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Upgrade my arse — 4 Comments

  1. Ah, the good old days of Bakelite phones! Our first phone didn't even have a dial – you had to pick it up and wait for the operator to answer, and tell her (it was always a her) the number you wanted, and she'd connect you. It did have a nifty little drawer at the bottom with a card that you could write important numbers on, though! There were no area codes either. Our phone number was the name of the town we lived plus three digits. Which goes to show how many phones there were in our town!

    Smart phones are an odd one. I quite like some of the functions that are available to me now, like for instance if I can pick up a WiFi signal where I am, I can make free international calls via Viber. Also, when I'm in Patras, I can use it as a WiFi hotspot, and it connects to my laptop and gives me internet fast enough to stream motor racing live. The camera is handy too, because although I have a good camera, it's not something I can put in my pocket, whereas the phone tends to be with me all the time, and with the work I do, I take a lot of pics of aspects of a job for further perusal at home. On the other hand, they do seem to have a mind of their own, which is sometimes frustrating. I have a bit of software that is an antivirus, but which also cleans out the cache on a regular basis and monitors what the various applications are doing unnecessarily. It still has brainstorms now and again, though (well, it is a computer), in which case a re-boot usually sorts it out.

    • Indeed I remember the UK system.  I had an uncle on the West Wratting exchange, which I see now is prefix 01223 – not quite so romantic?  And who can forget the radio news where every report of a crime asked us to call Scotland Yard at Whitehall 1212?

      I tend to use my phone as a reminder for events and as an alarm clock.  I also have a birthday reminder which is handy.  Apart from that it's just a phone!  There are precious few hotspots around here, or for that matter anywhere I tend to go, so the Interweb thing doesn't get that much use.  As a phone though, it's grand.  My only problem with that is keeping track of the vast array of numbers that are stored, especially as at one stage it somehow sucked in all my Farcebook contacts!

  2. Now I'm not as old as you geezers but I do remember our phone number being Kingswood 5-9443.  I can also remember having to call the operator to make a long distance call.  She would call you back when there was a line open.  I too have a smart phone now.  An Apple iPhone6 no less.  I love it.  I was at a gun store the other day and someone mentioned that movie with Robert Redford wherein he worked for the CIA but noone could remember the name of the flick.  Out pops the iPhone and a minute later I says, "Three days of the Condor".

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