Gah! Two weeks of work-hell straight and my neck is twisted out of shape from being on too many long conference calls where I have to talk and type at the same time. I don’t have a headset on my old plain old telephone at home. The trusty old Motorola i85s (Nextel/iDen) mobile phone I inherited from Erci is many years old and stopped taking a charge.
I decided to throw money at the phones and plow through the stupid daylight savings time change workload as best I could.
I am pretty happy with the phone situation I ended up with: I have a new AT&T model 992 “Speakerphone” with standardized 2.5mm headset jack (yay) and it works very well. I even figured out how to put pauses into the speed dial so it can dial me all the way into work’s most commonly called conference call numbers. Yay!
I also have a brand new Motorola i580 (Nextel/iDen still) mobile phone. This is my first Bluetooth capable phone, and it already works well with the Prius (though I am still trying to figure out how to transfer all contacts instead of just one). This i580 is heavy, tough as nails, gets good strong signal, has full duplex speakerphone and standard 2.5mm headset jack (as well as aforementioned Bluetooth).
A lot of people wonder why I stick with Nextel, instead of something 1) thinner, 2) sexier, or 3) laden with smart features. The simple answer is that for me a phone must work well as a phone. I have a camera and a PDA already, so those features on a phone are a waste. No phone can compete with my camera as a camera nor my PDA as a PDA. The thin and feature laden “smart” phones out there are a waste of time and money in my opinion, because most of them break all too easily and make horrible sounding calls. As to the sexiness of a phone… uh – people need to get a life. A phone is just a phone. I am happy Nextel and Motorola remain focused on what is critical: excellent call reception, clarity, contact list, full-duplex speakerphone, standardized headset jack, and recently – bluetooth for car and more headset functionality.
Work is beginning to calm down a little now that we are on Eastern Daylight Time and management finally realizes there is nothing to worry about, and I can enjoy long conference calls with my hands free.
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