G1 Goodness
WARNING: The following language might offend the technically-challenged, fiscally-unconservative, and people who think I am a snob and write entries that are waaay to long; proceed at your own risk.
I sincerely believed I would be the last man on the planet to own a cell phone. There's nothing inherently evil about cell phones; I just could not justify owning one because 95% of my time is spent near a landline or my mistress's cell phone, and there is no way I could find value in paying a monthly fee for something I wouldn't use that much. I follow a pretty routine schedule every day of the week, so the people that need to find me can find me.
But then I thought there are going to be a number of days in August where I will be away from my calling safety net--I truly would be inaccessible. Perhaps it was time to concede. I first thought about getting a simple, cheap phone that I could use on a prepaid basis. But the tipping point in my decision was that at work we have begun developing applications for mobile devices. I tried loading a beta version of one application onto my Dell Axim (it's not a phone, but it runs Windows Mobile, which powers many a smartphone), but the application didn't work. I spoke with the programmer, and he said I was one version behind, so I was out-of-luck. Sure, my Axim was still running strong after three years of daily use (during my morning commute for reading e-books and playing games, and for syncing all of my contact/calendar information at work), but I figured if I could replace it--feature-for-feature--and add the ability to make emergency cell phone calls on a pay-as-you-go basis, I'd do it. I thought T-Mobile would be the best carrier for my situation, and then I remembered something about Google making a phone, which just happened to be available only for T-mobile. Enter the G1.
Over several years I have gradually shifted most of my online tools to Google, so I figured it would be nice to have a phone that could take advantage of all these applications. So I watched listings on craigslist and ended up buying a white one from a lady (who graduated from McNary with me, I found out later) who had used it for two weeks and realized it was too much phone for her. I popped my T-mobile sim card in, set up my Google account on the phone (over Wi-fi), and I had a fully functional smartphone. The phone can access the Internet over 3G, but that costs money every month. I'm often around Wi-fi networks that I can access for free--and data transfer is much faster over Wi-fi than 3G--so I can use basically 100% of the G1's capabilities using existing resources and the $10 that paid to set myself up on the T-Mobile network and get 40 minutes of cellular call time. So don't ask me for my number; I'll give it out on a need-to-know basis--and if I do give it to you, I'll probably just give you my Google Voice number (I've figured out how to make/receive free calls using Google Voice over Wi-fi--yet another way to pinch every penny out of my 40 minutes of call time).
I really do enjoy my technology-based gadgets, and I think I get my money's worth out of them. It's not that I can't live without them, but I feel like they help me do the things I like to do better and easier.
I sincerely believed I would be the last man on the planet to own a cell phone. There's nothing inherently evil about cell phones; I just could not justify owning one because 95% of my time is spent near a landline or my mistress's cell phone, and there is no way I could find value in paying a monthly fee for something I wouldn't use that much. I follow a pretty routine schedule every day of the week, so the people that need to find me can find me.
But then I thought there are going to be a number of days in August where I will be away from my calling safety net--I truly would be inaccessible. Perhaps it was time to concede. I first thought about getting a simple, cheap phone that I could use on a prepaid basis. But the tipping point in my decision was that at work we have begun developing applications for mobile devices. I tried loading a beta version of one application onto my Dell Axim (it's not a phone, but it runs Windows Mobile, which powers many a smartphone), but the application didn't work. I spoke with the programmer, and he said I was one version behind, so I was out-of-luck. Sure, my Axim was still running strong after three years of daily use (during my morning commute for reading e-books and playing games, and for syncing all of my contact/calendar information at work), but I figured if I could replace it--feature-for-feature--and add the ability to make emergency cell phone calls on a pay-as-you-go basis, I'd do it. I thought T-Mobile would be the best carrier for my situation, and then I remembered something about Google making a phone, which just happened to be available only for T-mobile. Enter the G1.
Over several years I have gradually shifted most of my online tools to Google, so I figured it would be nice to have a phone that could take advantage of all these applications. So I watched listings on craigslist and ended up buying a white one from a lady (who graduated from McNary with me, I found out later) who had used it for two weeks and realized it was too much phone for her. I popped my T-mobile sim card in, set up my Google account on the phone (over Wi-fi), and I had a fully functional smartphone. The phone can access the Internet over 3G, but that costs money every month. I'm often around Wi-fi networks that I can access for free--and data transfer is much faster over Wi-fi than 3G--so I can use basically 100% of the G1's capabilities using existing resources and the $10 that paid to set myself up on the T-Mobile network and get 40 minutes of cellular call time. So don't ask me for my number; I'll give it out on a need-to-know basis--and if I do give it to you, I'll probably just give you my Google Voice number (I've figured out how to make/receive free calls using Google Voice over Wi-fi--yet another way to pinch every penny out of my 40 minutes of call time).
I really do enjoy my technology-based gadgets, and I think I get my money's worth out of them. It's not that I can't live without them, but I feel like they help me do the things I like to do better and easier.
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