Help me stop being a cellphone neo-Luddite

[MikeRivers]

 

You and I are now part of a very elite class of individuals who get to live life without being interrrupted every 5 minutes with some inane texting or the like. Why would you relinquish this lofty position?

My solution to this is very simple. I only turn my phone on when I'm expecting a call or when I want to make a call. My cell phone stays in a compartment of my car where it will be handy for me to call 911 if I drive off a cliff (and remain alive long enough for the phone to boot up.

 

My cell phone voice message says something like: "I know you expected to reach me wherever I am because you called my cell phone, but it's probably off. Unless I'm expecting your call, don't bother to leave a message because I might not turn the phone on again for a few weeks."

[Jon Gnash]

A cellphone is a MUST in LA. If your car breaks down on the 110, you don't want homeboy coming to hold you up...you need help ASAP.

Except that Los Angeles cops will respond to your 911 call 50 minutes sooner if you use a land line.

 

If LA scares you so much then why don

[doug osborne]

 

My girlfriend and a couple of my friends keep bugging me to join the 21st Century and get a cellphone. ...

 

 

I was sitting in a waiting room yesterday composing an answer to this on my cellphone...

 

Go into a Target of Best Buy and pick the Virgin phone off the shelf that seems right for you. They have great plans and coverage.

 

My three phones on Verizon are on a family plan, which ends up costing about a dollar a day for each phone every month. A single phone with Verizon, whether prepaid or on a contract, will cost you about $40/month, whether you use it or not, so Verizon is the most expensive. They probably do have the best network (and very annoying customer service), but I assume the others (all of whom I have tried over the last decade) are catching up.

 

I'm all wireless - no land line, no VoIP, and it seems to be working for my situation.

 

Don't panic - 911 works just fine, just not like a landline.

 

 

And cell phones don't bug people, people bug people! Just learn how to turn off the ringer, and remember where you are (don't share your conversation with others, anywhere, and don't let the phone distract you from driving, etc.). Cell phones don't rule your life, people just use them sometimes to insulate themselves from the world around them.

[tradivoro1]

Well, here's my story... I too was a cell phone virgin until a couple of months ago... I still am not thrilled by cell phones, but was losing some jobs cause people couldn't contact me...

 

I bought one phone, put out by Virgin, and I returned it in two weeks cause you couldn't hear it ring in public... I went to best buy and got a Motorola i455... However, the Motorola i455 has a nice loud ringer, no matter where you are you'll hear it... And it's sturdy... It's only $50 bucks... Then you buy time for it... I bought $20 worth... Since I don't use it much, that last me about 6 weeks... I just recently had to readdd money to it for more minutes, since it got to having $2 left...

 

Anyway Radio Shack sells the same phone... Boost mobile is the provider... To me, they're all the same, as long as I can make phone calls when I need to, or people can reach me, so be it...

 

 

My girlfriend and a couple of my friends keep bugging me to join the 21st Century and get a cellphone. I've never had one before (I'm seemingly the only person in the U.S. who has never had a cellphone). They mentioned that Verizon has some prepaid cellphones that I should consider. I know nothing about this stuff and it boggles my mind how many different plans and cellphones there are out there. If I do decide to do this, I'd want a cellphone that just calls and has a charge that lasts a long time. I don't care about whether it plays MP3s or takes photos or whatever. I'd prefer a slightly larger phone, if possible - I have large hands and find many people's cellphones too small. Prepaid sounds great, from what I understand. It must be EASY TO USE. If it has a loud ringer, that's a bonus. Do you have any suggestions for phones or whatever it is I'm supposed to be looking for?

 

[MikeRivers]

So it doesn't if you have a "reg'lar" calling plan? I know sometimes in posts, things look funny and can be misconstrued, but I know nothing about plans, so this is actually a serious question!!!

With a prepaid service, you pay for every minute you're "on the air." In order to get voice mail messages you have to make a phone call, so if you're checking messages from your cell phone, that's charged just like any other call. With a "contract" plan, the air time is charged against your monthly time allowance.

 

I used to receive e-mail (don't know about "text messages - never sent one, never got one) for free with my plan, but now it costs a nickel a message, per some number of words or bytes, another nickel for a message too long to bother reading on the phone. And the annoying thing is that you have to read the message in order to see the sender or subject so you can't tell if it's something you should just ignore until you've given them your nickel.

 

So, like your cell phone number, be careful to whom you give your cell e-mail address.

