i have a cell phone, i drive 20 miles to work everyday on rural hiways. after the news reported that a woman was lost in a blizzard for 2 days and they traced her with her cell phone, hubby decided i should have one. i carry it around with me mostly and have used it maybe twice, once after i hit a deer on the hiway and called the hiway patrol. i never have it turned on and the only one that has the number is hubby and my mother.
I used to have one several years ago, but I found that I just didn’t use it much. I couldn’t see paying a monthly charge for something I hardly ever used so when the contract was up I just dropped it.
It did come in handy once: when my wife was in labor with our daughter. We lived about 45 minutes from the hospital and my wife didn’t know if she would make it the whole way. I called the hospital while flying down the highway and they had a nurse and orderly waiting outside the emergency room enterance with a wheelchair to whisk her inside. Good thing, too. Our daughter was born just 11 minutes after we arrived.
I never use one, but I have one. I think it’s broken anyway.
It was handy when I was buying my house, but then I got the house and got rid of the cell phone. It had crap-ass reception inside the house anyway.
I have a cell phone, but like many of the posters here, use it very seldom. It’s nice to have it for emergencies, but my use is so infrequent, I have to check the manual if I want to do anything besides make call or answer a call.
MaddyStrut writes,
<Most times I refuse to call people who have cellphones because the signal quality is so poor even on those digital phones which are supposed to be crystal clear. I rather have a conversation with someone instead of shouting WHAT WHAT.>
Oh, yeah, this signal quality business is a good one. Just because I don’t HAVE a cell phone doesn’t mean I don’t get calls at home from someone who makes them. My boyfriend, who has a really migratory lifestyle at the moment, has a cell phone and he calls me using it sometimes. During the week he lives/works in one state. The house he owns is in another. I (along with his friends and family) live in yet another. We see each other for all or part of most weekends (at least now that the weather has broken), but on the weekends when we haven’t been able to get together and he goes to his house to make sure it’s still there, etc., he calls me using the cell phone, for which he got a free nights and weekends plan.
It’s his habit to call me from the car (he says it not only lets him talk to me, but helps him with the long highway driving) – he’s got a voice activated dial and a hands-free model for safety reasons, but sometimes when he passes through certain areas (in hilly or mountainous regious for instance) and the cell transmission towers are few and far between, the signal quality usually drops to pretty bad (and BOTH of us are shouting, “WHAT? WHAT?” ha ha), then sometimes it drops out completely and he calls me back. Now we have a joke about it, when I meet him in his “workweek” state to go to his house for the weekend (I leave my car there and ride up with him in his). When I see the sign for the town he’s mentioned where the signal always at best degrades to incomprehensible and/or at worst drops completely, I say, “Oh, your cell phone should be dropping just about now,” and he laughs.
I don’t call him on his cell phone, even though he gave me the number. If I have to call him during the week, I catch him at the end of the workday in question (he has no “land line” in his dwelling in that state) or I use his home phone if it’s one of those weekends when I couldn’t go.
I’ve got one, but it’s turned off most of the time. I use it mostly on weekends, especially to call out-of-state family members (all my family except my mom and sister live out-of-state, as do many of my best and oldest friends). I didn’t have one until about a year ago, but I realized that with unlimited free long distance on evenings and weekends, it would actually save me money.
It also comes in handy on those occasions that I’m out and about, but in the middle of trying to coordinate plans with a bunch of people. But I rarely use it just to chat for local calls.
I’ve only used a cellphone once (borrowed for one call, to get hold of my mum years ago). They’re still confusing, complex things to me – but at some stage I’ll need to have one. That stage is coming closer, as I get involved with my job, and the voluntary and paid work I do for two other societies. I get into isolated places at times, where (as I don’t drive) a call to a taxi company would be a godsend. There’s folk out there too who don’t like leaving messages on my home answer service, and so don’t contact me at all.
Meaningless hijack but that was me not MaddyStrut. Plus if someone calls me at home using their cellphone I ask them to call back using a real phone orwhen they get someplace that has better reception.
Don’t have one and never used one BUT I checked into it once and there WAS(I don’t know if they still have it) a plan where you buy the phone and can have it set for only calling(no incoming calls) emergency numbers maybe just 911 or something and it cost zero per month.
Considering how many people here have their phone JUST for emergencies I can understand why the various phone companies don’t publicize that more…or is this just a regonal thing?
I may if they still have it get that someday for emergencies and let it live in my car but for now I keep even my landline ringer turned off…I am not a phone person
I have one and always have it on, but try not to use it that much. I like it for emergencies, but don’t like talking on it in public.
I don’t own a cell phone and have never used one. One of these days I’ll buy a prepaid one for emergency use in the car. Other than that I really don’t need one.
