In Defense of the Low-Tech Individual

[travelover]

........ So far, I can't say that I feel my life is constrained or inconvenienced in any way.

But.....but when you are away from a wifi connection, how do you watch kitten videos and argue with strangers on the internet?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Harrrumphhhh! $0.83 per month - T-Mobile 'Gold Status'. $10/year and unused minutes roll over.

You are the Man !

I have to explain I'm not a techno-phobe, I have linux computers at home, tablets, and a bunch of smartphones at home (that I sometimes use with wi-fi) and all this tech gear - I just don't really need a smartphone enough to want to pay the monthly bill for data I would rarely use.

Just let em' know you pay 83 cents a month cell phone bill !

 

[Throwdownmyaceinthehole]

Had a pay as you go flip phone, until today, when it bounced off the dock into the lake. Will be about 20 bucks to replace it.

 

[pjm-7]

Ah, another "low-tech" thread. As you know I don't have cable TV and still use my flipper phone. However, for my birthday today I re-activated my SiriusXM radio in my car for $20 for five months. Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h. I thought it might come in handy this summer for road trips.

 

[ERD50]

Originally Posted by ERD50 View Post
I have to explain I'm not a techno-phobe, I have linux computers at home, tablets, and a bunch of smartphones at home (that I sometimes use with wi-fi) and all this tech gear - I just don't really need a smartphone enough to want to pay the monthly bill for data I would rarely use.

Just let em' know you pay 83 cents a month cell phone bill !

I have. They are not impressed! (As we order another $8 barleywine.)

-ERD50

 

[Bamaman]

Everywhere I go, I see the younger generation hung up on their smartphones. I call'em the one armed generation.

Our great granddaughter had a large birthday party 2 weeks ago. There were about 25 adults there, and I looked up and saw every single one with their nose in those damned phones--ignoring the party and everyone there.

As a retiree, I see a cellphone useful to carry when I go out on my 24' boat. In case it won't start. And that phone will be borrowed from my wife.

I no longer carry any phone. Since I don't work, there are few people I ever talked to--maybe 5-10 calls per month. My wife talks on the phone enough for the both of us.

 

[tinlizzy]

I still have never had a cell phone. Everyone hates that I don't have one except me.


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[target2019]

I enjoy hi-tech. It enabled my career. I have a lot of fun with it.
If you don't want to go along, that is fine.

 

[kcowan]

For what it's worth, my parents took to iOS much better than Android. Mom hated her Android smartphone. Granted, that was circa Gingerbread/iOS 4. Now, both mom and dad have iPads, too, and mom is surprisingly more advanced in her usage than I expected her to be. She uses a bunch of apps now - Facebook, Skype, Pandora, YouTube, etc.

DW started with an iPad. Then she wanted to take pictures on the move and wanted an iPhone. So I bought a used 4C for $100 with a $100/yr plan. She had a Motorola flip phone before.

Now she has an iPhone 5 and I retired my Samsung for her 4C. I found the whole iOS experience a treat compared to Android. She remains the Apple expert.

 

[folivier]

I always have my smartphone with me. Mostly to read kindle ebooks.

 

[FUEGO]

If having a smart phone is the default among the people you interact with, you will lose out over time if you don't have one. I found this out. My other big use, beyond social connection is local transit. Instead of standing in the wind for an unknown period, I show up at the stop just in time, and the buses/trains are tracked to show updated itineraries.

A smart phone is much cheaper than a car.

This, and a thousand other uses is why I spent $100 on a used smartphone and subscribed to a free cell plan (no, not the govt phone; freedompop).

We have the bus locator app locally too (transloc??). Very nice modern approach to making transit accessible to non-traditional users.

Then there's Uber. Another great app for getting around town.

Real time radar, GPS, maps, etc all make trekking through the woods a little safer. And if you get hurt, help isn't far away (assuming you can get some bars!).

I use it for navigation all the time (in the car, on foot, satellite imagery/google streetview to determine pedestrian cut through/short cut possibility).

We bought a new used car this week and it was invaluable to research on the fly (does this car have a timing belt; what's the service interval), coordinate adding auto insurance, coordinate the independent inspection, etc.

When I get bored I have a library of books on it, and I can check out more from the real library.

Oh yeah I think I can receive and place telephone calls from it but not sure how that works.

For under $100 it's an amazing device. I went without a smartphone until 2010 but probably won't go smartphone free again.

