Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Have a Pager? Do You Find It Useful? 307
New submitter Chance Callahan writes: I am starting a business, helping a friend with his own startup, and volunteering regularly with a major political campaign (#feelthebern). One thing I have noticed is that my phone likes to die at the most inconvenient times and leaves me out of touch with people. With the business I'm starting requiring clients to be able to get ahold me quickly, I have been seriously considering getting a two-way pager. It's much easier swap out a AA battery once a month then to worry "will client X be able to get ahold me in the event of an emergency?" So, Slashdot, the million dollar question is, in the age of cell phones, do you have a pager? Do you still find it useful? Do any other "dead-tech" tools still play a big role for your communications? For example, fax machines are still big in Japan, and a lot of people keep landlines, too.
Extra battery? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not buy one of those easy-to-find extra battery USB-charger things and carry that with you instead?
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I keep seeing them on Kinja for like $10 - $20. Some of them even have built in flashlights and whatnot. Sounds much more useful than a pager IMO.
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They are. I have a 15000 mAh unit; two, 2.4 ampere outputs. Wouldn't be without it, can't really, at least unless the companies making the cellphones stop putting too-small batteries in them. last weekend I drove five hours, during about 3 of which we were either completely out of contact or only in distant contact with a cell tower (Montana... lots and lots of empty space.) When we left the city, my phone was at 25%. I kept the phone (a Galaxy Note III with an aftermarket "big" battery that's good for abou
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I even have a battery that includes a wi-fi hub for sharing data (unfortunately, it doesn't include a network jack and the wireless network it creates is local and only useful for file sharing).....but those batteries are really easy to find. Most of them will even fully charge a phone two or three times.
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Why not buy one of those easy-to-find extra battery USB-charger things and carry that with you instead?
This is a much better solution than having to give all the contacts another number to try you at if your phone's dead.
If you're going to carry an extra device, might has well make it 99% battery/device ratio.
Also -- should have been a better shopper when picking your phone. I recommend the phone finder at GSMArena [gsmarena.com] to narrow down requirements (including talk/standby time for the battery).
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This is a much better solution than having to give all the contacts another number to try you at if your phone's dead.
I set up my pager to receive a copy of my important emails. No additional contact information required.
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or just some 101 or whatever nokia s30 device you find..
it's like a pager. except cheaper monthly cost and can call on it.
nobody uses pagers unless theres some burocratic or regulation reason anymore..
Re:Extra battery? (Score:4, Informative)
I would like to suggest one better: If your phone is one that allows you to remove the batter (i.e. not an Apple or a OnePlus or a few others), just get a spare battery of the type that the phone takes. When your phone dies, reach into your pocket, pull out the spare battery, and switch it for the one that is in the phone. It's instant, efficient, and doesn't require you to juggle your phone plus another box for whatever length of time it takes your phone to charge.
Additionally (and this is good for all phones), if you are traveling much by car, get a cigarette-lighter charger for your phone. Plug it in whenever you are in your car.
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iPhone battery life is not great especially if you do a lot of stuff on your phone. When it's plugged in charging, the iPhone is not in my pocket. I'm usually all over the place during the day. My phone is charging at my desk, but I'm not there and miss stuff. I also have small charger that's about the size of my thumb. But this requires a wire to be attached between the phone the charger. It's real clunkly. It doesn't all fit in one handle easily. It would be nice to have a phone that can last for a few days or be able to swap batteries on the fly. But this is not the case with iPhones. Plus you have to remember to charge it each night.
Do you know how to shut down apps on your iPhone? (insert curse about apple not having shit for manuals here)
Double tap the home button and swipe up on all the stuff that appears. If you shut things down, the battery lasts much longer.
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iPhones still have pretty horrible battery compared to cheap low end dumb phones.
iPhone is at 4-5 days, IF you turn off data roaming, 3G/4G and GPS for all apps except Camera and calender.
Dumbphone is at 6-14 days depending on model, or 4-5 with realworld usage.
PowerBank + WallWart + RollUp (Score:3)
extra battery USB-charger things
Yup, I would definitely agree with this.
My setup up is:
- 10'000mAh USB powerbank [mrhandsfree.com] (good for ~4x full recharge of the smartphone)
- small compact USB wallwart [hama.com] that can still deliver at least 1'000mA (2'100mA model in the same build size are starting to appear).
