The Dell Streak.
I can see, if you’re a night watchman, or if you have some other job that means you have long wait-times, there may be some desire to watch a movie designed for the biggest possible telly on a handheld screen instead…
Personally I consider a movie a waste if it doesn’t have neat costumes, so that’s kinda lost on me…
But…there has to be a happy medium with the consumer, and Dell, a company I actually like a lot, may have gone just a shade far.
What do you think about screensize and personal electronics?
My own desire is for a phone large enough I can see the buttons (I’m very far-sighted, and can’t see close-up things except as a blur) and read the time without my glasses. I also prefer it to fit in a neat side pocket in my purse and to have a fliptop so the screen doesn’t get scarred up from the hundred other objects I may shove into that pocket with it…and I want it small enough to fit in the purse pocket but not so small it gets lost. Credit-card size is the smallest I ever want, personally. The in-ear ones for the car, maybe—but only if you get a reasonably-legible control unit to set it up and some way to set a: Go ‘way I’m busy response.
I don’t want it to take photos and play music. I sure don’t want it going to the internet. I don’t text. I just call people, maybe a call a week. Some weeks several, especially if Jane and I are on a shopping trip and need to find each other in Walmart. Many people really do use all that functionality and power to them: I just don’t want it being turned on by accident, which is my major gripe: I’ve had my phone stuck on speaker phone at some really bad moments, and I have to flag a passing teenager who can see the keyboard and ask them to shut it up.
And being told I have voice mail or text messages—heck, I never set it up to receive them, because I just barely keep up with hundreds of e-mails. [Thank you, Lynn, for reducing that down to only 20-30 a day.] And I still get them. Mostly from the phone company.
I figure if somebody wants me badly enough they’ll e-mail me. I do check my e-mail. My ideal phone would have a message that says, if someone texts it: this phone just receives regular phone calls. Sorry! That’s all, folks! I would also like a per-month price based on just phone calls. 😉
What are your own preferences? Just curious. I know OSG (who has professional reasons to want to be contacted) loves her Droid. But it’s sure crazy how wild this market is!
I have an iPhone and love it, but really, phone calls are about the rarest thing I do with it. I use it for work and I fix computers on the side, so I kinda have to be reachable during the day or for emergencies, but I do frequently just turn it off to be disconnected. People can leave voicemails, or send me email, or text me, and I’ll get it when I turn the phone back on. Nothing is so urgent that I have to answer an email during a movie or when out with friends. Was out for dinner once and saw a table of three guys in the restaurant, all engrossed in their phones. They never spoke a word to each other, barely noticed the waiter, and I wondered why they had bothered to go out… Height of rudeness to me.
But I play games or read ebooks in waiting areas, research on the internet, check bank balances (living hand to mouth sucks swamp water), price parts, and create and email invoices for my computer business. That said, I have one of the older iPhones, the 3G, and no immediate plans to upgrade. It does what I need, and I have removed many bells and whistles that were plain frippery (is that an oxymoron?).
It’s kind of startling when the phone rings, because I find myself thinking “Oh yeah, it does that, too!”
My personal cell phone is a 6 or 7 year old Nokia – no bells, no whistles, no camera, and a $35/month plan that I get through my employer. Verizon continually sends me junk mail encouraging me to upgrade (and pay more!). I once lost it at a local rock music venue when I went to hear Susan Tedeschi and it was turned in to the lost & found! One guy working there said if it had been a younger crowd I probably wouldn’t have seen it again — and the other said no one would want it!
Unfortunately, I am one of the *lucky* people 🙁 supplied with a Blackberry by my employer. It’s an electronic leash – my boss used to expect me to response within an hour 24/7 but has finally accepted that I turn it off at 10 p.m. every night and on the weekends unless I’m working a hot job. I keep the personal cell phone as I don’t want my employer to have access to all my personal calls (and then I couldn’t turn it off on weekends). I travel a lot and it lets me keep in touch with my friennds & family when i’m in another generic hotel room.
Handy tip. For those who like to save money. You can email a phone from your computer and save yourself $20+ cents a pop on text messages. Just remember you only have around 160 characters to work with, or it becomes multiple texts.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/4318204
And if an advertiser or someone you dislike keeps texting you. Go to Project Gutenberg and copy and paste a text file book into an email to text message. It will be divided into so many messages they may not be able to receive a text for months, and cost them $40-60.
