Finally Got A Smart Phone Today - Five Years After the Rest of the Adult Internet

[Joe Obenberger]

OK, I no longer possess an operational "Cell Phone".

Now I am using a "mobile device", a smartphone with a dual-core processor and more computing power, by far, than the Apollo capsule that sailed to the moon had onboard.

And I promise not to make much fun about its name, ATRIX 2, which frankly sounds like a derogatory term that escorts would use among themselves to describe their clients who have exotic and unhygenic interests.

All of this is more than I personally care about - but I learned at Phoenix that two parties tried to get hold of me by email to set up meetings, and had not mutual friends intervened to help, we never would have met. Doesn't anyone use text or make phone calls anymore? OK. I surrendered today and joined the 4G world, kicking and screaming.

After 16 years, Verizon finally lost me today, too. Where once a repair department stood, staffed with sincere, energetic, and talented technicians, today there stands a security guard, and that says it all. Where once well over one hundred choices were on display, now there are only 21 choices. I counted them. They even have a rigid, automated sign-in protocol with limited choices, and if none of them fit your situation, the people tell you chose any of them, it doesn't matter. Seldom have I more conspicuously felt like a cattle being pushed down a chute than I have with Verizon during the past few days.

All I wanted was to replace my serviceable LG flip phone with qwerty keyboard when some of the keys started to work erratically, and I've learned that though the phone is still out there, none of the majors deal with it because they want you to chose between junk that would be unsuitable for a junior high kid or the smartphones that come with an expensive data plan. If I had to make that choice, I wasn't going to give Verizon the benefit of it. The simple repair of a foil connector printed circuit would probably have fixed the old phone, but repair doesn't seem like an option anymore. So now, I'm with a Sprint unlimited data plan.

Now I gotta figure out how it works, and it doesn't look easy.

[DeanCapture]

Hey hey, good for you man! You'll really enjoy it once you get up to speed with it

[candyflip]

I hardly leave my house with a laptop anymore. My phone can do everything I need on the go, and it's pretty out dated at this point.

I can't wait until our phones are our desktops...coming this year.

[journalism]

What kind of phone do you have right now?

[Joe Obenberger]

Originally Posted by journalism

What kind of phone do you have right now?

I got the Motorola Atrix 2 running on Sprint - to replace an LG 9520 Envy with flip qwerty, NOT the el cheapo sliding configuration. Two rows of numeric buttons on the front started working only now and again, and I had to twist the body to make them work sometimes. When that stopped working, I started shopping for a phone - and picked up a piece of garbage with the sliding qwerty at Verizon at the Mission Mall in Phoenix last Friday. Junk.

At least I can feel and sense that this phone is good quality.

[Brad Mitchell]

Welcome to the revolution!

Brad

[Theo]

Sprint is great network at least here in LA. I get to have signal in areas that both verizon and AT&T do not work. Atrix has some pretty bad ass specs too.

[AaronM]

Originally Posted by Joe Obenberger

Doesn't anyone use text or make phone calls anymore?

Text yes. Make phone calls though? Good luck. People would rather Tweet than pick up a phone and have a real conversation.

[Brujah]

welcome to the future, JD.

[KillerK]

Do you still run Windows 95 too?

Maybe you should upgrade to Windows 7.

[Joe Obenberger]

Originally Posted by KillerK

Do you still run Windows 95 too?

Maybe you should upgrade to Windows 7.

Please don't laugh too loud. You _are_ onto something about me!

I use XP on all my computers cuz I don't want to buy new versions of all my important software, and I don't trust the emulations in the later versions to work reliably. I hear about all of the advantages of 7, but for the simple stuff in a small law office, XP is solid as a rock and I can't imagine why I'd ever need the enhanced networking.

It's like that line in Men in Black where the guy says he's bought the Beatles White Album five times. Vinyl, 8 Track, cassette, cd, and then the big remastering. I've bought the White Album just twice, but for what I need, I don't know that I need to buy Windows again. I buy new computers with a downgrade to XP.

[papill0n]

Originally Posted by Joe Obenberger

Please don't laugh too loud. You _are_ onto something about me!

I use XP on all my computers cuz I don't want to buy new versions of all my important software, and I don't trust the emulations in the later versions to work reliably. I hear about all of the advantages of 7, but for the simple stuff in a small law office, XP is solid as a rock and I can't imagine why I'd ever need the enhanced networking.

It's like that line in Men in Black where the guy says he's bought the Beatles White Album five times. Vinyl, 8 Track, cassette, cd, and then the big remastering. I've bought the White Album just twice, but for what I need, I don't know that I need to buy Windows again. I buy new computers with a downgrade to XP.

[Joe Obenberger]

Gotta make a correction. I've got the Sprint version of that phone with slightly diffferent (better) specs than the Atrix. I've got the Photon as I discovered going through the manual tonight.

It's a wholesale slaughter of any sense of privacy. The GPS tracks everything and even imprints the location on every photograph unless you disable that, there are protocols to upload the address book for safe keeping (just a subpoena away from government access) handy interconnections for cops with your home computer, and I've just started reading. This thing takes a sim card and can work all over the world, but I'm not so sure that I'd ever want to take it through customs and submit it to inspection.

[2MuchMark]

Originally Posted by Joe Obenberger

I use XP on all my computers cuz I don't want to buy new versions of all my important software, and I don't trust the emulations in the later versions to work reliably. I hear about all of the advantages of 7, but for the simple stuff in a small law office, XP is solid as a rock and I can't imagine why I'd ever need the enhanced networking..

Congrats on your smartphone purchase!

Windows XP was excellent. Vista was terrible and a resource hog. Windows 7 is pretty good but you would probably find it pretty slow if your machines more more than a few years old.