What else can be said about cellphones that hasn't been said over and over? Am I about to trumpet the virtues of the iPhone, rant about students randomly calling their parents from school on their "against policy" phones, or talk about my wife's need to upgrade to a "dumb-phone" with a keyboard since she texts regularly now?
No, nothing so exciting, just plain laziness. In my house, I'm the fetcher. Josh is the fetcher in training, but he's only good for small pieces of trash and papers off the printers at this point. So anything else is really up to me. This was especially significant the last 2 summers, since Camille has had back surgery both of them. In general, its not bad with the exception of the cellphone issue! We've not had a landline for a number of years now and are quite happy with simply having our individual cellphones. However, there is a fly in the ointment. I hate running across the house to get/find it!
We're all familiar with this drill. Phone rings, and your spouse looks at you helplessly since she's laid up from back surgery, you run across the house trying in vain to get to the phone before it goes to voicemail, you can't find it or you drop it while trying to get the darned thing open and it....goes to VM! Or better yet, you are talking and have to go into another room since the kids are being loud and the signal is lost or voice quality goes into the Darth Vader mode since you don't have enough bars in enough places.
I used to have a solution to this issue, back in the dark pre-GSM days when I had this cradle that I put my phone in, then it sent the signal to a 2-line Semiens deskphone system that distributed to all of the handsets strewn throughout the house. The cellphone stayed in it's cradle where it got charged and stayed put in a place where it got a good signal. Unfortunately, those cradles have gone the way of the DoDo; so what to do?
Recently I ran across a system called "Link-to-Cell" put out by Panasonic implemented in a DECT 6.0 expandable phone system. Unfortunately, the retail on a 2 handset system was around $120 (well beyond "Frugal" guidelines for phone items). So I kept looking on eBay regularly and sure enough, they sold for less there, but still in the around $50 range. I couldn't pull the trigger on it, but was able to wait out an auction for a set that didn't sell. I contacted the buyer and "low and behold" he offered it to me for $30 including shipping! I jumped all over that and PayPaled the payment.
Yesterday, it arrived and I've been playing with it ever since. It's really very simple. You connect it to up to two Bluetooth enabled cellphones and the little box sends the signal to the wireless handsets in the house. The phone connects when you go into the room, you put the phone down whereever it gets good signal and you're done! From there you just use the normal-phone looking handsets just like a regular phone.
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