 

[KmmFIdreamer]

Got my first smartphone this year. I never thought I needed one, but now I love that I can check my email, the weather, news, or do whatever while sitting on the bus. It frees up a lot of time that I used to spend sitting in front of my desktop at home.

Now I get to waste that time on doing stuff like posting here. I do kinda miss those bus naps though on the way to/from work!

 

[MasterBlaster]

This, and a thousand other uses is why I spent $100 on a used smartphone and subscribed to a free cell plan (no, not the govt phone; freedompop).

FREE ! - Well that's my favorite price ! I'll look into this when my time runs out on my TracFone plan.

What's the catch ?

 

[Midpack]

I was an early adopter on the Internet, but a late adopter on an iPad (got one as a gift) and even later on the iPhone (DW forced the issue) - all due to $'s vs value. But I don't plan to go backward.

It's fine if others voluntarily choose a low tech life, really. Each of us can decide if we're missing anything as a result.

But along the lines of haha's POV, when reaching out to several others (vs one on one):

• When I email friends/acquaintances and they rarely/never reply because they 'look at email every two weeks' - sorry, but not my problem.
• Friends who don't read texts are going to miss some things.
• When I post info on a club website and Facebook page, and members tell me they 'don't look at the web regularly, or Facebook' - not my problem. One member (of 190 members) confronted me and asked why he wasn't told about an upcoming event. I told him it was on the web, Facebook and his email to which he said 'if you want me to know about club activities, I expect you to call me' - definitely not my problem.

Not knowing how to use a PC/internet is rapidly (if not already) becoming the equivalent of not knowing how to read 50 years ago. Not using email is rapidly becoming the equivalent of not using a phone 50 years ago.

Thankfully Luddites will never prevail...

 

[2017ish]

... Not using email is rapidly becoming the equivalent of not using a phone 50 years ago.

Thankfully Luddites will never prevail...

Amazingly, email is itself rapidly becoming old-school. My eldest and his SanFran/S.V. friends rarely use it; we remind him by text or google hangout to look for email if we sent him anything. Otherwise, he might see it weeks later. (And, at his job, the internal chat board is used instead of email for most communications)

 

[hesperus]

In retirement I have refused to buy a smartphone, and am doing just fine. Don't need a computer in my pocket, when I already have one at home. I have only a flip cell phone with text. I'm good It's funny how quickly people consider them a 'necessity'. Maybe for work, but not much else other than entertainment.

 

[bld999]

In retirement I have refused to buy a smartphone, and am doing just fine. Don't need a computer in my pocket, when I already have one at home. I have only a flip cell phone with text. I'm good It's funny how quickly people consider them a 'necessity'. Maybe for work, but not much else other than entertainment.

You're right, nobody needs one. People choose them after considering the notion that they can save a bunch of their time. If you use a traffic app to save you 2 hours a week, that's a plus, not to mention the aggravation avoided. I see your avatar is about skiing, here in my state we have "snotel" stations that report snow conditions in real time at different locations in the mountains. Sure, you can wait till you get home to know the snow score if you insist. That's really just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[HFWR]

I can access all my email accounts from my phone. And it indicates, on the home screen, if there's an unread message, so no excuse, or as Midpack so eloquently put it, "Not my problem".

My iphone is my only phone, though "phone" is almost a misnomer, since the voice-calling feature is one of the least used.

Apps include numerous financial (banking, cc, insurance, investments), travel (airlines, rental cars, hotels, maps, weather, gps), social media (facebook, erorg, match, etc), and shopping (amazon, costco, overstock, florist, concert/movie tickets, pizza delivery...). Plus the ubiquitous text, camera, photo storage, music player, clock, compass, calculator...

Pretty handy contraption, if you ask me.

 

[Midpack]

Amazingly, email is itself rapidly becoming old-school. My eldest and his SanFran/S.V. friends rarely use it; we remind him by text or google hangout to look for email if we sent him anything. Otherwise, he might see it weeks later. (And, at his job, the internal chat board is used instead of email for most communications)

No argument, and yet I know people who still refuse to use/read their emails. I wonder why they have email addresses (not really)?

