wrighters.net

In the 11 years that Laura and I have been married, we have owned countless phones. Does anyone else have this problem? Think back to when you were young, how many phones did your parents buy during your childhood?

I can remember owning the following phones:

• a GE phone with a digital answering machine and a windy cord
• our first cordless phone, forget the model
• a GE cordless phone, I think we still have this one (900 MHZ)
• a Panasonic cordless phone with a base station. Forget the specifics.
• a set of Motorola cordless phones with a single base station (2.4 GHZ)
• a set of GE cordless phones with a single base station (2.4 GHZ)
• a set of V-Tech cordless phones with a single base station with answering system (2.4 GHZ)
• and our final system, a Uniden DECT6.0

All of these phones except the original GE cordless phone have stopped working. The Motorola’s buttons stopped working. The GE made a terrible noise 5 seconds into every call. The V-Tech made a terrible noise every time the caller id was activated during a call. This final system is supposed to take care of WiFi interference, we’ll see about that. All we wanted was a phone that would have an extender base station (no plug in the kitchen), no answering system (we have voice mail), no interference with our WiFi, a speakerphone, easy to use caller ID callback, and a message waiting indicator. It seems all phones are missing at least one feature, usually the message waiting indicator for the voicemail.

Now, how about cell phones?

• my first cell phone, for work, a Motorola TAC with Cellular ONE
• Laura’s first cell phone, a Qualcomm with PrimeCo
• my second cell phone, a Nokia 5100 with Cingular
• Laura’s second cell phone, a Nokia 5200 with Cingular
• my third cell phone, some crappy flip phone from a Korean manufacturer with U.S. Cellular
• Laura’s third cell phone, a Sony/Ericson that looked like a fluke worm with U.S. Cellular
• my fourth cell phone, a Motorola flip phone with U.S. Cellular
• my fifth cell phone, a Nokia candy bar model with T-Mobile
• Laura’s fourth cell phone, a Nokia with TracFone
• my sixth cell phone, a Sidekick II with T-Mobile

So that’s 8 land phones and 10 cell phones in 11 years. Yikes. I guess our demand for the latest technology drives the manufacturers to make disposable electronics with lots of features, none of them done right. Maybe we should have an old Ma Bell rotary phone in the basement for when the power goes out.