ot-first cell phone

[Tom Buchanan]

65 yrs old, and got my first cell phone today. Wife bought it for me cause I go down to our small 20 acre place about once a wk,50 miles away.My son said I don,t have to start every conversation by yelling" can you hear me?". Drives him nuts.The dam thing takes pics and has games(they say) but I,m happy just knowing how to turn it on and off.Can see how handy it would be if I broke down on the road.For sure, people don,t stop and help like they used to.As crazy as things are now, can,t say I blame them.

[mochinist]

I'm 30 and just got my first one this year, if it wasnt for work I would still not have one.

[Ries]

I was something like 48 before I broke down and got one- and I still dont like giving anybody the number- the damn thing scares me when it rings and its in my pocket.
Usually its my wife or kids- and for that, its handy.
I really do like it when I travel, though-no more searching for phone booths, which, in most towns, dont exist any more, or trying to find quarters.

[Weston Bye]

Try having the phone on vibrate and in your pocket while you are working on a live electrical circuit. Guaranteed to make you jump when it goes off, even if you dont touch a live wire.

[speedy]

Cell phones are a bane and a blessing. Mine stays off unless I need to use it and don`t ask me my number because I have never memorised it, 021 something
I don`t answer the phone if I don`t want to either; that is what the answer machine is for.
Some people get quite agitated when they observe others not rushing to the phone
Wes, you mentioned vibrating phones which reminds me of a character we worked with at the power station.
He was observed standing with his crotch against the pipe handrail as the turbine came up to speed through its frequency spots . After a week or so of this his shift mates sprung him
The greaser was seen doing other stuff.
Too much EMF?

[Mcgyver]

it's all what you are used to. my kids will call on my cell phone if I'm the garage shop (free inter-family calls) I use it out there for its notepad to make lists of all the little bits of crap i need to pick up, then next time I'm in the hardware or electronics store i never forget to get everything i need. even sitting in the the kitchen my kids and wife know they have to call the cell because i will never pick up the land line, it is simply never for me. two of four are too young ( 9& 11) for cell phones (not according to them mind you), otherwise I'd consider giving up the land line like other friends of mine have. Now with more people going to voip, I'm the dinosaur still on the cell phone

[webbch]

I can get one for $70 and ten bucks a month with 1/2 hour talk time and no other fees.

There may not be a similar plan in Canada, but I went with the prepaid plan from Alltel, as we still have a land line. Phone cost about $25 (could've got one slightly cheaper), had to put $20 "credit" on it to start. No fees, no monthly statement, pay as you go. Rate is "crappy" at $0.15/min domestic, $1.00/min roaming (only roam in emergencies), but with our usage pattern, it fits the bill perfectly. Got one for the wife as well, mainly out of concern for car trouble related issues.

We used to have a plan that had ~650 minutes/mo, with a mo. payment of ~$40. Finally got rid of it after realizing we never used more than 50 of those minutes/mo, so our "real" rate was pretty close to $1.00/min. Still have a land line.

Chad

[Evan]

This one is a pay-as-you-go plan. No fees, no contract and the first month is free. If you don't use your minutes they roll over to the next month as long as you top up with $10 before the next month. It's a Motorola V190 GSM phone with 500 hour standby rating. Airtime is expensive at 33 cents a minute but I don't expect to use it much.

[dirty old man]

I spend way too much money with Bell South, Verizon, and Satellink.
Here at home I have landline with all the "complete choice" stuff and DSL extreme. Then at the shop I have a business line that also links to the security alarm monitoring service. The Satellink pager is a leftover from my boat prop sales and repair business that I sold the inventory and equipment last June. I have areas close by that are long distance to call me and when these folks needed to contact me they dialed a toll free number to page me. Then I called back, either on a cheap phone card or with my cell phone after I got that. I'm not renewing when the prepaid year on the pager is gone 1/31/08.
I can't drop the shop phone or I'll lose the monitoring on the security system and with a shop "inna hood" I need to keep that alarm!
I suppose I could drop the landline at home, use cable TV for voip phone and internet service provider and save some money.
But Comcast service here is so lousy that I feel more sure of Bell South. Once I had a large tree limb take down my power lines, phone lines, and cable line at approx 2:00 am. The muncipal owned power company had restored my service by 4:00 am, Bell South had my phone back online by 2:00 pm. Comcast took 2 days to even come out and do a patch job that left my TV full of snow. After 11 days, they finally got it right, except hanging too low across the driveway so I couldn"t get my RV out of the back yard, took another couple of weeks to fix that.
So you see, I'm sort of boxed in on this unless Comcast gets a lot better with their service.
Dave