Jules Richardson wrote:
On Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:10:39 -0700, DGDevin wrote:

"Jules Richardson" wrote in message
...

I've not had one for three years now, and it's a liberating experience.
If people need to contact me in an emergecy, they'll find a way. For
everything else, I'm either near a land-line, or email, or whatever it
is can wait until I get to it. Life just shouldn't be so fast that we
have to be at someone's beck and call every waking second of the day
:-)
My wife and I both use pay-as-you-go cell phones, the only condition is
we have to pay at least $20 every 90 days but we can bank that airtime
if need be. Most of the time the phones are not even turned on, we use
them when *we* want to, so they aren't a means for other people to annoy
us. Works pretty good.

Yes, I used to have one before I moved to the US (no restriction on
minimum spend, either), but it wouldn't work on the US system (well, at
least not outside major cities). I was lazy about spending money on a new
phone (which would probably break reasonably quickly anyway, because they
all seem to be built to the worst possible quality) and as time went on I
just found less and less need to have one.

I think there are probably a handful of times a year now where I think
one would be useful - but that's not enough to justify buying a phone and
then spending $80/year just to make 4 or 5 calls.

(a side issue is that I've only ever used a cell phone to make voice
calls and send the occasional text message. I couldn't give a hoot about
playing games on it, or Internet access, or it having a camera, or any of
the other "extras" that they seem to insist on tacking on these days :-)

cheers

Jules
I finally broke down and got a prepaid cell phone, I went with net10
200 minutes a month for 15.00 bucks, that's plenty for me, the time
and minutes roll over,
http://www.net10.com/
I use skype to call out, once you use a headset you will never be
happy holding a phone to your ear again, skype is a couple of cents a
minute or for all you can blabber it's something like 4 bucks a month,
actually they have a limit of something like 10 gazillion minutes/month.
more free unsolicited spam,......no I don't get paid to do this,
http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home
I haven't gotten around to trying the free Google voice but someday I will.
http://www.google.com/chat/voice/
I hate contracts on anything, some of the cell phones/satellite TVs
are like a pregnant cat showing up on your doorstep.