Friday, September 22, 2006

Finally decided to get a cell phone with a monthly plan. Up until now, I've mostly had pay-as-you-go phones for personal use. It has actually worked out cheaper for me because I don't do a lot of talking on the phone; I give out my cell number to only a few people and don't do a lot of chatting.

I used to be required to have a cell phone for work, and I think that explains why I have sort of an aversion to them. At one point it was possible that I would have my work cell, the on-call cell, a pager in case they couldn't get a hold of me on either cell, and a personal cell. That's 3 cells and a pager, for one person. I still cringe whenever I hear the ringtone of my old work cell.

I've been cell phoneless for about a month now, ever since I ran my last one through the laundry. And I only had it for about 3 weeks. I should really buy big, brick-like, Soviet era military surplus cell phones so they are more noticeable in pants pockets.

Frankly, the real reason I've decided I need to get a cell again is that I'm playing around with Asterisk (an extremely powerful PBX telephony package, which doesn't begin to describe what it can really do) and I've found it a little difficult to tell if what I'm doing is working if I can't call it. I can't call from my home phone because the Asterisk system is connected to it.

I decided I wanted a camera phone this time. Don't need one, just think it would be handy to have a device that could take a really bad picture of some random boring event while I'm talking. Then I could send it to everyone I know.

I didn't like my options for a camera phone in pay-as-you-go world. Virgin Mobile had a decently priced camera phone, but if you want to transfer the pictures to your computer you have to upload them to a website for 50 cents a picture. I'm not interested in having the pictures that are stored on my phone held for ransom.

Bell Mobility had a decently priced PAYG plan and a good selection of phones, but the phones were all more expensive than I wanted to pay. It looks like they aren't willing to subsidize the price of phones for PAYG plans in the hopes of recovering the cost later.

I finally went with a basic monthly package from Telus. With a one year contract I was able to get a free camera phone. I got an email from them today letting me know that it is being shipped, so I'll find out exactly how good a free camera phone is early next week, I guess.

2 comments:

Bowds said...

Hey I got in on the ground floor. Its name tripped it off for me, I love it.

Anyway, keep writing!

Steve said...

Hey, thanks bowds! You got the very first comment ever on this blog.

No prizes, but you get to lord it over everyone else.