Embracing the 90s

[Enzo]

SO my little cell phone ran out of minutes. The little cell phone store up the road who usually adds minutes to my phone had closed down. "Please visit our convenient other location on the other far far side of town."

I am cell phone challenged, I don't know how the damned things work.

But I rose to the challenge, went to the gas station and bought some minutes, and get this:

I installed them all by myself. It works!

I truly am a renaissance man...

[Мастер]

Who provides the service?

I have one of these goofy prepaid deals, one of these days I'm going to switch to a more conventional service...

[Enzo]

This is T-Mobile, prepaid. Every three months I have to buy $10 worth of minutes - they are only good for 90 days. That gets me 30 minutes I think. I never come close to using them up.

It is there so I can call the wife and tell her I am not dead every so often. I usually call her from the end of the driveway and tell her I am stuck at Hooters. She always says, "No, you are not, you are in the driveway...asshole." She is such a lovely little flower.


The trouble comes from the receipt. I has a transaction code, a sale number, a serial number or something. Three large numbers, then to activate it it asks for a PIN number from the receipt. Nothing there called PIN. I used to let the dweeb at the little store do it for me.

[Мастер]

Mine is Virgin Mobile - same idea, different details. It made sense when I started out with it, but my usage has increased (mostly other people calling me) to the point where I would probably be better off with one of the regular plans. Also, these days, anytime I use it in a group, everyone spends the next ten minutes ridiculing my phone

[troubleagain]

Dood. She read this. You can never pull the "don't know how to do that" thing again, now. ;)

[Squee]

I like my plan. 900 mintues a month to split with my mom, and 300 text/pix/flix messages.
Handy for us youngin's.

[Enzo]

Wow, that is 15 hours on the phone.

[Dragon Star]

I have 900 for myself. I thought I'd end up using it more then I do for work. I'll reduce my plan after the contract expires.

[Arneb]

This is T-Mobile, prepaid.

Zis iss ekstsellent! Oll your mobiles arr belong to uss now. Lern German, vee'll take ohver ssoon!

[KLA2]

Mine is Virgin Mobile - same idea, different details. It made sense when I started out with it, but my usage has increased (mostly other people calling me) to the point where I would probably be better off with one of the regular plans. Also, these days, anytime I use it in a group, everyone spends the next ten minutes ridiculing my phone :evil:

Why - are theirs smaller than yours?

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

This is T-Mobile, prepaid.

Zis iss ekstsellent! Oll your mobiles arr belong to uss now. Lern German, vee'll take ohver ssoon!

And Virgin is furin too. What's up with that?

[Blue Monster 65]

My wife and I have a pair of phones that we got on a deal ages ago - both need to be replaced. We pay something like $20 a month for 100 minutes each. That's more than enough time for us. No text messages, no voicemail, no nuthin' - works for us.

I had to have a cell phone back in the late '80's/early'90's for my radio gig. Remember those big bag things? Yep, one of those. The only calls I ever got were the friggin' sales reps asking me, "Where are you? Are you going to be here soon?" Grrr ... I swore I'd never have one myself, but after about seven years of no nonsense, we were both commuting and figured we should have a way to keep in touch, should something happen. Sigh ... Sometimes I am such a luddite ...

Woof! - Scott

[Мастер]

And Virgin is furin too. What's up with that?

Well, not really. The service comes from Sprint, Richard Branson subcontracts it out. From the packaging the phone comes in, I would say the typical Branson customer is about 20 years younger than I am, and considerably more tattooed and pierced.

Unless you refer to the phones themselves - I guess most of them come from Finland, Sweden, and Japan these days. Or is Motorola still seriously in the game? Of course, those countries are where the companies are based, the phones could be manufactured elsewhere.

Gripe - I didn't really expect my US-based mobile phone and service would work in Europe or Asia, but it doesn't even work in Canada. What's up with that?

My wife and I have a pair of phones that we got on a deal ages ago - both need to be replaced. We pay something like $20 a month for 100 minutes each. That's more than enough time for us. No text messages, no voicemail, no nuthin' - works for us.

I could live without voice mail on my mobile, but not text messaging. I use that all the time, including internationally.

[Lance]

My buddy Jim is in South Africa again and I still can't exchange text messages with him there. We are sure it's the fault of my carrier, Sprint. Even Sprint agrees, but they can't figure out why.

[Мастер]

My buddy Jim is in South Africa again and I still can't exchange text messages with him there. We are sure it's the fault of my carrier, Sprint. Even Sprint agrees, but they can't figure out why.

For a while, I was using this third party web-based service (the guy running it has a Columbia University email address - run out of a dorm room?) to forward messages to China. I could do it from my phone, but the message had to go to an email address (which my phone could handle), which forwarded it to the phone in China. Return messages the same way.

All this went away when Virgin Mobile gained the ability to send text messages to China. I don't know if it is the Sprint network, or the Virgin/Sprint contract, that was upgraded...

[KLA2]

My wife and I have a pair of phones that we got on a deal ages ago - both need to be replaced. We pay something like $20 a month for 100 minutes each. That's more than enough time for us. No text messages, no voicemail, no nuthin' - works for us.

I had to have a cell phone back in the late '80's/early'90's for my radio gig. Remember those big bag things? Yep, one of those. The only calls I ever got were the friggin' sales reps asking me, "Where are you? Are you going to be here soon?" Grrr ... I swore I'd never have one myself, but after about seven years of no nonsense, we were both commuting and figured we should have a way to keep in touch, should something happen. Sigh ... Sometimes I am such a luddite ...

Woof! - Scott

I had one of those! Around 1991! Had a lead-acid battery, and the transmission wattage could be upped to (I think) 5 watts. (as compared to .5 watts on modern cell phones.) Didn't matter, because the transmitter was in the bag, connected to the (full sized) handset by a cord. I guess this meant that if you were WAY out in the wilderness, you could still place an emergency call. (I was never way out in the wilderness. )

WHAT is with text messaging? It would take me 10 minutes to text what I could communicate in 10 seconds in a voicemail. Not to mention a conversation, which is interactive. :wink:

[Мастер]

WHAT is with text messaging? It would take me 10 minutes to text what I could communicate in 10 seconds in a voicemail. Not to mention a conversation, which is interactive. :wink:

Given that I have to dial the number, wait for it to ring several times, listen to some voice mail message, I might actually be faster with a short text message than voice mail. And at the receiving end, it's basically instantaneous - no dialing up the voice mail, punching in a PIN, etc. Also, it can be done in situations where speaking aloud would be totally inappropriate. Compounding the whole issue is the fact that in the 21st century, after decades of technological innovation in computers, radio, communications, etc., my mobile sounds like total crap at least half the time :( Text messages, if they are garbled, they just get retransmitted...

Personally, I love text messaging, and use it all the time. I wouldn't even consider a mobile service without the capability.

[Enzo]

I don't know who I would text-message to. I suppose it would be yet another conduit for dissing the wife.

[Мастер]

I don't know who I would text-message to. I suppose it would be yet another conduit for dissing the wife.

I seem to remember hearing about a guy in Asia a while back, who had some problems because he got his wife and his girlfriend mixed up while sending a text message...

[Enzo]

Well, my wife is mixed up without any help from me or my girlfriend(s).