Rooting with Two Incredibles

[Phoenix111]

Here's my situation:
I have two Droid incredibles at the moment. One I have had for months, its stock everything, no rooting. The other is new, hasn't even been activated yet. I only have one phone line. What I would like to do is use the new phone for tinkering; rooting and custom roms.
So I have two questions: 1 How easy is it to dial *228 or whatever it is and switch back and forth between these two phones on my one line? And will activating this hopefully rooted phone, cause me to lose my settings and home screen setup on my original phone when it gets deactivated?

 

[Revolutionary]

Don't bother with *228 -- just use the phone switcher on the VZW website.

Under My Account, click Activate Phone, then follow the directions. Just enter the ESN of the phone you want to switch to. When you want to switch back, enter the ESN for the first phone. (EDIT: to clarify, once you switch the ESN, you have to dial *228 to activate; but you can't just dial *228 from a deactivated phone and expect it to work, you have to switch the ESN first).

And no, activation has nothing to do with your settings and screens, etc. The deactivated phone will simply not connect to Verizon's network any more. Everything else will remain unchanged -- you can even use it over wifi.