Landlines and Phone Booths
When cell phones first hit the scene and the “Zack Morris” was the coolest thing on the block, but mobile phone service wasn’t exactly the cheapest thing in the world. The reception wasn’t the best, voice quality was mediocre, and battery life was far from being truly acceptable. Times have changed and many people are abandoning their landlines in favor of a cell phone-only existence. I’m one of these people.
There are certainly some arguments for why a person or a company would want to keep a landline telephone. There’s that whole issue of 911 service, of course, as well as the issues with reliability. Having consistent service with a landline is easier than having consistent service with a cell phone.
That said, the pros of a landline-free existence far outweigh the cons. Do you need to make long distance calls? Skype and other VoIP services are far more affordable. Moreover, there’s no real reason to need a landline if you have a cell phone with you all the time. Why pay for two services when just one will do?
I still find phone booths to be a bit of an oddity, but I guess they have to be there for tourists (who don’t have a cell phone that’ll work locally) and for rural locations where cellular service is sketchy at best.
Do You Have a Fax Number?
As a tech journalist and someone who reviews a fair number of products over the course of any given month, I interact with quite a few couriers and delivery people on a fairly regular basis. Most of this interaction is quite congenial, but I’ll come across some negative experiences with couriers too.
Well, I recently send a product back to the manufacturer and I assumed that it got there. Three months later, the manufacturer inquired about the whereabouts of this product. After digging up the tracking number, I looked through the online interface to discover that the only scan was the pickup scan. The parcel was lost somewhere along the way. Uh oh. That’s not good.
I called the courier to see what happened and they said that they would investigate. The representative on the line asked if I had a fax number where they would be able to send supporting documentation and so forth. While many companies still use fax machines to this day, I don’t. I don’t need one. It’s just so much easier to have something scanned and emailed as a PDF, because the last thing that I need is another loose piece of paper floating around my home office.
Fax machines should go the way of the dinosaur. With the instant delivery and reliability of email, fax should be a thing of the past.
Even If You’re an Early Adopter…
Some technology just refuses to die. It’ll straggle behind, because there is still a demographic that wants to use it. Sometimes, it’ll get repurposed (a wristwatch is more a piece of jewelry than it is a timepiece). Other times, it’ll stick around because of people who refuse to adopt something new and better. Even when legislation kicks in like in the case of the transition to Digital TV, there will probably still be people out there wondering what happened when their sets go to snow and that antenna on the roof no longer works.
The almighty early adopter is guilty too. Even though you happen to be an early adopter of most new tech, you’re probably holding on to some old school technology too. Do you still read the dead-tree edition of your local newspaper when you can also read the news online? Do you still watch DVDs when the content can be delivered in digital format? Yeah… me too.
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