We took a drive south yesterday to visit my aunt to celebrate her 88th birthday. It was a spectacularly sunny, bright-blue-sky early spring day, so on the way back home we took advantage of what's becoming a rare thing: The five of us all together with nothing we have to do. We traveled east just a few miles to a beautifully untouched piece of the Jersey Shore, Island Beach State Park in Seaside Park.

I left our camera home by mistake, so I took some beach photos with my phone, the Samsung SCH-a670, which I am close to trading in and up. Awhile ago, I attempted to email photos from my phone to my email account but failed somehow. This time, I could easily figure it out.

For 25 cents a piece, I can send a "pix msg" by hitting "options" in the phone's camera photo gallery. Click on options again, and it brings me to my contacts, where I click on my email address and type in a subject and hit send. One went to my inbox and the others to my junk folder, but they arrived.

Since I've heard complaints about getting photos out of phones, I wanted to find other solutions for moving photos from mobile phones to PCs. There are several software options for syncing cell phone data with your PC. My search took me to this CNET weekend project , which featured the Mobile Action Handset Manager 9.0 , which works with some Motorola models, including the Razr V3 .

For a one-time cost of about $40 or less, these software options allow you to transfer photos, contacts and calendar info from your cell phone to your PC. The trick is to make sure you match the right syncing software to your phone. One warning: Sometimes one software option does not handle all syncing needs; you may need separate programs for photos and calendar, for example. Do you have photos stuck in your cell phone? Is syncing software a good idea or not tops on your need-to-do list?