Cell phone is for emergencies. Things that emerge, not things that should have been planned in advance, like a lunch meeting. Now that “everyone” has a cell phone people don’t plan anything, they just call or text whoever will answer them and let that drive their BEING WITH PEOPLE at which point they also ignore those people.
I bought a Kindle, as much for emergency email checking (my best friend has cancer) as anything. It’s clunky, but I don’t want to make it easy on myself to be Connected when I’m not at a computer. I have a life and I’d like to keep it…
Have a phone means people EXPECT to be able to talk to you at their convenience. Well, they don’t. If it’s not someone I want to talk to I will cheerfully ignore the call. The phone is silenced at the dojo, during meetings, etc. And if I must take the call I will leave the room or be as quiet as possible because Half A Phone Conversation is Really Annoying (TM) : http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/05/cellphones-driving-annoying.html
Hmmm. Here’s my take: Misuse of a tool doesn’t mean the tool is without merit. Phoning (or texting!) while driving is a good example of misuse, as is being distracted by the phone for any reason when attention should be paid to people who are actually present. However, use of a smartphone to keep in touch across miles, or to find one’s way on unfamiliar roads, or all the many applications mentioned in the posts above, can make one’s life easier. I certainly don’t object to that.
Well said, Nighthawk. I use my Droid multiple times a day so I don’t harm, or even kill, someone. My patients have yet to object.
I agree completely. The technology is not at fault here. Cell phones are great very useful tools. It’s how people use that tool that is the problem.
A hammer works great for driving nails and prying them out. But it would be detrimental, thoughtless, and wrong to crack someone in the head with one.
Actually, I’m with nighthawk here. If it weren’t so flipping expensive, I’d like to have a phone with all the bells and whistles, to use when I need them. However, I think the services are way overpriced,and refuse to support highway robbery. I fully see the advantages of connectivity. For instance, if I’m on the road and someone has a problem with a download. I’d like to be able to generate a new one and fix the problem right away. I can see the advantages of the built in gps units. Or showing someone our site rather than just telling them about it.
However I’m SO with sweetbo on the intrusion of them into real time social interactions. It bugs me to be out at a restaurant with someone and have them wedded to their phone, either texting or just talking because the stupid thing rang. I don’t mind people letting it take a message then checking it…emergencies do happen…but for general conversations…no. It really bugs me being in the middle of a several person discussion on some interesting topic and having half the people on their phones posting to facebook or texting someone about an interaction they’re only half (at best) following. This is happening increasingly at conventions and it drives me nuts.
We need to get back to sharing memories not moments. People who aren’t there can’t be there, no matter how much you text them, and if you’re posting on facebook, you aren’t really being part of the moment you’re texting about. When it’s important to get immediate feedback, when a decision has to be made or input from someone across the country is necessary to close a deal, sure, it’s great. But for daily life…we should get back to living it, not spreading a thin, colorless facsimile throughout the WWW.
Thanks, Jane. But I did wince a bit at your last paragraph. My 2 daughters and 5 grandchildren live a thousand miles away. Yes, they can’t be here, or I can’t be there, often. My life between visits is much enhanced by email, free long-distance, phone messages (talking, texting, pictures), and the connection is kept current so that when we are “really” together we don’t spend all our time trying to catch up.
I think the subtext of Jane’s last paragraph (she’s trying to get our modem put back together) is that you WOULDN’T go visit them and sit in their presence and ignore them while you texted someone else. What you’re doing is ‘being’ with them though absent, and that’s the good use of phones.
Maybe Sweetbo ought to do a Cafe Press t-shirt with Be With The People! and in fine print, “If you’re talking with People, switch off the cellphone!” I’d buy one!
I might actually do that this weekend. I’ve been suitably inspired. ^_^
Ha! http://www.cafepress.com/switchoff800
I only use my UK cellphone when I’m travelling, and then I text my daughter, mostly to say I got here – it’s the cheapest way to communicate from Europe to the UK. there is no reception in my house anyway. then I have a spanish cell phone because I don’t have a landline in Spain, and I do need to communicate with my friends there when I am there. otherwise my cell phones are mostly switched off. however I would love to have an iphone when working in Paris, just for those 2 weeks a year, because I can’t get my emails unless I go and sit in a cafe otherwise. hotel wifi doesn’t work. house where I show the collection wifi will not share with any of us who are just there for the week with our macbooks. very frustrating, as there are long hours of boredom, in which I catch up on office work, and it used to be possible to use whatever wifi was around and send emails – now everybody is security conscious, LOL!. when I first got my cellphone with its camera I used it – novelty value – but haven’t for years now.