You can use a non-activated cell phone to call 911. But I was asking myself if it’d be right to do this if it’s just because your car breaks down. I wouldn’t think so. That would be the only reason I would get a prepaid one (as opposed to a non-activated one).
when i don’t have a cell phone, i’m told that i’m desperately in need of one. as soon as i get one…nobody ever friggin’ calls it.
<Originally posted by raisinbread
<Meaningless hijack but that was me not MaddyStrut. Plus if someone calls me at home using their cellphone I ask them to call back using a real phone orwhen they get someplace that has betterreception.>
Oops, I’m really sorry about that. I just signed up as a member to these message boards yesterday and forgot how much trouble I have with web based stuff. In the past when I’ve subscribed to discussions, etc. on the net I subscribe so that I can read and reply via email. And while the SDMB is probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever signed up to do online, I gotta say it’s been giving me computer hell, and I’ve still got to get used to it here. What I really need is DSL but don’t have the money to spring for that, and I bet even if I tried to get it, the provider would tell me my OS isn’t high enough. Neither an OS upgrade nor a new computer is an option now either. ANYWAY…
Well, if it wasn’t my boyfriend calling me on the cellphone, I’d take your idea in mind. But he’s the only one who calls me on a cell. He got the thing specifically so he could call me without bankrupting himself on long distance charges, and even at best, I don’t get to see him nearly as often as I’d like to. So from him (and ONLY him, hee hee) I’ll tolerate cellphone calls with occasionally lousy connections.
I doubt it. I imagine a city like NYC would be clogged with transmission towers. There’s at least a dozen boosters in the CBD of my tiny city; the loss of a few in NYC wouldn’t disrupt mobile communications appreciably.
What would bring communications down, OTOH, is tens of thousands of panicked citizens all trying to use their phones at the same time in the wake of the attack.
For example, it’s near impossible to get through on a mobile (cell) phone here for the hour or so after midnight on New Year’s Eve. The network can’t handle that much traffic.
As to the OP, I use my mobile phone to the exclusion of land lines. It’s convenient, often cheaper than a land line and saves me from looking up phone numbers. My phone also doubles as an organiser and a personal radio, which provides me with more incentive to take it everywhere. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single friend my age who doesn’t carry a phone with them.
I hate cell phones, and I rarely use them. Each time I do have to use one, I need how it works explained to me. My father thinks I should have one, and it trying to make me think I need one too.
Define rarely. I use mine probably 4-5 times a week, more if I’m out doing site investigation.
I think it’s kind of funny that so many people in this thread are saying that CELL phones make you be “at everyone’s beck and call every minute of the day”.
I’ve had family get annoyed and say “but what if we need to get ahold of you”? regarding me turning off my HOUSE phone. I’ve said “hey, if I’m going to take a nap, I’m going to turn off the phone, if it’s a life or death emergency you can come and get me”. To which they are JUST as annoyed as if they couldn’t get me on the cell phone.
I personally find that my home phone is more intrusive than my cell phone. Also, I find the “no one’s that important” to be kind of smug. There are many many reason to have a cell phone other than because the owner of said phone thinks that they’re “so important”.
I use mine mainly for work, and I DO happen to have a project where we (those at my company) all take turns being oncall for a project where the contract binds us to have at least two people available 24/7.
I’ve also spent a lot of time out in remote site work, as in getting dropped off at the site by a float plane and having to call for your “ride” when you were done with your investigation. It’s not like there are payphones located in the middle of the wilderness on an Island in Prince William Sound.
When my boyfriend and I part ways at the end of the year, I will probably not get a house phone, but use just my cell phone.
I don’t get this whole “I’m too “cool” (carefree, unleashed, insert word of your choice here) for cell phones” thing. Cell phones can be turned off too, so it’s not like they HAVE to be some sort of leash. The only way they are different than a regular phone is that they are portable.
I don’t use mine for chatting at all, but it does come in handy.
For my full-time job, I almost never need it during work, but before work I use it to call in and let someone know if I’ll be late.
On the weekends I do part-time work as a wedding minister that can send me anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Tokyo, and which requires me to call in on arrival to confirm that everyone’s where they need to be. While I could use a pay phone to call in, there’s no way the office could relay messages to me if something went wrong (which they have, though not frequently). Also, there have been times when the trains have stopped for anywhere from ten minutes to an hour and a half because of accidents. While some trains have pay phones in them, most of them don’t, so having a cell phone to let someone know what happened can mean the difference between being greeted at the hotel with “is everything ok” rather than “you’re fired and we’re suing.” As an added bonus, with my cell phone, fax machine and direct deposit, I haven’t needed to go into the office in over two years.
I forgot to mention, even though I don’t chat with my cell phone, it does come in handy for meeting people outdoors. It’s a lot easier to say “I’ll be hanging around the Shibuya neighborhood this afternoon. Gimme a call when you arrive and we’ll meet” than pre-arranging a fixed time and place, then waiting at the meeting place wondering if something came up because they can’t reach me.