On April 30th of last year, we signed up for cell phone service.
Here’s my “before” post:
http://admansblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/so-last-night-diana-and-i-pulled.html (To summarize, I looked forward to the utility of having a mobile phone without becoming “Cell Phone Guy”).
After buying $100 worth of minutes (which came out to 1150) initially, I think I was left with around 300, and Diana had about 500. What’s cool is that once you get up to $100 worth of minutes purchased (which we did in one shot), minutes don’t expire for a full year. Not only that, but they apparently roll over, which was an unexpected surprise. I learned this only after I spent another $100 to get more minutes. On Diana’s phone, I spent $10 to get some small amount of minutes, and rolled over the remaining 500 (which should theoretically last for another year’ish).
Being lukewarm on having mobile phones in the first place, I’m pretty stoked on the pre-paid plan that we chose. $8 a month is tough to beat.
I honestly can’t remember using my phone all that much. I guess it added some convenience in things like calling and ordering take-out food while driving home after a long day out. It made it easier to coordinate with people who have an aversion to making plans in advance. And although it was never realized, it’s nice to know that it was available in an emergency situation. But I can’t think of Big Wins.
So, while definitely didn’t turn into Cell Phone Guy, after a year, I guess you could call me a satisfied customer.
6 comments:
I'm just curious to what "Big Wins" you have experienced in your home phone service in the past year?
Iwan
No Big Wins for home phone, either. I could substitute one for the other without too much problem.
That said, home phones dominate (in my opinion) in:
1) reliability (100% uptime for me this past year)
2) battery life (infinite)
3) voice clarity
4) full duplex communication (I hate the voice collisions on mobile phones)
My mobile phone dominates in:
1) mobility
2) ...?
... but I don't have any fancy data plans or anything.
When I say "Big Win", I mean some crucial advantage that I couldn't live without. Like if I had a job where I was on call 24/7... I simply wouldn't be able to leave my house for fear of missing a call. Having a mobile phone, in that case, would free me. In my situation, having a mobile phone offers some fun little conveniences, but nothing particularly life changing.
Were you making a point? I didn't get it..
We have not had 100% uptime with our phones. Our new house, for whatever reason, bothers our home phones. We wander around and get crappy voice quality and occasionally drop the call.
But, I agree with your assessment of cell phones as well. They can be annoying. That said, I use mine for a couple minutes every day and that's about it.
Fancy data plans, on the other hand, are awesome! We just got my brother a fancy data plan for work stuff and it is sweet. Blue toothing it to my laptop on the road and getting high speed internet wherever we are is pretty sweet. (And using gps combined with google maps to find restaurants and stuff while traveling was also cool.)
"Our new house, for whatever reason, bothers our home phones."
I know the reason:
House size > cordless range :)
Fancy data plans do appeal to my geeky side (which is to say, all of me). I simply can't see myself actually using it for any real purpose, though. (I'm guessing they don't have "pay as you go" data plans?)
Your house size comment is certainly true. But, it doesn't seem to be the only problem.
No idea on data plans. We just got the unlimited all-the-time plan.
My point was simply that you can't really get "Big Wins" from a phone, it's just a phone. Especially if you are not going to count the ability to use it in an emergency situation as a "Big Win." I don't think you would need to be in an emergency situation to count it as a huge plus, that would be like saying I'm not sure if airbags in my car are OK but I'm not sure I should get them in my next car... I have never used them.
Iwan
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