Text 8205, 93 rader
Skriven 2010-06-06 14:59:15 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Bargeld lacht
=====================
Hello Robert,

On Sunday June 06 2010 08:55, you wrote to me:

 MV>> I find it much more important that others can reach ME in an
 MV>> emergency. Such as when something happens to my 91 year old
 MV>> mother....

 RB> That's naturally another matter, but assumes you are out of the house
 RB> fairly frequently and can't be reached otherwise.

How can you QUICKLY be reached when you are shopping?

 RB> Could be useful on your trips, though: I carry a cell phone when I
 RB> travel too, but only switch it on in the evening in case anyone needs
 RB> to call or send an SMS.

To be only reacheable in the evening is not good enough for me. Not in the 21
century.

 RB>  Don't want incoming calls when I'm driving.

I have a car kit. I do not mind calling while driving. I have been a ham for
almost forty years and had a mobile rig in my car for most of that time. I am
used to talking/listening and driving at the same time.

 RB> Then you go on to include amortization and the expense of electricity
 RB> for charging... this wasn't what we were talking about: I wasn't, and
 RB> I doubt Dale was. The subject was phone rates.

Maybe that was what Dale intended to convey, but it is not what he wrote. He
wrote; "it costs me less than $95 a year".

Surely when you say "my car costs me EUR 5000 a year', you do not just mean the
fuel?

 RB> If you start to include _all_ the costs, you might as well include
 RB> your own time for using the phone, charging it and the like, at a
 RB> certain amount per hour or minute. But that really would be
 RB> exaggerating, and would be beside the point for most people.

If you just want to discuss the phone rates instead of the COST of the  cell
phone, that is fine with me. As long as we are clear what is being discussed.

I may add that not including the cost of the hardware may lead to a situation
of aplles and oranges. In many plans you get a "free" phone if you sign a two
year contract. Prepaid phones are never free. Not any more, too easy to
circumvent a SIM lock.

 RB> As for battery replacements, I am somewhat perplex at your problems...
 RB> the only battery that ever went bad on me (didn't hold a charge) was
 RB> on a really old Motorola T-191. Never had battery problems on anything
 RB> else. But I also don't keep the things switched on all the time, maybe
 RB> that's the difference.

Possibly. What is not well known about rechargable batteries is that they can
only be recharged about 1000 times.

A starter battery for a car is even worse BTW. That will only survive 200 full
charge/decharge cycles.

 MV>> Last year I bought a Nokia 6150 for EUR 50.

 RB> Are you sure you mean a 6150?

Correction: 1650

 MV>> My first cell phone, a Sony CMD-2000 is still in working order.
 MV>> But I had to replace the speaker and the battery. Now that battery
 MV>> is shot again and no longer available. My second cell phone, a
 MV>> Siemens M35 also needed a battery replacement twice.

 RB> Probably a new phone wouldn't cost much more than the battery.

Batteries for the M35 were about EUR 10 IIRC.

 MV>> I rarely use it for outgoing calls.

 RB> Same here. That's why a EUR 5 credit on the SIM lasts me a long time.

As I wrote, I do not keep track of the cost. I changed to prepaid last year in
june. Gor a EUR 10 credit when changing. Coming to think of it, it lasted me
until two weeks ago.

I may add that a fair number of people are not so cost minded. I often get
called on my cell phone by people that I know, they know I have a fixed line.
They don't even bother to try me at home first.


Cheers, Michiel

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