Food for Thought

[seangee]

We use our landline for incoming calls because that's the number most people have. But my husband and I both have dumb phones which we make calls with as we pay less for calls using those.
We use laptops for everything most people use smart phones for.

Interesting. When we had our fibre upgrade the provider gave us a box so we could plug our analogue phone in and keep the same number. The quality is diabolical! Since the only calls we ever get on there are spam sales calls we simply unplugged it. Even Elaine's 90 yr old mum regularly calls on Whatsapp.
Yet our neigbbours (in their 70s) refuse to upgrade their dumb phones and choose to pay for their weekly calls to their daughter / grand daughter in Germany. He is fairly IT literate (although I do occasionally have to help out) and they are happpy to use the PC to do shopping, banking, and other stuff online.

 

[GaryE]

Most of my time on TFF is laptop, because visually, I need larger images than a smart phone offers. We ditched our landline years ago. The smart phone's useful for travel, so a simpler phone wouldn't be worth it. If I didn't travel, texting would do.

We get set in our ways, especially for those of us out of the active workforce.

 

[Panda_Monium]

My Mum finally disconnected the landline after scammers called her EVERY TIME she turned on her pc.... They would call (on the landline, as she also has a smart phone) and say her pc security had been compromised so they needed to connect to it remotely to fix it.
So it's not just Big Brother who's watching!
Here in Australia, one of the biggest Government and Telco rorts is leading people to believe they have to have home internet as well as smart phones - so people pay 2 separate bills and they make more $$$. Not me. I've got enough data included with my mobile plan that I simply connect my set top box (which is Not a smart appliance) to my TV (also not a smart appliance), so I can stream shows etc. I do the same with my laptop when I need to work online. I have the front & back camera covered, and the microphone access off unless I need it for a meeting. I also turn off my phone's microphone when I'm not on a call and have a sliding rear camera cover built in to my phone case. I do leave my gps on, but locatability isn't that important to me. Having said that, I've been able to get out of a couple of parking fines by showing where I was and how long I was there using my gps tracking history! Lol!
It's not paranoia. I've even tested the theory that smartphones are listening by deliberately talking about a random subject. The next time I logged into my online shopping app, items related to the conversation were in my feed. And pop-up ads on my phone browser were also relative to the conversation. So yep. They Do listen.
So do my fish.

 

[Essjay]

Interesting. When we had our fibre upgrade the provider gave us a box so we could plug our analogue phone in and keep the same number. The quality is diabolical! Since the only calls we ever get on there are spam sales calls we simply unplugged it. Even Elaine's 90 yr old mum regularly calls on Whatsapp.
Yet our neigbbours (in their 70s) refuse to upgrade their dumb phones and choose to pay for their weekly calls to their daughter / grand daughter in Germany. He is fairly IT literate (although I do occasionally have to help out) and they are happpy to use the PC to do shopping, banking, and other stuff online.

We were changed last year from copper landline to VoIP by plugging the landline phone into the router and the quality on the landline didn't change so we're quite happy to receive calls on that. Yes we do get calls dropping out but at least with VoIP we don't get that time delay we often got with the copper landline.
700 minutes per month for the landline would cost over £10 per month. Our mobile tariff is £4 per month each for unlimited calls and texts. We do pay a small monthly amount to have a landline but we still break even and we can use our mobiles away from home. Last year my husband went to Romania for a few days with our son, grandson and Romanian daughter-in-law and his calls home were included in the tariff. We don't know anyone else living outside the UK.

There are two issues with smart phones - well two for me and one for my husband. Neither of us could read a smart phone without our reading glasses, and my husband doesn't carry his when he goes out. I have my last prescription in my bag but they're not as good as my current prescription. When we are at home, a laptop screen is so much easier to read. And I have terrible hand-eye co-ordination. Last time I tried logging in to TFF on my 10 inch Fire tablet it took me 3 attempts to hit the right letters of the password, and that's after enlarging the keypad to fill half the screen I mainly use that as an e-reader (wearing my reading glasses )

 

[Essjay]

We used to get scam calls about our computer not working properly so just enter this and we can fix it remotely but we haven't had any scam calls for a while now. I just checked and no, the setting by the provider to block calls is still disabled. I won't use that after the same company's software 'decided' that emails from TFF were spam so stopped them even reaching my account instead of putting them in the spam folder even though TFF was in the safe sender list. If they do that to emails they can do it to legitimate phone calls as well.

We don't pick up a number we don't recognise but let them go to the answering machine. If the message they start leaving shows it's a legitimate call we just pick up the call. It's spam emails we get plagued with. I've just cleared 30 from my server's spam folder and half were about our (non-existent) McAffee subscription expiring.

 

[fishorama]

We had flip phones we rarely used; we paid $20/3 months. Then our phone co. got sold & the new co. was awful. We signed up for auto-pay...but we had to log in & pay at least $1every 3 months. How is that automatic?!? We had a few $100s of credit from our old co. We just stopped paying the new co when they'd no longer support our flip phones. Forget that! Then they gave us free smart phones, so we did it for a bit longer when they needed the quarterly payment & suddenly our old credits were gone! Not playing anymore!

So, we have "smart phones" that don't have a carrier. We can use them via wifi & for emergencies, meh. We have computers for at home...but my PC died recently so I'm using a laptop I don't like. We use it for travelling but not banking or anything important. It could be stolen & I'm paranoid enough not to want my real stuff compromised. I use my husband's PC for bills, etc.

We never answer landline calls that don't ID themselves & we know. I've already had the Medicare scammers try it on, bah! & of course, the contractor calls...we can't just block them for some CA? reason...like we need that.

We had a hybrid car w/built-in GPS but when the screen died, we lost GPS & climate control. Our new cheap non-hybrid car has no cool features but is much cheaper to maintain. We're back to studying maps & writing directions on paper. We get lost going to new places often (sigh).

This summer we're doing a driving trip to a wedding in Montana & GPS, if it works in the middle of nowhere, would be nice. But only if we don't have to buy new expensive phones. So, I'm shopping...slowly & not happily.

Has anyone done the "senior discount" plans available on some US carriers? Other than this summer trip we probably won't use them often. We have ATT for our other stuff.