- USB roll-up cable (take very little place and doesn't tangle)
With that I'm good to go every-where for long period of time. I can recharge the smartphone on the go with the powerbank.
Or plug it into the wall, or even into the electrical outlets availabl
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Holy crap, I got a first post AND a 5, Insightful? How often does that happen?
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You go on a lot of two day trips where a wall socket wasn't available? And on these trips, the cigarette lighter must not work and can't send out a charge.
Yes considering how poor cell coverage is! (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I work in downtown Seattle, cell coverage doesn't work at all below ground or in our office building if you're not near a window. We have to still use pagers.
Re: Yes considering how poor cell coverage is! (Score:5, Interesting)
This. Cellphones, like wireless Ethernet, use frequencies that are just too high to penetrate. I think our pager system is 26MHz, and works even in the bottom of our parking garage.
Re: Yes considering how poor cell coverage is! (Score:5, Funny)
It won't even penetrate our cube walls
You're supposed to drill through the wall before you try to run Ethernet through it.
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Not sure what kind of cubes you guys have, but for us (similar size space, 8x7' workstations), a single Ubiquity AC-Lite access point in the center of the office easily covers everything... with measurements taken on the floor in corners, and the access point on 5GHz only.
Of course we have three to be able to reduce power on each and improve throughput, but not for coverage.
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I once worked at a university wherein most of there labs were below ground. A major concern became the lack of cell service below ground. We have come to a point in society where buildings need cell repeaters installed in these areas as it is becoming a life safety issue. Good Luck
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Or you can just switch to a carrier that allows wi-fi calling, such as T-Mobile. A lot cheaper than $200K.
3rd time: Wireless ethernet doesn't exist (Score:2)
I'm maybe 25% of the way down the page and already I've seen three posts from you about "wireless ethernet". Since you feel the need to keep posting that in reply to every message , I'll let you know: wireless Ethernet does not exist. No such thing. Unless it's installed in a Ford Chevy, by a man woman, during winter summer.
Perhaps the reason the people who make the standards have an opinion different from yours is because they have some clue what they're talking about.
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You missed your chance to ask the parent how their ALOHAnet implementation was working out? Maybe by tweaking the carrier-sense and timing they could achieve better performance in that environment.
Actually, I wonder if they considered going for a slower bit-rate, at a lower frequency. VLF may well work. Failing that, there's always ELF and CW if the message simply must get through.
What's wrong with your cell phone? (Score:2)
Get a more reliable cell phone (either a simple feature-phone or iPhone), a car and extra desk chargers. You should only need those extra chargers if you're like me and you forget to charge your phone 2-3 days in a row or you're actually continuously (10h+) dialed in on the phone. There is also a low power mode on iOS which can be manually turned on and disables all non-essential features.
Not sure how you manage to have a phone with less than a half day of life. Paying for a pager and having your customers
Re:What's wrong with your cell phone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure how you manage to have a phone with less than a half day of life.
My guess is that the OP is like a former boss of mine who would complain constantly about the shitty battery life of new phones yet would never charge his phone until it shut itself off because the battery ran low.
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I bought a car charger shortly after a several day power outage. I used it a couple times just to try it, and it got lost. I plug it in every night and don't have any problems. I could probably make it 2-3 days most of the time.
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I had problems with my battery life when I was using a bluetooth head set, I'm on the phone probably 5-6 hours a day. It's not a problem with bluetooth turned off using a wired headset.
My old flip phone was amazing 5-6 hours a day for 2-3 days on a charge and about an hour to charge 100% from completely dead.
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Get a more reliable cell phone (either a simple feature-phone or iPhone)
LOL! Obsession with thinness and battery life do NOT go together.
No. Burn it with Fire. (Score:3)
Landline is it for me. (Score:3)
I've got a landline, but basically only because my work requires that I have real phone service. I don't keep a cell phone either as in my situation it'd be a waste 99% of the time, or more.
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1) On the land line we have a DECT base station with three handsets scattered around the house. If someone rings then there is a good cha
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You can get a DECT phone system that connects to multiple cell phones over bluetooth and forwards calls to all handsets.
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I cut over to a cell-only setup. I bought a box called "X-Link" that you pair via bluetooth and plug into an existing phone jack. It will ring all the old analog phones on the circuit when the phone rings, you can make calls from the analog phones, and it passes caller ID, too.
