We all know that men (big boys) like their toys, and spend a lot of money on them. Did you know that some of us women like toys too? Well, I'm here to tell you that I am one of those women. I like toys. Hey, you... yes, you... get your mind out of the gutter. I am not talking about that kind of toys, this is a family friendly blog! haha.
A couple weeks ago I ordered a gizmo called MagicJack. You plug any regular phone into it, then plug it into the USB port of your computer. With this, you can make free phone calls anywhere in Canada & the USA, and people can call in to you too. You pay $40 to get this gizmo and the first year's use, then $20 each year after that to keep using it. Since I pay $25 per month for my local calling, then more on top of that for long distance, whether I call long distance or not, I figured this would be an awesome saving. $20 per year sure beats $25 plus per month. My MagicJack arrived day before yesterday and I started using it yesterday. The first time, you have to register it and get a phone number for it. As I did this, I found out that they don't have Canadian numbers for this yet, so you have to use a US number. Not cool!!! Oh, I can still use it to make calls, and they promise me the Canadian numbers will be available by the end of this year and I can get one then for free. In the meantime, I still have to keep my current land line because I can't have people phoning long distance to the US to talk to me here. Okay, so that's only maximum 3 month, so not really a huge deal. Dan was here with me at the time I registered and hooked up the MJ, so I called his cell. It was clear enough, we could hear each other well enough, but there was a lag time. However, if we weren't in the same room we couldn't hear the person until it came through the phone, so likely you wouldn't even notice the lag time. Later in the evening, Dan was home and called me, using his Skype so he could call my computer phone without the long distance charges. I could hardly make out a word he was saying, well I could hardly hear the words for one thing, and it was breaking up some for another thing. He seemed to be able to hear me well enough, though I didn't think to ask him for sure. Later still, I called a friend who lives in town here and she could hardly hear me and said I was breaking up really badly. I had to hang up and go to my "real" phone to call her back and tell her what was going on, haha. Really had her wondering why I was calling her from a number in New Mexico, lol. So, I think I will be sending back my MagicJack. I'll try it a few more times yet and see for sure, but so far I am NOT impressed with what sounded so good in the TV ad and on their web site.
Also, I have been wanting a PDA. Rev. Dale and Rev. Sheila both said I should just get a Blackberry or similar phone as that is a PDA and phone combination. I looked into that, but since I have more than two years left on my 3 year contract, I can't get a new cell yet without paying full price and that is a LOT for one of these kind of phones. I ended up deciding that I'd just have to keep writing stuff on paper until my cell contract runs out, then see what I think at that time. However, a few days ago I was looking around on Kijiji.com and found a PalmOne Tungsten E2 for sale. Supposedly in 'like new' condition, for $125, and here in the city where I live. I contacted the gentleman and offered him $100. He wasn't real happy about coming down that low for it, but decided to accept my offer. I guess he realized that with everyone wanting the PDA/phone, not many are buying just PDAs any more. In fact, the reason he was selling this one is that he'd gotten himself Palm's version of the Blackberry. So, I drove out to his place and got my Palm which really IS in 'like new' condition. I'm really impressed with how good it is. I don't think he used it much while he had it. So, now I have my electronic organizer to keep track of my Toastmaster and Centre for Spiritual Living commitments as well as all my other appointments, etc. I can also (once I get a memory card for it so it will hold big files) can use it to read e-books, so I can again "take a good book to bed" rather than taking my computer to bed. I always like to carry a book with me when I go places, in case I have some time to kill, and this is great if I am reading a regular book (have a stack waiting for me to read), though I also have e-books I want to read, some really fabulous books that don't kill trees to be read. Okay, so maybe I'm making excuses to justify my spending money on 'toys'... haha.
Oh well, I like my toys and that's reason enough to get them for me.
2 comments:
Sorry the phone turned out to be less than a great toy but glad your PalmOne turned out to be even better than you expected. New toys are always fun.
That's too bad the Magic Jack didn't turn out to be a good buy. It sounded great -- I use a cell phone for all of my calls but have an apartment intercom I don't have hooked up because I don't want to pay for a local phone line. I got all excited about the possibility of using it for that purpose -- oh well!
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