync it with my laptop, as I did with my old phone. It seems not all bluetooth is made equal, and having bluetooth doesn't mean it can send contacts over it... Grrrrrr!

Couldn't get that working on the iPhone either, so it's not just cheap ones. I guess they've probably fixed it by now though, or I didn't know what I was doing. "Contact. send. Bluetooth. discover. Sent" - how can they make it hard??!

I've always stored the information in the 'phone itself, but then I prefer to have a single entry for a person and select the correct number than have a person listed 3 or 4 times - especially as I often know lots of people with the same or similar first/last names, the truncated names get confusing...

O2 (Germany) offers a service where they will back up all non-Windows Mobile 'phones to your on-line profile via a simple MMS. You can modify your contacts there and re-synch them to the 'phone and if you buy a new 'phone, you can automatically download them all to the new 'phone - all free of charge.

I don't know if Orange offer anything like that.

My current Windows Mobile 'phone is synched with Outlook 2007 on my home machine, which is synched to MobileMe, which is synched to my iPod and iMac... That makes backing up all the information a doddle.

After travelling with the iPod to the funeral, I'm starting to seriously want an iPhone! I like the iPod Touch as a music device and just carrying one device around instead of the Touch Pro and the iPod Touch would be a lot simpler.

I threw out the Apple ear buds though, they are absolutely useless, they fall out of my ears every 30 seconds or so! So I ended up buying a pair of Sennheiser CX299s(?). They fit nicely inside the ear, are comfortable, with the different sized rubber spacers and they were great on the plane on the way back. I kept them in after I had to switch off the iPod for the landing, because they nicely muted the loud droning of the engines.

I think they did, or do, but as I've only ever been on PAYG, most of that kind of stuff is for contract payers so I've ignored it.

In the worst case, I shall simply write down all the names and numbers and spend a happy hour or two faffing about putting them back in the new phone.

What's the noise-canceling like on the Sennheisers Dave? I'm thinking of getting a set

Okay, an update by way of closure...

Batman's new phone contract became live today, so the old phone SIM died. We arranged the swap for my PAYG SIM, and it only bloomin' worked first time!

Since then, I've figured out how to customise the N73s appearance and ring tones despite the manual (which seemed to think the phone was actually a camera first and foremost). I think I've managed to disable the WAP connection, which was annoying me by accidentally on purpose going on line to the Orange web site when I least expected it (I'm not made of flippin' money, y'know), and I've successfully paired the phone with the MacBook Pro and transferred My First Mobile Phone Pic™ by Bluetooth.

So, thanks to everyone for their help and advice. Although it's a couple of years behind the rest of the world, I'm reasonably happy with the N73. I mean by that it does everything I want (voice and text) and a ton of stuff besides.