well...its not fixed yet.
I went into the Sprint store yesterday and gave them my sob story. I activated the phone and sent if off to their technicians. The technicians say it works 100% and there are no hardware issues. They returned the phone to me, gave me a new usb cable, and told me to contact customer service over the phone in order to troubleshoot the connectivity with my computer.
in the mean time, i'm getting really excited about the possibilities of this phone...movie player, music player, picture albums, contact backups, bluetooth headset interface...all the things i want, except the usb syncing part...
stay tuned for the continuing saga...