cellphones
In my humble opinion, our two cellphones, AudioVox CDM8600s from Verizon, aren’t very user-friendly.
This is because: 1) they are hard to hear, and 2) the video-display is hard to see in bright light, plus the display goes off after about 10 seconds.
Nevertheless, they're what we use, because A) they’re portable, B) they avoid long-distance charges, and C) they have lots of phone-numbers stored in memory.
What matters most, enough to make me chose the cellphone over the landline here at home, are B and C.
Calling nearby Canandaigua on the landline is still a long-distance call*, a vestige of an ancient billing-procedure caused by the fact Canandaigua was a separate phone company; i.e. not affiliated with the Rochester telephone company: Frontier (used to be Rochester Telephone).
I have a couple Canandaigua phone-numbers memorized into our landline phones, but they’re still a long-distance call*.
Which is silly. Here we are 10 miles from Canandaigua and yet our Frontier landline is still charging us long-distance to call Canandaigua*.
(*Cue Bluster-King here, who will foam at how reprehensible I am, because Canandaigua is still a long-distance call — as if I could change this....... FOAM AWAY, BLUSTER-BOY! Cover your monitor, Bubby!)
The charge is only a mere pittance, but I still think it’s silly.
I had to memorize the Messenger’s 800-number into our landline phones to not get charged for calling the Messenger.
The cellphones get around this by only charging for airtime — which is free for 500 minutes.
This means Linda can call the great land of the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower and not get charged long-distance.
But only on the cellphone, which also adds a desperately-needed hangup feature, namely that the battery is getting weak.
(We could plug the phone into the charger, but need an excuse to hang up.)
The other additive factor is that the phone-numbers we use are memorized into the cellphones.
Our first radio landline phone is at least 20 years old, a Radio-Shack.
It still has Mother-Dear’s old phone-number memorized.
It can only accommodate 10 numbers**.
(**I predict more noisy blustering here — that I should toss that antique turkey into Canandaigua lake, and get a “moderin” phone from mighty Wal*Mart.
But it ain’t like I’m attached to that there phone. Why should I replace a phone I hardly ever use — we use the cellphones......... I only keep it to answer the landline at this desk.)
Our second radio-phone, a Wal*Mart special, is about 5-8 years old; and I’ve never programmed numbers into it — we had the cellphones by then.
Our current cellphones can memorize “hundereds” of numbers.
And it can memorize by group: e.g. for Bill I could memorize his home-phone, his work-phone, and his cellphone (all I have memorized is his cellphone).
I could do that for Jack too, but he has barricaded his phones with all kinds of firewall security, so all I have memorized is his cellphone.
I also have two other phones in this house; a hard-wire Wal*Mart special in our bathroom, and an ancient wall-phone in the garage bathroom. That phone-design in the garage is at least 30-40 years old. I have it in the garage because I can’t disable the ringer without a lotta dorking around. I had done that to our bedroom phone, which at first was the ancient design, and the first phone inside when our house was being built.
I hard-wired all the other rooms in the house when it was built, but why connect them when phones are wireless?
So here I am alone at the mighty Canandaigua Weggers, and I have a shopping question for Linda, who is at home.
I drag the cellphone out, and take it outside because apparently being inside mighty Weggers disables a cellphone (or at least it has in the past).
Now I’m outside in the brightly-lit parking-lot, that obliterates the display.
I root blindly through all the contorted phone-book directories to get to “home” (all the time trying to shield the phone from the sunlight, soz I can see the display); “send” the call, and then the audio is so wonky I have to verify that Linda actually answered.
The phones have worked well from Tunnel Inn, but that was at dusk, when sunlight wasn’t obliterating the display. Although I still had to verify Linda had answered the phone.
The AudioVox CDM8600s, each about three years old, are due to be replaced. Linda will probably get a camera-phone, so she isn’t left with the D100.
I, on the other hand, only want a more user-friendly phone — I have a site that compares cellphones. I probably will get something other than Verizon — and I don’t need no camera-phone.
What’s most intimidating to both of us is that new cellphones will only lob another gizmo at us — although it ain’t that much a problem to me, no matter what the bluster-boy says.
