We finally broke down and got new phones over the weekend. Frankly, we're not "cell phone people", and had messed around with pay-as-you-go phones that kept expiring way before we used up the minutes we'd buy for them (I think between The Wife and I we average about 20 minutes per week of cell usage!), and so we'd lose interest in having the phone, then try another a year later, etc. We didn't actually get a regular plan until '04 when The Wife started her tutoring business, figuring that she'd be out and about a lot and we might need them. Our current phones dated from then, and we'd amassed 9,600 roll-over minutes in the meanwhile.However, with my working up in Evanston, and her starting a new job downtown, we were no longer going to be home for The Girls like we'd been for the past dozen years, so figured we needed to get everybody a phone. We were able to keep our old plan (which was "smaller" than all the current plans at AT&T) and all those roll-over minutes (though we'll be paying for 2 new phone numbers), so we're still on the cheapest available "plan" ... and what was really cool was that the phones were on sale with a buy-one-get-one-free deal that ended up costing only about $120.00 for all four phones (and, yes, we got one in each color just like in the picture) and each came with a $50.00 rebate, meaning we're $80.00 ahead on the deal!
Of course, I never "figured out my phone" in the 4 years I had the other one, and that at least had a menu in English ... this has this screen full of icons that I guess I'm supposed to be able to decipher what they're for. Last night I tried to find my ringtone and spent 15 minutes poking through things in it while waiting for the train, and still could not find where that stuff was hidden (on the previous phone it was, remarkably, in the section headed "ringtones"). I noticed that most of my stored phone numbers came across when they moved the SIM to the new phone (although it doesn't recognize my home number without the area code now), so I'm hoping, in the words of the Prego commercial "it's in there".
This phone also comes with a slot for putting in a "micro SD" card, which I'm guessing is how you get stuff from a computer into its memory and vice-versa (it does all sorts of multi-media and takes pictures and movies and whatnot), being that it doesn't seem to have any sort of a port (aside from where the charger goes) that one could use for a cable. I see that TigerDirect has these (with their regular SD adapter sleeve) for as little as $9.99 for 1gb, so I should probably think about picking up one of those.
I wish there were weekend classes in "how to use your new phone", since I've proven myself to be pretty clueless ... although I suppose if we let the 8-year-old run wild with hers for a couple of weeks, she'll be able to show me all the stuff it does!