[Mr. Botch]

Ken, like you I finally broke down January and got my first one. I got the same Tracfone deal Ed A. did above. I know you travel quite extensively, and that's the only time I carry mine with me; meeting up with friends or getting directions to an unknown hotel makes it worth it. I've used less than 20 minutes so far, and the only people who've called me were wrong numbers (you don't have to give out your number!)

[whit townsend]

Don't do it! Do you really want to be at her beck and call 24 hrs a day.

But if you do get one, you can always turn it off. Mine stays that way unless I specially want to hear from someone. I tell people that my cell phone is for my convenience, if I need to make or receive a call. I decide if its on or not, no-one else.

[cx04332]

I started out with a basic phone from the old AT&T. It worked great out in the sticks where I live. When Cingular took over the network, their phones did not work in rural areas so I kept my old AT&T phone. Cingular has slowly degraded the signal strength on the old AT&T system so I got a Cingular prepaid phone. Instead of using their phone, I went here: http://www.usedcellphones.com/

 

and got an older Nokia GSM phone with an antenna jack. I had to argue with the salesperson to make them activate it but they finally did. Cingular is slowly improving their rural service but the old AT&T phone still works better in the mountains. The prepaid works well for me and when Cingular kills off the AT&T service, I will probably get a signal amplifier and continue on with the prepaid.

[blue2blue]

Help me shop beside a cellophane Neo lamplight...

 

Sorry.

 

I had to inoculate myself against making a new thread just so I could see that next to the title of this thread. By posting this, here, I think I've precluded that greater lapse.

 

Go on about your business.

 

 

Oh -- and just buy a freakin' phone already, wouldja, Ken?!?

It's 2-freakin'-thousand-7, for crying out loud.

 

[Cry Logic]

Down here in the best country on the planet we call 'em "mobile" phones.

Driving while using one is illegal and will cost you points off your license.

 

I recently lost my old Nokia and when I went to buy a new one I was astounded

that I couldn't buy a simple phone that just made calls , maybe a bit of texting and

no extra frills.

That was impossible.

Even the lowest , simplest model is way over burdened with color screens,

menus, icons, games, calendars etc etc etc

There's no way to avoid the Mp3 thing...they use Mp3 s for the ringtone!

 

I have a Vodafone prepaid account and, down here at least, they have 2

different payment methods.

One where you just pay up front and the cost of the call is deducted

from the current account balance......dollar for dollar.

So... use $1 worth of time, get charged $1.

 

The other type of plan gives you so many "extra" dollars worth of calls

for the price you pay.....

$29 "Jumbo Cp" I get$130 worth of calls, texting etc etc for $29 ....

$50 "Maxi Cap" gives me $200 worth of calls, texting etc etc for $49

But...the catch is, these plans expire 1 month after purchasing with no

rollover to the next month.

So a $ is not a $ with these plans.... I call 'em 'Vodafone dollars".

And you must use all of the time you pay for within 1 month.

 

But the wave of the future is Bluetooth .

 

Many people down here have the new Bluetooth phones and I never understood the

attraction 'till I recently witnessed a bunch of people swapping songs

and videos they'd downloaded from the net to each others phones!

 

These phones can connect to each other via Bluetooth which is basically a

form of wireless networking...

There is no charge to connect "phone to phone" via Bluetooth .

The user is not using the phone network when he/she does this.

 

When you realise the implications of this it might open your eyes to what's

really going on out there in LALA Land.

People are downloading songs from their favorite BitTorrent site, downloading

video from Youtube etc etc ...straight into their Bluetooth enabled mobile

phone and swapping them via Bluetooth ...

A user meets a friend who has the new

video on her phone,

she wants it... they connect via Bluetooth and transfer the song over to her

phone in a few seconds... no extra cost to either...

 

New cars (like the Toyota Aurion Presara for example) are equipped with Bluetooth ,

so a user can connect their Bluetooth phone to the cars' audio system and

use it to make calls "handsfree" .

 

I reckon it's the wave of the future and anyone who doesn't get with it will be left behind...

I'm gonna get one myself ...it's on my list......

[Cry Logic]

Update: I just went to Vodafone Australias' site and

found that they are selling the new Motorola F3.

 

Review of the F3 at CNET here.

 

This looks like the perfect phone for you UstadKhanAli...

and anyone else who's not quite ready to join the Bluetooth

revolution just yet.

 

I'm gonna get one of these to use at my day job.

Looks like the perfect, no nonsense, no bull{censored} phone.

[Cry Logic]

"Hi, where are you?"