This is because: 1) they are hard to hear, and 2) the video-display is hard to see in bright light, plus the display goes off after about 10 seconds.
Nevertheless, they're what we use, because A) they’re portable, B) they avoid long-distance charges, and C) they have lots of phone-numbers stored in memory.
What matters most, enough to make me chose the cellphone over the landline here at home, are B and C.
Calling nearby Canandaigua on the landline is still a long-distance call*, a vestige of an ancient billing-procedure caused by the fact Canandaigua was a separate phone company; i.e. not affiliated with the Rochester telephone company: Frontier (used to be Rochester Telephone).
I have a couple Canandaigua phone-numbers memorized into our landline phones, but they’re still a long-distance call*.
Which is silly. Here we are 10 miles from Canandaigua and yet our Frontier landline is still charging us long-distance to call Canandaigua*.
(*Cue Bluster-King here, who will foam at how reprehensible I am, because Canandaigua is still a long-distance call — as if I could change this....... FOAM AWAY, BLUSTER-BOY! Cover your monitor, Bubby!)
The charge is only a mere pittance, but I still think it’s silly.
I had to memorize the Messenger’s 800-number into our landline phones to not get charged for calling the Messenger.
The cellphones get around this by only charging for airtime — which is free for 500 minutes.
This means Linda can call the great land of the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower and not get charged long-distance.
But only on the cellphone, which also adds a desperately-needed hangup feature, namely that the battery is getting weak.
(We could plug the phone into the charger, but need an excuse to hang up.)
The other additive factor is that the phone-numbers we use are memorized into the cellphones.
Our first radio landline phone is at least 20 years old, a Radio-Shack.
It still has Mother-Dear’s old phone-number memorized.
It can only accommodate 10 numbers**.
(**I predict more noisy blustering here — that I should toss that antique turkey into Canandaigua lake, and get a “moderin” phone from mighty Wal*Mart.
But it ain’t like I’m attached to that there phone. Why should I replace a phone I hardly ever use — we use the cellphones......... I only keep it to answer the landline at this desk.)
Our second radio-phone, a Wal*Mart special, is about 5-8 years old; and I’ve never programmed numbers into it — we had the cellphones by then.
Our current cellphones can memorize “hundereds” of numbers.
And it can memorize by group: e.g. for Bill I could memorize his home-phone, his work-phone, and his cellphone (all I have memorized is his cellphone).
I could do that for Jack too, but he has barricaded his phones with all kinds of firewall security, so all I have memorized is his cellphone.
I also have two other phones in this house; a hard-wire Wal*Mart special in our bathroom, and an ancient wall-phone in the garage bathroom. That phone-design in the garage is at least 30-40 years old. I have it in the garage because I can’t disable the ringer without a lotta dorking around. I had done that to our bedroom phone, which at first was the ancient design, and the first phone inside when our house was being built.
I hard-wired all the other rooms in the house when it was built, but why connect them when phones are wireless?
So here I am alone at the mighty Canandaigua Weggers, and I have a shopping question for Linda, who is at home.
I drag the cellphone out, and take it outside because apparently being inside mighty Weggers disables a cellphone (or at least it has in the past).
Now I’m outside in the brightly-lit parking-lot, that obliterates the display.
I root blindly through all the contorted phone-book directories to get to “home” (all the time trying to shield the phone from the sunlight, soz I can see the display); “send” the call, and then the audio is so wonky I have to verify that Linda actually answered.
The phones have worked well from Tunnel Inn, but that was at dusk, when sunlight wasn’t obliterating the display. Although I still had to verify Linda had answered the phone.
The AudioVox CDM8600s, each about three years old, are due to be replaced. Linda will probably get a camera-phone, so she isn’t left with the D100.
I, on the other hand, only want a more user-friendly phone — I have a site that compares cellphones. I probably will get something other than Verizon — and I don’t need no camera-phone.
What’s most intimidating to both of us is that new cellphones will only lob another gizmo at us — although it ain’t that much a problem to me, no matter what the bluster-boy says.
posted by BobbaLew at 2:03 PM
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