@Sweetbo&CJC: I’d buy one!
@Jane: Your point about facebook and twitter replacing realtime interaction (“Be Here Now!”)is well taken, but on the other hand, I find both (plus LiveJournal) to be useful in keeping in touch with people that I don’t necessarily want to or have time to call, yet want to stay in touch with.
Like OSG, I have a cell for professional reasons, but I was an early adopter of the Palm PDAs. I started out with a no-frills phone I had for years and years, but my colleagues were finding the smartphones so useful I broke down and got a “crackberry” when my Palm died and the company stopped making plain PDAs.
I miss the Palm (and its OS) like crazy; the Blackberry doesn’t interface with my practice management software as advertised, so I have to go to Outlook and then the Blackberry. I did like having it on my recent trip, though 😉 because I was able to keep up with email even while out of the office (some vacation) (but I didn’t do that DURING events). It is also now my personal phone; I have my office phone line routed to my home office, so I have a landline, and I just couldn’t see spending $50 a month for another landline. It’s not like my family or friends would benefit from having to remember a third number for me.
Otoh, the Blackberry is sort of addicting; I spend waaay too much time checking emails, facebook and twitter (and reading the NYTimes before I even get out of bed). I snap the felions in funny poses with the camera.
I like Dell, and the size of the Dell Streak. I bet it would be easier to see, but $300? And I’m hooked into a Verizon contract, and they’re not offering it (or their own version), yet. Just wait a year: we’ll have the tech CJC envisions (I hope!).
I’ve had a lj since 2001 and use it a lot…but I don’t carry it around with me wherever I go on my phone. Same for Facebook. I don’t think community is the issue (look at us here after all) its just the need to have that with us 24/7 that I don’t have any need for. I like to experience my day and then talk about it after. It’s like people who watch concerts through their camera phone to capture the “moment” when they are actually missing the moment because they are too busy documenting it.
You sound like you answer the quesion in the cell phone add “who amoung us only uses their cell phones to make phone calls” To which I answer a resounding “Me”.
I am not even that found of laptop computers, But then I am primarly a CAD user and doing CAD on a small laptop screen is a pain in the neck. also shoulders and back. not to mention the eye strain. Cellphone use while driving is another peave of mine. The Iowa legislature just passed a ban on texting while driving for all drivers, and a complete ban on cellphone use for drivers under 18. I did not think the law went far enough. In my opinion no driver should be on a phone while driving. From all the studies you are as likely to have an accedent while using a cellphone as driving drunk, and 4 times more likely it texting. AS someone who lost a close relative to a drunk driver that’s scarry.
There are a limited number of reasons I would accept cell phone use while driving, our legislature recently passed a law requiring all drivers to use a handsfree device if they want to use a cell phone in the car, which I can accept. Under NO circumstances am I okay with texting while driving, having seen my SiL doing this with me in the car. She scared me out of a couple years of life!
Count me firmly on the side of people who have found uses for electronic devices.
Having a mobile phone means that I’ve stayed contactable. I had the same number through a couple of moves, including three months in youth hostels (flathunting + people not moving out of the new place). I remember moving to a new place and standing in phone boxes until you were connected a month or so later – and I don’t miss it one little bit.
I phone (rarely), text (certain friends), am never short of the current time, have an alarm function to alert me to parking meters running out, appointments, and whatnots (waking up to Star Trekkin is also the best alarm clock EVAR), I have an MP3 player on me wherever I go as well as a radio, and I – when I think about it – back up important files via bluetooth to my phone.
I would love to have a smartphone because it would be a better use for some of the dead times I have (waiting for buses) and mean I could coordinate online activities better. I’ve had reason to check my e-mail when out and about, this can be difficult, and having it in my pocket would be a Good Thing.
You don’t have to be a slave to it, you don’t have to set it to ring (mine’s almost never off silent mode), you don’t have to answer messages if you don’t want to, and you certainly don’t have to be an idiot about using it in inappropriate places like dates or while driving, but, yeah. Count me firmly in the ‘ooooh, shiny’ department.
Thanks for the thread; I’ve picked up a couple of suggestions for my need for a cell phone kept for emergencies, mostly travel issues. My life does not require regular phone communication with others, so I want to spend as little as possible on a once in a while need.
