Life without an Electronic Leash

[Saga]

If work didn't pay for my cell phone I wouldn't have one. When I did, I paid $20/m for a cricket plan with unlimited local and long distance minutes, and thats it. If I absolutely felt I needed a cell phone, I would likely just go back to that.

 

[BoomerD]

Good info folks. Thanks.

Originally posted by: silverpig
I'm looking to do this too OP.

You should get a google voice number, and then an iPod touch with skype. You'll pay ~$200 for the iPod (but you get an iPod...), and then it's $2.95 a month after that for unlimited calling in North America.

However, until OS 3.0 comes out, calls to your iPod won't ring unless you have skype running.

WTF would I need an iPod for?
(sorry, I'm not one of those, "I GOTTA have MY music on" kind of people.


I don't see us giving up our land line.

to begin with, I'd lose my 6 gb DSL service.
AFAIK, the BEST AT&T offers for "dry loop" service is ~ 768 mb service...s..u..p..e..r....s..l..o..w...just a step better than dial-up.

Crap, we've had landline service (as a married couple) since 1975...

Getting calls (except emergency calls from the wife) on my cell phone always pisses me off anyway.

LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!! If I want to talk to you, I'll call you.


(and yes...GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN!)

 

[BassBomb]

I get 33 mins / month at about 9$

I use maybe half that

 

[alkemyst]

wow, $90 for 100 mins...

Also if you can afford to simply do without a phone all together, those roaming charges you MIGHT run into while traveling shouldn't add up to much.

But if I were looking at my cellphone as a leash instead of a facilitator I may have the same outlook.

 

[reallyscrued]

Glad I got the old Sero plan....

woot.

 

[BoomerD]

Originally posted by: alkemyst
wow, $90 for 100 mins...

Also if you can afford to simply do without a phone all together, those roaming charges you MIGHT run into while traveling shouldn't add up to much.

But if I were looking at my cellphone as a leash instead of a facilitator I may have the same outlook.

Well, the plan actually gives us 1000 minutes per month...we just never use the dammed things.
IIRC, when we turned off the phones, we lost something like 5000 roll-over minutes.(whatever the maximum you can accumulate is)

AT&T wouldn't let us keep them for use with a pre-paid plan, nor donate them to US service members and their families.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
I've never had one. I hate talking on the phone anyway, but cell phones are a complete and utter ripoff. The plans are absurd.

this

 

[kalrith]

My wife and I just canceled our cell-phone plan as well. We were paying $60/month. We switched to T-Mobile prepaid Pay As You Go. There is no monthly service fee, and the cost is 10 cents per minute if you buy a 1000-minute card. You can also frequently find 12%-off coupon codes for sites like http://www.ephonecard.com/. I used one of those and bought two 1000-minute cards for $176, making the cost 8.8 cents/minute. I estimate that we'll probably use around 1,000 minutes each per year, which makes our yearly cost $176 instead of $720. The minutes expire after one year, but once you buy a 1000-minute card, you become a Gold Rewards member. This means that every refill card extends the expiration date of your minutes by one year. For example, if my wife and I each have 500 minutes left after one year, then I can just spend $17.60 on two $10 refill cards (after the 12%-off coupon code) and extend the expiration date for a year.

Most of our cell phone minutes were used to called friends and family from our house (we don't have a landline). To keep our cell-phone usage down, I bought a MagicJack which basically gives us a landline with unlimited local and long distance for $20/year. The caveat is that you have to have a computer on for the phones to function, but our HTPC is on 24/7 so it's not a problem for us. If the computer's off, the phone calls will just go to voicemail, and the voicemails get emailed to you as a WAV file, so there would be no problem having the computer off while nobody's home.

I also canceled our $52/month DirecTV bill and switched to free HD locals and internet TV through the HTPC. Between the cell phones and satellite service, we'll save $1130/year, and the HTPC that allows us to do this only cost $310.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Tracfone doesnt charge a monthly fee. You only pay for what you use.

But you must buy at least one card for minutes per month, or the larger ones last for a few months or they "expire"

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer

Originally posted by: shortylickens
Tracfone doesnt charge a monthly fee. You only pay for what you use.

