On Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:49:25 -0400, aemeijers
wrote:

On 10/8/2010 3:40 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 7 Oct 2010 14:11:18 -0700 (PDT), Hilary
wrote:

On Oct 7, 1:40Â pm, Jules Richardson
wrote:
On Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:10:39 -0700, DGDevin wrote:
"Jules 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. Â 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. Â 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- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I have a Tracfone which I only use in an emergency, plus 1-5 times a
year for "I'll be there in 10 minutes, are you home yet" or "Do we
need XYZ from the store?", etc. I have no idea if it texts or not,
since texting seems to me to be the biggest waste of time EVER!! Just
call the person and TALK. But then again, I'm a grown-up, not trying
to text during math class. I don't care if you can text using one
character for every word, it is still WAAAAY faster to actually TALK!

I have about 800 minutes (which came with the airtime) saved up and it
costs less than $80/year. Totally worth it, since the last time I used
it I was stranded in a snowstorm, in a dead car, up in the
Adirondacks. Would probably still be there if I hadn't had that
phone...
The beauty of texting is the message gets through whether the
recipient is driving, sleeping, busy talking to someone else, or
whatever. He reads it at his convenience and replies or not -

Isn't that is what email is for?
Except e-mail, more often than not, is NOT available to the guy away
from home unless he has a smart-phone - and is not available to me
when I'm away from nhome because I do NOT have a smart-phone..
(actually, I do, but no data package)