In message , Mike Mitchell
writes
On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 11:23:22 GMT, (sPoNiX) wrote:

On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 10:17:14 +0000, Mike Mitchell
wrote:

I am a mobile phone virgin. I do not have a mobile phone. I hate
mobile phones. But now that I am selling the house and still want to
be reachable, I am resigned to getting one, albeit only for a
temporary period. The minute I am in my new house and it's all done
and dusted and the sparkling wine has been opened, I shall take great
pleasure in removing the mobile phone to a suitable flat surface,
whereupon I will take a number 2 sledgehammer to it.

Check out:

http://skybuy.sky.com. They have a rather nice Siemens phone on PAYG
for less than £40.

Even that doesn't sound cheap to me.

It is cheap !

What would the phone charges be,
roughly? Does one pay someone else for the usage?

On a Pay as you go phone, you have no ongoing costs if you don't make a
call, the person calling pays for the call of course.

You buy the phone, you purchase a bit of 'airtime' if necessary with a
voucher or whatever, though many come with GBP 5 or 10 anyway. This
'airtime' is what you use if you need to make a call - the cost is
debited from the airtime balance, once you have used it up you can't
make any more outgoing calls

Tariff's vary, on our virgin phones it is 15 p for the first 3 minutes
a day then 5p per min after that, on other tariffs, the per minute cost
may start at about 25p. If you expect to make limited calls then the
major cost will be the phone, so it may make sense to get the cheapest
you can, and not worry to much about the tariffs

Don't forget you can flog the phone on ebay afterwards and get a fair
bit back.

If I wanted to take instant photos with a throwaway camera, it's dead
simple. I can buy such a camera almost anywhere. So why hasn't anybody
done the same for mobile phones

They have/are coming, but the technology in mobile phones is rather more
complex :-)
--
Chris French, Leeds