Feel free to congratulate me! I'm just about to join the 20th

[TomGoodheart 444]

That should of course read "20th Century" .... stupid topic titles!

Christmas was traditional this year. Which means everyone except me was playing games on their mobiles or tablets!

So Wifey has suggested that perhaps it's time for me to get a phone that connects to the internet, so when I want a cup of tea I can Viber her like everyone else, rather than shouting downstairs and frightening the cat.

I've never had a contract phone before so I'm nearly really excited!

Of course as it's all new to me, I might be on here asking for tips about security and so on. After all, I don't want anyone on the ISS emailing me a spanner by mistake, do I? Or maybe I do? Oh, it' all so complicated!

.

Edited December 27, 2014 by TomGoodheart

[Rob 3,228]

Be careful what you do. When I got my last phone, I managed to run up an excess use bill of £30 over and above my 1Gb allowance despite not having used it. I got the kids to disable it, so no nasty surprises any more. The internet is useful, but not £30 a month plus whatever time you actually use useful. I might revert to a steam powered version when I get a new one.

[TomGoodheart 444]

I'll get a cap on the contract I think! At least until I know how much I'm actually going to use it.

.

[azda 983]

I have 5 gig and LTE (high speed internet) if i go over that then it just slows down to 3g intetnet speed without any over usage charge

[TomGoodheart 444]

But I don't suppose your contract is £7.50 a month Dave?

.

[azda 983]

Lol, no its not. Mine is with T-Mobile, the best in Germany IMO. I used one called EPLUS when i moved here and had done for 5 years, always with internet connection, then in my last contract year with them the coverage was terrible and they capped it to 500mb but it did'nt state that in the contract, when i asked about it they just said "you can buy more data" but it was never capped for the previous 4 years and so were obviously looking for cash, when the data was reached you got an sms saying it was and basically rendered the internet so slow and useless that it was pointless even having it.

Here's the funny thing though, the Frau also had the same contract as me, she was in Turkey for 3 weeks, stepped off the plane and switched on her phone and immidiately got a data reached message which was impossible as she'd never used the phone while away, so they were basically just bullshitting people into buying more imternet data.

Never once had a problem with TMOBILE and encouraged her to change providers now, she gave her notice of quit in specified timeframe and it should have gone off on the 24th and her old number transferred to the new TMOBILE contract but her old one is still active uo until now, so i know they're about to hit her with some bulshit excuse that she did'nt give enough time to quit and will try and extend it by another year as they did with me. A very poor company, but i got her a new aye phone 6+ for her christmas and i know she'll enjoy a huge difference in these companies as i've done in the last 12 months without problems

[Bronze & Copper Collector 417]

You're still a century behind....

This is the 21st Century.....

[TomGoodheart 444]

You're still a century behind....

This is the 21st Century.....

It was deliberate. It's only a budget smart phone. Lacking even the most basic teleport, time warping or terra-forming capability.

Plus to be really up-to-date it appears I'd need to understand what a Google account does or why I'd need to sync my watch to my washing machine or something. Which I don't. But it's a start.

[Bronze & Copper Collector 417]

You're still a century behind....

This is the 21st Century.....

It was deliberate. It's only a budget smart phone. Lacking even the most basic teleport, time warping or terra-forming capability.

Plus to be really up-to-date it appears I'd need to understand what a Google account does or why I'd need to sync my watch to my washing machine or something. Which I don't. But it's a start.

Actually, I suspected that was intentional....

Apparently, we are not alone......

[Peckris 579]

That should of course read "20th Century" .... stupid topic titles!

Christmas was traditional this year. Which means everyone except me was playing games on their mobiles or tablets!

So Wifey has suggested that perhaps it's time for me to get a phone that connects to the internet, so when I want a cup of tea I can Viber her like everyone else, rather than shouting downstairs and frightening the cat.

I've never had a contract phone before so I'm nearly really excited!

Of course as it's all new to me, I might be on here asking for tips about security and so on. After all, I don't want anyone on the ISS emailing me a spanner by mistake, do I? Or maybe I do? Oh, it' all so complicated!

.

"Frequencies open, Captain..."

[TomGoodheart 444]

"Frequencies open, Captain..."

As long as I can go "Computer..." and it does what I want, I'll be happy.

But seriously it's made me realise how much new technology can make you feel the years advancing! I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not actually getting a phone but a chunk of hardware that does pretty much everything my laptop does. More perhaps.

It's kinda amazing to me ... though of course to my daughter and her friends it's all perfectly normal that you can have your entire life on one device ...

But then perhaps I should have gotten accustomed to such things by now. I can remember being astonished when my then employer upgraded their computer system to 4GB of memory. Those 4GB took up just four small suitcase sized boxes and I thought that was amazing.

Yesterday I bought 32GB. On a micro-SD card the size of my finger nail. And which cost me less than a quarter of what I paid for my first scientific calculator ....

Makes me feel so OLD!!!

Edited December 29, 2014 by TomGoodheart

[declanwmagee 122]

In 1999, in a previous life I was an IT bod, I bought 500GB of disk space for my company. Took up half an airconditioned server room and cost £220,000.

This laptop's got twice that.

[Peckris 579]

In 1999, in a previous life I was an IT bod, I bought 500GB of disk space for my company. Took up half an airconditioned server room and cost £220,000.

This laptop's got twice that.

Me too. Working on dumb terminals attached to an IBM mainframe. I remember our project manager stopping me on the stairs in the late 80s and announcing proudly that each programmer now had ... wait for it ... TWO GIGABYTES! of virtual storage allocated. Collapse of stout party in utter amazement - 'gigabyte' up to then being just a notional extreme, like a googolplex.

[Fubar 82]

This is memory.

None of your modern LSI stuff.

[TomGoodheart 444]

LOL Back in the day I remember my Dad building a Sinclair Micromatic radio.

Fast forward and Father-in-Law got a Raspberry Pi B for Christmas. Not much bigger than that Sinclair jobby all those years ago. Amazing!

.

[declanwmagee 122]

This is memory.

None of your modern LSI stuff.

Mem - 001s.jpgMem - 002s.jpg

I remember seeing that second picture (or similar) in a magazine or something when I was a child, and thinking "oh, so that's how computers are made, I'll make one for my bike."

So I did. It didn't do anything, but my Raleigh Commando had a computer just like that.

[Peter 615]

i'm still trying to cancel a contract with 3....bloody impossible.

[Garrett 76]

Peck, 2GB back in the 80's sounds very impressive !!

[Peckris 579]

Peck, 2GB back in the 80's sounds very impressive !!

Ah, but we're talking IBM mainframes here...