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Saturday 25 May 2013

Progress, Retrogradation and Progress

Somewhere back in my worklife, I had been carrying around my own PDA when the Government of Canada decided that Blackberries would be our work friend.  I was OK with that, and for the rest of my working life, I had a Blackberry, the models long forgotten, but the ease of use still appreciated.

When I retired, PDAs had already started to morph into cellphones and I kind of forgot how much I loved my Blackberry.  Dave and I got android smartphones, moved to gmail and google, synched everything and somewhere along the line, I managed to run up a bill of $300.00 for a pocket-dial long distance call.  With almost the speed of light, I gave up the android, red-faced and guilty and got a little-old-person phone with a safety cover, large keys and no fancy stuff.

      A Doro phone has some awesome features for the untechy-at-heart.  You can turn the ringer up to "empty the room" and you look so cool with the whole side of your face covered with, in my case, red plastic.

You are safe from pocket dialing for several reasons, the most uncomfortable of which is that Doro doesn't really fit in your pocket, if your clothes fit.

You have nowhere to download your Google calendar or contacts, but you can buy a really nice little box with small squares of paper which you can put in your pocket with your friends' phone numbers on it, if you happen to think of that before you leave the house.

Dave, who fairly consistently leaves his phone somewhere where he's not planning to be, continued to have an Android phone but just before his 6-week vacation in the American southwest, he began to notice a problem with it.  Days before he left, he called Rogers and voila! became the future owner of a Blackberry which was going to be sent to him in Victoria, where he would become familiar with it before setting out for regions where no cell phone ever works.

While he was away, he sometimes found pay phones or internet cafés and we discussed his trip, my life and the way the Blackberry had some amazing features, but he really thought he liked his Samsung better.  I, foolishly but understandably, started thinking that perhaps it was time for me to have a new phone, and why shouldn't it be the Blackberry that wasn't making Dave as happy as I remembered being with one.  "Started thinking" is the euphemism I'm using for "started obsessing".

Very long story, not very short, Dave just bought a new Samsung, I have a Blackberry and lots is good with the world.




3 comments:

  1. LOL!!! I'm planning to "downsize" my phone soon. I'm pretty sure my contract on this piece of you-know-what is up. I like things simple.

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  2. That's pretty funny. Our cellphone is just a cellphone and nothing more.

    ReplyDelete