I like some electronic devices – I have an mp3 player, a Nook, a Mac laptop and a PC desktop. I like to keep the usage separate rather than combined in one or two devices. I can see how someone who is on the move a lot might want one device to carry about – it’s rather like a woman with one bag, always containing the basics, rather than changing bags every day and forgetting something in the bag switch. I have found in the past the devices designed to do one or two things often do those things well, frequently better than a device with many possible applications. I also find single-use devices less distracting. On the other hand, this means several devices that need to be kept charged.
Now that a bare-bones Kindle is available for under $140, I announced to my husband that I wanted one for Christmas. This immediately sparked an argument about whether I should get a Kindle or an iPad; he thinks I should get an iPad, not the Kindle. It’s the same reason I don’t want all the extra fluff on an device I only want to use for phone calls. While I am fairly akamai about computerage, he is the true household computer geek, and sometimes it shows.
Stick to your guns — the iPad is NOT a book-reading device. 😛 The glossy screen on it gives the vast majority of users eye-strain after too long a time reading. The non-glossy “e-paper” screen on the Kindle is perfect.
Luddite and proud!! I don’t have a cellphone. I find that the sound quality on the phones, esp. when you are outside, is real poor and hard to hear. They feel like a step backwards in technology when it comes to their actual, original purpose: talking to people and hearing what they have to say in return. Between work and home and e-mail, I figure I am connected enough to the world. Only time I really wish I had one is when I catch the subway home in the rain and discover that a) I don’t have what is now 50 cents for a local call to say, “can you come pick me up? It’s wet and I don’t really want to walk the mile home.” or b) discover that they’ve removed the pay phones because everyone on is supposed to have their own cell phone!!!
I’m pretty sure the Dell Streak is going to be marketed as a “tablet” computer, not really a cell phone, right?
As is, when it comes to technology, I’ll be one of the first to get a cell phone implant whenever they’re available. Might as well. 😛
Here’s a link to a piece on “the death of the phone call” that relates to some of this discussion:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/st_thompson_deadphone/
passed 2 people in the middle of phone calls on the coastal path just now, out walking my dogs … well firstly of course it’s terribly useful if you are in the great outdoors and get into trouble to be able to call – but in fact you are never far from people on this path – and so sad to be spending time welded to your iphone when all around you is amazing sea, sky, birds, marsh …. no way would I ever take my phone down there!
oh, and they had driven their car down the track as far as they could get and were standing yards away from it … go back to town, you townies!
My Btother used to love Phillmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. Half a million acres,basiclly wilderness, no phones. He died before cellphones were every where, but as far as I know there still are no cellphone towers in the ranch. If you call the basecamp looking for a guest, they will ask you one question. “Is this a life or death situation your calling about?” “No, Well his party will be back in about a week, leave a message.” You can’t take a car past the base camp either. Put the pack on your back and hike.
My nephew has been to Philmont twice. I’d never heard about it when i was a Scout. Of course, MY Scoutmaster would never had thought to send me, after all, my family wasn’t rich, we didn’t contribute to HIS church, and we didn’t have the right surname. I got so sick of being compared to my uncles, who were 36+ years older than me. Who the heck cares about what happened 31 years ago?
I guess the most fun I have communicating has nothing to do with cell phones. As my nickname indicates, I am an amateur radio operator, so I try to bring my radios with me if I’m on a long trip. I don’t even have to look at the radio once it’s set up, I can just scan through the bands without having to divert my attention from the road, except for a couple of seconds to change bands, and that’s only if it’s safe to do so. Best call I ever had was when I was driving home to Virginia Beach from Ohio. I was just west of Ripley, WV and getting ready to get on the WV Turnpike. I started up a conversation with a guy just outside Dallas, TX, and we talked for a half-hour. I’m in a car, moving, subject to the whims and whiles of radio frequency propagation, and we had a great chat, until his wife told him it was time for lunch and they were going out. By that time, I was almost in Charleston, WV, and it was a pleasant way to make a boring drive less boring.
One got to go to Philmont twice, in ’74 and again in ’76, paid for by lawnmowing, snowshoveling, and othersuch fun activities. This was by train from St. Louis, MO, to Raton, NM, with a layover in KC to switch trains. As a boy aged 14, this was a Major Adventure. One of my fondest memories comes from the first trip, as one morning in the mountains I awoke, and realized that I didn’t know what day of the week it was, or even what time, other than after daybreak. It was soooo cool, the first time that happened. Had a similar feeling kayaking down the Little Spokane at Shejicon3, was alone on one bend with just the river and goldfinches keeping me company. Sigh. One lives for moments like those.