 

[MichaelB]

Amazingly, email is itself rapidly becoming old-school. My eldest and his SanFran/S.V. friends rarely use it; we remind him by text or google hangout to look for email if we sent him anything. Otherwise, he might see it weeks later. (And, at his job, the internal chat board is used instead of email for most communications)

So, does that mean that luddiutes / old pharts / curmudgeons that never learned to use email will soon be considered leading edge and part of the vanguard?

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

I find it somewhat humorous that we still call the super-computers "phones." That is probably the least used feature on mine (also a Republic Wireless user...between $10 and $14 a month depending on data). The phone part is important to me...my Dad isn't a young whipper snapper anymore and so if something happens, I would like him to be able to get a hold of me (as well as his medical monitoring and alarm companies). If he wasn't around, I would probably leave it at home quite a bit.

Also, I love the "you don't have to have it" argument. Sure, you don't need a microwave, either, but they sure come in handy sometimes, eh?

 

[MRG]

I fought getting a smartphone passionately. My last manager insisted on it and I gave in. His reason for insisting drove me nutty. He'd recently had a coworker implement monitoring at a very low level(disk sector reallocation) so we now got several hundred pages a night. My beloved flip phone wouldn't keep up so the answer was 5 people needed smartphones so we could all not read hundreds of texts all night long.:what:

After I retired I woke up to the power of the technology. I could do many of the things with a dozen different solutions but why?

 

[haha]

I don't think anyone needs to be defended for his choices. I also think people who flatly state that a smart phone or a whatever is not needed is a bit too full of himself. Who appointed him to decide what other people may feel that they need?

This board can be Puratinville. I don't care if someone wants to sleep in a doorway on a sheet of cardboard. I don't, and I think these two different choices are a minimum level of self determination that we should have as over 21 citizens of a putatively free country

I don't have a car, and I know many others who do not have cars. Do I think that this means that cars are unnecessary? For me, I would say provisionally yes, but I can think of many things that could make this no longer true, and many people who have decided that it is far from true for them. For example my young and pretty neighbor who works a few blocks away is certainly in good health so she could walk to work. Yet she keeps a nice Lexus in her parking slot, because she wants it available to her. Is it my business to tell her or any other car owners that they don't need one or more? Don't think so.

Ha

 

[dixonge]

I've been mostly cutting/bleeding edge of technology for many years. I've had and used every OS on every desktop, laptop, phone and tablet (except for an Android tablet). We are currently using Windows 10 on 2 laptops, iOS on an iPad Mini (won it in a contest) and Android on 2 phones. I am running the stock OS as installed by Asus, my wife is running Cyanogenmod which I installed myself.

Having said that, I experiment with older technology just to keep it real I still use paper for certain tasks. I have discovered that I can read faster with paper books vs. Kindle - not sure why. But texting with plain cell phones is a major PITA after you get used to a smartphone keyboard. Maps, Google, etc. My wife uses VOICE to search things on Google. It's that good. Music in the car - streams on my phone vs the radio and the damned incessant ads. Many reasons I'll keep a smartphone of some sort.

My Dad is 85 and has already advanced from an iPhone to a big Samsung Android phone. He uses it a lot! My mom, not so much.

 

[HadEnuff]

I second Meadbh's opinion.
My mom was like that. Afraid to touch anything for fear of breaking something.

What worked with her (at least to some extent) was sitting with her and prompting her to use a phone (or a computer, same thing).

"Try something"
"What should I press?"
It doesn't matter, just try anything you think might work. You can't hurt it, and if you do I'll be here to fix it."

Repeat until the lesson begins to sink in.

HTH.

I had just the opposite experience. My dad, who passed away 3 years ago at the age of 88 was the gadget head I would seek out when my Apple, or iPhone wasn't doing what I thought it should do. At the assisted living center where he lived his last 4 years he was the GO TO guy for Apple issues. He was living in Ithaca, NY, and I was with him in Idaho when his phone rang at 6AM Mountain Time, when another resident from his community was having a computer issue.

One day I was fixing a tooth for him and every time my hands left his mouth, the iPhone came up. I chided him that I usually only have this problem with adolescents, and I typically only have to admonish once before the problem goes away. Not with Dad.
It just so happened that this is what we were doing when I once again asked him to get the phone out of my way and he said, "Herman Cain evidently put his hand up some woman's dress, who was not his wife."...
"Really? Dad? That couldn't wait until 4 O'Clock? My life is richer learning this right now?"
I thought it was funny, but he didn't really laugh. Maybe it was the novocaine.