RE: Waaay Offtopic - Mobile Phones

From: <Steve>
Date: Wed Nov 10 2004 - 02:43:00 EST

Thanks Chris

Blackberry is not a common brand over here. Will let you know what I finally get.

Cheers

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Wright [mailto:chrisw@skypoint.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 4:47 AM To: <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=494kUvvWJrbRBEGGFJ6veIPPHKrp0IU4U6IIy7VjgpNTEewoisy_LmyXGihKSzGw7z59_do22CpEGy6p3E9qssmERNK5">PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com</a> Subject: Re: [PipingDesign] Waaay Offtopic - Mobile Phones

On Nov 8, 2004, at 2:53 AM, Steve McKenzie wrote:

> However many of us are cursed by having a mobile phone so I thought I
> might get some useful feedback.

My son seems to have solved the problem to his liking. He carries a laptop and a T-mobile cell phone whose guts are customizable for different countries with a rechargable plug-in pay-as-you-go logic card. He spent last week in Indonesia so he uses the cell phone with the Indonesia card. After getting back to Republican-occupied US he switches back to the US phone guts and his customary number. There's also a Bluetooth hook-up between his laptop and the phone that lets him send e-mail through his usual IP. With a digital camera he can takes pictures of what needs photographing and store them on his laptop for e-mailing or carrying home. The airport gropen-polizei spend a lot of time looking over those sorts of thing, depite obvious cluelessness about them, but that appears to be the only disadvantage.

I have a friend who swears by his Blackberry, which does everything you're asking about, but I don't think it has a lot of storage. If you're looking for serious storage, you might be able to get a USB keychain memory cartridge but I don't know if Blackberry speaks Bluetooth or USB. Friend has IT people at his beck and call so I'm not sure if he knows anything more than what he's been told. You might want to check the Blackberry web site, although I just checked it and found the options totally bewildering.

Personally I'm very comfortable with my laptop and e-mail via Wi-fi at a convenient coffee shop. I know that's impractical for those who spend weeks gallivanting around Papua-New Guinea, but I haven't had to do that yet. My approach to the cell phone curse is to use it for outgoing calls, except in situations where two-way contact is convenient to me and not just an excuse for potential callers who feel that written communication is too demanding.

Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=-XlCeDchXWBJsv8PLzAu0my8MJ4ooja8GlQkZtMfMMcCNJZ_YF2m3ZeCPf3oXAnIonQb6Y3_XGhC">chrisw@skypoint.com</a> | this distance" (last words of Gen.

...................................| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw/">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw/</a>

---

PipingOffice - Excel Spreadsheets for Piping Calculations

<a href="http://www.pipingoffice.us/">http://www.pipingoffice.us/</a> =========================================

Main site: <a href="http://www.pipingdesign.com">http://www.pipingdesign.com</a>

Yahoo! Groups Links Received on Wed Nov 10 02:43:00 2004