On Dec 6, 5:39*pm, Doug Freyburger > wrote:

> Cell phone ___ words and ___ces of words and {pop} they add noises.
> Often they randomly hang up for no apparent reason without so much as a
> vibrate to point out to you that the screen pressed against your ear
> suddenly displays "Call ended" in a way that your ear can't see. *Are
> there folks out there with ears that can see to be able to tell when
> your call just got dropped or do folsk redial every few calls without
> noticing? *The things may as well be walkie talkies for the quality of
> the sound on them. But what walkie talkie has a dailing range of most
> of the civilized world and a local toll free range of most of the
> continent?


I'm not a techo person, couldn't help anyone fix anything
electronic or even things that aren't. But I agree it is marvelous to
be able to call anywhere in the world from a phone you're carrying
around on your person. The one feature yet to exist with the
cellphone (as far as I know), is a live answering machine function.
You may get a beep that you have a message, but you can't hear it when
it's coming in. Maybe that will be the next advancement in the
cellphone, an answering machine that allows one to hear the actual
words of the message coming in, the way one uses an answering machine
at home to screen calls or determine their importance. I don't think
screening is crude either. A person might be washing their hair or
making food they can't walk away from, not for long anyway - and the
phone rings and the anwering machine takes over and they hear, "Help
me Doug, I've fallen and I can't get up", or some other emergency.
Then you can rush to answer it and tell them what's going on and how
long it will be and what you can do to help them. With the cellphone
answering system that is not yet possible. But it's around the
corner, as are most if not all inventions I have ever thought of.
Some might say that caller ID is as good as an answering machine.
Bullshit. You can see the name of the person but you don't know what
they have to say. This is one more plus for the landline if this is a
contest to determine which is better between the cellphone and the
landline. But there's no rule against having both. A landline can be
had for like $15 a month. I use it for the phone and also the
computer. Maybe I'll get lucky and die before I have to upgrade
something.

TJ