Most weeks I meet friends for dinner on Thursday night. I get an SMS that says “Food?” and I reply “OK” or else we don’t go.
Yesterday I returned from visiting my parents. They like to know that I got home safely but they were out for the day. I SMS’d them “Home” and that was enough. They are in their 80s but understand the advantages of texting.
I wanted to address this. My texting package costs $5 and I can text using my “dumb phone.” many people have “unlimited talk and text” packages that are also no expensive at all.
texting is not an advanced feature and it doesn’t cost $400. It’s basically free.
Think of it like the difference between sending someone a letter or going over to knock on their door. With the former, they can take their time with it, read it when they want to, respond to it if necessary, and move on with their life. Going over for a visit, while more personal, requires that they meet social standards right then and there. They have to offer you a drink, hang up your coat, ask about the kids, etc. They (or you) might not want to go through all that.
I’m in my late 50’s. As I said in my OP, I consider myself current on the hardware side, but I’m feeling older all the time with all the stuff I don’t get. I typically hate 18 of the top 20 songs, I didn’t get texting until now, and things like Twitter and Facebook look so useless to me that I didn’t even bother asking about them.
I guess Twitter is innocuous enough for people who really can’t go very long without telling the world what they had for lunch, but Facebook seems diabolical to me. A few years ago, I would come across the occasional website that had useful information, but required registration. I’d use a throwaway ID and have my stuff in about a minute. Now these same sites require a Facebook login, and they won’t let you on the site until you agree to an absolutely unbelievable (to me) list of crap – you have to agree to give them all kinds of access and authority to your Facebook account.
Obviously I use a throwaway ID for that, too, but it boggles my mind that people actually use their real name and pictures, and pictures of their family and friends, on a thing like that.
Thank you. What is with people who think that the monthly cost on a smart phone approaches the cost of the rent money? The minimum plan on an iPhone at AT&T is like $58/month. That’s phone calls, data and texting, all at some minimum amount. If you maxed out every thing which would be an insane amount of call minutes, a huge amount of data and unlimited texts, you’d still pay less than $110/month.
When I said $400, I was referring to the specific phone in the ad, that translates voice to text. I admit I have no idea how much it actually costs, I just assumed it was in the same ballpark as an I-phone.
I was just talking about the initial purchase of the phone, not the monthly cost.
Well, that seems pretty high to me, considering I get (essentially) unlimited phone and internet for less than half of that. The uses given in this thread have convinced me that texting would be worth an extra ten bucks a month for some people (not me), but I can’t imagine anybody paying an extra hundred unless he’s like a traveling salesman who needs to keep in constant touch with the home office.
An older model (3GS) iPhone is free with a contract. The latest iPhone with the maximum amount of storage is $300.
Got it. My apologies.
Another example is when my (now ex-)girl friend was in the hospital a couple of years ago. I have three sisters, two parents and two step-parents who wanted to know how things were going. Texting “MRI looks good” to all of them at once made an already stressful time much easier… except for my Mom who refused to learn to text.
For Mom had to walk to the closest place with good phone reception. That was way down the hall and down the elevator and across the lobby and outside in the rain. She is in her mid-70’s and very intelligent. I finally told her enough was enough and she was going to learn to text. Now she loves it. I swear within two weeks I’d get texts from here like “K. C U soon. Dont keep ur old Mom waiting. lol”
Aha, I read “for the ability to use their phone in this way” as referring to texting, not the voice-to-text service. But even so, I can’t imagine that service is expensive at all. Google has a service that transcribes your voicemails to text and it’s free. Dragon Dictation, a speech-to-text app for iphone is free. etc.
If what you’re used to is a landline, it makes sense that you would assume that all these cellphone services are expensive. My last landline (cancelled in 1999) cost a fortune and they nickle & dimed me over every damn thing: voice mail: extra, caller id: extra, speed dial: extra, etc. (not to mention the crazy prices charged for long distance and worse, interLATA. remember interLATA? what a freaking scam).
However in the cell phone world these things are mostly free, or when considering smartphone apps, many are between free and a couple of dollars to buy, and free to use.
I’m severely hearing-impaired and cannot use the phone. TTY is a pain in the butt, because of the relay operator. People simply don’t want to bother with accommodating the hearing-impaired.
Texting FINALLY puts us in a point of equality. I can use a cell phone! I can contact my family!
Yes. My husband will always answer, and if he is in a meeting or very busy, he’ll say “I’ll call you back,” which gives me about one second to say “I NEED YOU,” like the time his mother wrecked her car and I had to tell him to get to the hospital. If I’m calling to see if he has band practice tonight, he can call me back.
Unfortunately, on our cell phone plan, texting is exorbitant, so we disabled it because of all the spam we were getting. When our contract comes up for renewal, we’ll look at it again.
Unless you have a button to send a call to voice-mail (and remember what it is) - it is likely more disruptive to let the phone ring/sing long enough to go to voice mail then to answer and tell you I can’t talk.
I think this is probably one of the dividing lines between people who love texting and people like me who think it’s at best marginally useful in certain situations. It would honestly never occur to me to think about the least intrusive way to contact someone about a non-urgent personal matter when they’re at work, because they’re at work and are presumably trying to get some damn work done.
We’re fast approaching – if not already living in – a world in which everyone is working around the clock. There are no longer clear dividing lines between not-work and work. People are weaving them together.
Early 50s here. I don’t text often enough to get an unlimited plan, but at only 5 cents per text, I find it extremely useful for letting my wife know that I’m stuck at a meeting so I’ll be a few minutes late for our restaurant reservation, or things like that.
I’ll admit that I was a Facebook skeptic at first, but about three years ago my wife convinced me to join. Since then, I’ve gotten back in touch with dozens of people I’d lost track of from high school, college, and previous jobs (and let go of some old grudges with a few of them). I got back together with two childhood friends just months before they passed away. I’ve joined groups with common interests, and through them learned of museum exhibits, band performances, magazine articles, and television programs that I would have missed out on otherwise. I’ve had real conversations with authors whose work I’ve admired. I made friends with the daughter of one of my father’s old Army buddies. And I’ve shared photos, stories, and laughs almost daily with people I typically wouldn’t see or talk to for months at a time.
I’ve blocked all the games and most of the apps from accessing my Facebook account, and what’s left, I found to be wonderful.
1] Texting conveys most important information more quickly and concisely than a conversation; plus it’s stored for review as needed.
2]Texting can be used at all sorts of times when it isn’t appropriate or feasible to make or pick up a phone call or have a conversation (most include greeting, pleasantries, small talk, information exchange, pleasantries, farewell - it can take a while).
3] I don’t really like talking on the phone, anyway. I do love to chat but only in person. I barely use my email; I don’t have an office job, my only computer access is when I’m home.
4]Texting is the best way to ‘stay in touch’ more casually with the people you like/love but don’t get to see or talk to all the time. I also love Facebook for this reason. My friends and I may not get to (or want to) talk on the phone or see each other in person every day/more than once every couple months (varying), but through text and social media we are able to stay up to date on important life events, and laugh together. It’s priceless IMO.