The Big Picture..... Err; The Family Portrait: Part 1, Phones

 

Lately, I've talked a fair amount about individual computers in our home system, but haven't "gone around the horn" (an American idiom meaning "to cover everything", to our international readers) in quite a while. So, it being around New Years, both Julian and Chinese calendar-wise is probably a good time as any to take a look at my ever changing home system..... before it changes again!

 

First of all; let's define a few things so that we can all understand the situation. We're a modern American family, so in terms of technology (which incidentally is what this blog is all about), we have a desire/need to stay connected as well as have expectations of leveraging technologies for our jobs, and leisure. So let's look at how we accomplish all that. I'm going to break this up into categories and today's is phone day.....

 

Communication is the most basic and fundamental of these needs and going back to around the turn of this last century, we gave up the use of "land-lines" for our phone service. Today, our family uses a combination of "smart" and "dumb" phones. My wife and I use the Apple iPhone 5S. They're still the "5" series because it accomplishes what we need it to, but not the "6" even though we qualify for an "upgrade" because we hate to change phones and the "6" doesn't do anything that we need done that the "5" doesn't. We use the iPhones since my wife was pretty tied to the Apple "Eco-System" since she uses iOS devices in the form of iPads both personally and in her teaching. I have an iPhone because my son does not communicate well and translated "I don't want an iPhone" into "Daddy, doesn't care" while my wife was doing her upgrade! I was quite happy with Android! My fault for allowing my 10 (at the time) year old son to carry the message to Mom. 

I do use a Pebble "smart-watch" because I'm a classroom teacher and don't like to constantly look at my phone. It's been absolutely the best technology decision I've made in the last 5 years! Now I can see when it's the doctor's office regarding an appointment (because nobody want to have to call those people back) or the daughter's school with an emergency (because with daughter, it's always an emergency) or God forbid, my wife (for obvious reasons)! On these rare occurances, I can excuse myself and step out of the room and take the call. I've pretty much stopped wearing my other watches unless we're camping.

My other phone accessory is something I go back and forth on: the Panasonic "Link2Cell" system. On the surface, it's one of those things that's a really great idea. What's not to like? You walk in the house, and put down your phone somewhere in the neighborhood of the "Link2Cell" base, and the Bluetooth connects the two together. It hands off the phone functions to the base and like magic, it's a cordless land-line so you don't have to run around the house looking for you cellphone when it rings! You just pick up the nearest cordless phone from the system and it talks back to the base through the usual 2.4Ghz system. ...... except, not really. You often have to remember to go to the base and push a button because the system didn't automatically connect. Then you have to remember to NOT use the actual cellphone since it's now in "headset" mode and you can't talk into it. Well, you can, but no one will hear you. And sometimes, there are signal issues. Can't decide whether I'm under-utilizing it because I'm not used to it, or because it doesn't work well. Jury is out on this gizmo! 

The kids have "dumb-phones". They are kids and the only reason they even have phones is for communications since they're on opposite ends of towns and attend schools that neither my wife nor I are teaching. Plus, daughter walks to a friend's house after school and we like to know when she's gotten there. Why "dumb"? OK; call us old fashioned, out of touch, whatever..... My son is 12 and daughter is 9: these are to communicate only, not so they can start developing what we consider bad habits of constantly messing around on their phone with earbuds in, and not paying attention to the world around them! End of rant.

What's in our com-roadmap when it's finally time to replace the "5s"? Not sure that I'll go back to Android despite the SNAFU that caused me to be Apple-bound originally. I have to say that I like the lightning connector WAY more than the ill-conceived micro-USB. At the end of the day, the likely thing that will keep me from switching is the convenience of not having a different cord than the one my wife uses.