 

hehehehe

 

Spot on Angelo.

[Cry Logic]

".....There simply are not new phone-like phones made any more.....

 

Check out the Motorola F3 in the link in my post above Mike.

Looks like the perfect Neo Luddite phone to me.

 

Motorola have very cleverly identified this "gap" in the market.

[MikeRivers]

 

I recently lost my old Nokia and when I went to buy a new one I was astounded that I couldn't buy a simple phone that just made calls

That UsedCellPhones link that someone posted looks like it could be a good resource if you're resourceful enough to find a service that's priced the way you work and can match the phone to the service. There are several phone-like Nokia phones on that list that can be unlocked from the keypad and $5 (maybe free if you find the right source) gets you the unlock code.

I have a Vodafone prepaid account and, down here at least, they have 2 different payment methods. One where you just pay up front and the cost of the call is deducted from the current account balance......dollar for dollar. So... use $1 worth of time, get charged $1. The other type of plan gives you so many "extra" dollars worth of calls for the price you pay..... $29 "Jumbo" plan I get$130 worth of calls, texting etc etc for $29 .... $50 "Mega" plan gives me $200 worth of calls, texting etc etc for $50 But...the catch is, these plans expire 1 month after purchasing with no rollover to the next month.

I look at it over the long term - cost per year since I rarely use more than a few minutes per month. My "wired" phone habit is about the same, so I use a prepaid long distance service for my real phone as well. I pay nothing for having long distance service available if I don't use it, and 8 cents per minute when I use it. I have an MCI Minutes card (two, in fact, one for personal use the other for business, so I can deduct the cost of my long distance business calls accurately) with non-expiring time and that can be refilled at any time. Like the cellular service, the cost per call is higher than if I had a pay-every-month plan, the cost per year for me is considerably lower.

 

That Motorola F3 phone you pointed out looks like it has a large display, but it's hard to tell how large the actual phone is. Cingular originally gave me a Motorola C139 (I think, same model that's usually the basic Trakphone at the moment) and not only were the characters on the display hard to read at a glance, but the whole phone was just too small to handle comfortably. And it got lost in my pocket.

 

Oh, and don't get me started on my wrist watch. That's another silly user interface problem.

[Cry Logic]

 

That Motorola F3 phone you pointed out looks like it has a large display, but it's hard to tell how large the actual phone is.

 

47 x 9 x 114 mm

( For Americans that's approx: 1.85 x 0.35 x 4.5 inches )

 

Cingular originally gave me a Motorola C139 (I think, same model that's usually the basic Trakphone at the moment) and not only were the characters on the display hard to read at a glance, but the whole phone was just too small to handle comfortably. And it got lost in my pocket.

 

The F3 has an electrophoretic display which is supposedly very

"paper like" and viewable even in bright sunlight.

 

If I have time tomorrow I'll check it out and get back to you....

 

Meanwhile ... check out the really cool F3 web site at motorola.com

 

Update: I didn't made it to a Vodafone shop today (Sunday may 6th)

Will have to wait till later in the week now...

[chipmcdonald]

Just because some people can't drive *period*, why should I not be allowed to use a cell phone in a car?

 

Am I not allowed to talk to someone else IN the car, too?

 

How about drinking coffee?

 

How about women putting on makeup while driving?

 

Some people do appear to become catatonic while using a phone, it's very weird - and scary. It affects me no more than talking to someone in the car; don't make a dumb law just because some people can't drive.

 

 

You should have a cell phone because A) you can call long distance for free. B) they're great for emergencies in places where a phone is NOT available C) they're useful time savers when you find yourself somewhere, unable to do anything else D) why would you NOT want the capacity to communicate with someone when you need to...?

 

I had the experience of talking on the phone once with my mother, when I noticed a car pulling up to a stop sign ahead of me - that didn't appear to be intending to stop (which they didn't). I had the presence of mind to get off the phone with my mother, start dialing 911 while avoiding the car in front of me that crashed into the car running the stop sign. I'm glad I had a cell phone with me, and I had it in my hand fast enough that I had already dialed 911 before the accident happened.

 

There is no reason I should have to give up using a cell phone because some people can't multitask in a car. The same people can't manipulate a drink cup or eat while driving, among other things people do that AREN'T banned.

 

Frick, how about make people use turn signals, and not stop traffic to let 1 car into an opposing lane? You know, the important hazardous stuff...?

 

 

/ verizon does appear to be the most consistent

// suncom sucks

/// bad experiences with T-Mobile as well