But you must buy at least one card for minutes per month, or the larger ones last for a few months or they "expire"

This is why I use T-Mobile. The minutes last for 1 year once you buy $100 card (for $88) one time, and you only have to buy a $10 card (for $8.80) every year to keep those minutes from ever expiring. If you see that $8.80/year as a monthly charge, it's only 73 cents/month.

 

[Barfo]

Cool, bro.

 

[LS8]

I wish I could dump my cell service. I don't really use it much. I like my wife having a cell phone though, in case of emergency.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: BoomerD
Good info folks. Thanks.

Originally posted by: silverpig
I'm looking to do this too OP.

You should get a google voice number, and then an iPod touch with skype. You'll pay ~$200 for the iPod (but you get an iPod...), and then it's $2.95 a month after that for unlimited calling in North America.

However, until OS 3.0 comes out, calls to your iPod won't ring unless you have skype running.

WTF would I need an iPod for?
(sorry, I'm not one of those, "I GOTTA have MY music on" kind of people.


I don't see us giving up our land line.

to begin with, I'd lose my 6 gb DSL service.
AFAIK, the BEST AT&T offers for "dry loop" service is ~ 768 mb service...s..u..p..e..r....s..l..o..w...just a step better than dial-up.

Crap, we've had landline service (as a married couple) since 1975...

Getting calls (except emergency calls from the wife) on my cell phone always pisses me off anyway.

LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!! If I want to talk to you, I'll call you.


(and yes...GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN!)

Well you don't need an iPod if you want to just use your computer, but if you want to have some portability with it, then the iPod allows you to do that.

 

[2canSAM]

Actually you might want to check back with ATT for "dry-loop" DSL. I am on their 6MB Service (extreme) without a home phone line. I pay 5.00 extra per month that way but it beats a bare minimum phone line that after taxes still came out to almost 30.00 bucks a month.

 

[AstroManLuca]

My cell phone is not a leash. It's a lifeline. I don't have to take calls if I don't want to. But it lets me coordinate things with my friends so much easier.

 

[ric1287]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
My cell phone is not a leash. It's a lifeline. I don't have to take calls if I don't want to. But it lets me coordinate things with my friends so much easier.

yep, exactly. People saying that its a leash just want yet another thing to feel "cool" about not having (tv, car, etc)

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Leash? It's like my safety blanket :Q

ya, its only a leash if you assume you have to answer every call. it drives my kids NUTS when i let the phone ring when we are doing family stuff. i keep telling them that im not ruled by my phone like they are, and after a few months of doing so they will leave it sit on occasion too. im hoping they realize its not their lifeline at some point, but im sure it seems very different to a teen.

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: ric1287

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
My cell phone is not a leash. It's a lifeline. I don't have to take calls if I don't want to. But it lets me coordinate things with my friends so much easier.

yep, exactly. People saying that its a leash just want yet another thing to feel "cool" about not having (tv, car, etc)

The bolded part says it all. I've been with friends and family who feel like they have to answer their cell phone every time it rings and talk to the person as long as that person wants to. It's messed up when I can drive to a friend's house to hang out with them, and someone else calling them takes priority while they go off for 30 minutes to talk on the phone. Those are the people who are on a leash. I answer my phone less than half the time, because it usually interrupts something else that's more important.

 

[trmiv]

I feel a home phone is more of a leash than a cell phone. With a cell I don't have to sit and home and wait for a call. But if my cell rings, I don't have to pick it up. I screen plenty of calls. I wouldn't feel comfortable not having a cell now, especially with my parents getting older.

 

[moshquerade]

Originally posted by: BoomerD
For the first time since the early 90's, we are now without cell phone service.

With neither of us working, we just don't NEED the dammed things anymore.

Between us, we rarely used 100 minutes per month, and at $90 per month...that's an average of 90 cents/minute. Too high.

We've looked at "pay as you go" cell phone service, but even they aren't "cheap," and many still charge you a monthly fee, even if you don't make a single call.

The CHEAPEST ones seem to have crappy service areas, and while we don't travel a LOT, we do occasionally climb in the vehicle and go...so I'd prefer to have a cell phone that can actually get out if I need it.

I haven't been that impressed with the newer cell phones anyway. It seems to me that they spend more money on non-essential features...and less on making a quality phone.

just an fyi, an AT&T go phone averages out to about $8/month ($25 every 3 months) and would serve your needs. my mom is on this and no extra monthly fees or contract.