It works pretty well, but really, I always have my cell phone with me anymore. It's MORE convenient than any extension because it's within reach.
Plus, nobody calls much anymore. They text or email. Kids these days.
Who still uses pagers? (Score:3)
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Given the issues I've seen with coverage and random SMS delays on phones, I'm glad they do.
http://www.slate.com/articles/... [slate.com]
Re:Who still uses pagers? (Score:5, Interesting)
We are beginning to investigate smartphone based solutions, which, in order to be compliant with US privacy regulations have expensive recurring monthly charges, and will involve installing and maintaining microcells in our hospitals.
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You can still buy brand new Motorola Minitors. v and 6's are current. Yep, they're old tech and voice besides. The new once have a bit of memory so you can replay the page which was the biggest issue with the old analogs.
I just delivered four brand new ones to some ER docs. The youngest one looked at it a bit curiously. I think it's the first time he's seen a pager.
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Our hospital is looking into something called Spok for secure messaging. Should work whereever the cell phone has wifi or cell service. It's a secure texting app that's HIPAA compliant and has desktop/web versions so that the operators or nurses can send us texts without having to use a phone. Added bonus of read receipts and ping-back to the sender (if wanted) if the message isn't read in a timely manner (ie: STAT pages).
At least that's what our IT guys told me. We haven't gotten it yet.
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I still have my original Motorola pager. Whenever they try to give me one of these crappy new pieces of shit, I tell them that I am the doctor they were warned about in their customer service training, and that they should decide how much blood they want to shed. I think that they have actually written it off by now; no one has bugged me about it for a couple of years.
It is highly amusing to me that young doctors who care about having the newest iThing get jealous of my pager.
Re:Who still uses pagers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why doesn't someone developing medical devices see this as a market and develop a pager for the medical industry if pagers are no longer being made?
It's not the pagers. It's the paging systems. The market has dropped greatly, so maintaining transmitter towers, repeaters, the whole system, is a hard business to be in. Reliability is exactly why some large medical systems run their own metro-wide paging systems.
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SMS is not a reliable alternative (Score:2, Informative)
I am part of a couple of groups that use SMS (sent from an email list server) for notifications. ...
Sometimes it works great, sometimes they are delayed 30min, 1hr,
Its amazing the phone companies can charge so much and offer so little.
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I am part of a couple of groups that use SMS (sent from an email list server) for notifications. ...
Sometimes it works great, sometimes they are delayed 30min, 1hr,
Its amazing the phone companies can charge so much and offer so little.
Another issue with SMS "paging" is that phones are often not set up for that. By default, they're usually set up to be more discreet. They will often play a notification ONCE when the SMS comes in, and if you miss it, don't wake up, etc., you're screwed, especially if you're the only point of contact. A real pager will usually be much more persistent, which is important for heavy sleepers like me.
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In a prior life I spent many hours working with SMS. Both text and binary mode, and interestingly a browser that ran in the SIM chip that used binary-mode SMS as a transport. It was a fascinating thing to use, transferring small pages back and forth all via SMS. It wasn't actually that horrible, and had some nice features - the big one being you could keep everything on the SIM which had advantages.
Most people don't realize that the SMS standard includes binary mode, and you can also request delivery rec
why not charge your phone? (Score:2)
Re:why not charge your phone? (Score:5, Funny)
He's a Bernie supporter. He's holding out for free energy.
Why not buy an uncrippled phone (Score:2)
Uncrippled would be something with a swappable battery.
Why not SMS instead? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, you could setup a simple email to SMS gateway, so you can get a text message whenever somebody emails emergency@yourbusiness.com.
In a nutshell, your phone battery will drain quickly only if you keep using it as a smart phone, i.e. using data, wifi, bluetooth, having your screen on all the time, etc. If you keep a dedicated mobile phone for emergencies only and use it primarily for texting, you will have all the benefits of a pager while remaining in the 21st century.
You can push a dumb phone battery to a full week if you do it right, and to me at least, charging a phone over weekend or in the car is easier and cheaper then swapping batteries.
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SMS can take hours to deliver messages in a downtown area. I work for a data center, and I typically receive an email and can fix the problem before I even get the SMS alert. Nothing beats a pager when it comes to reliability and speed of delivery.
Network gone (Score:2)
Gives you time... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm on call from time to time (one week a month, for a full 7 days) and I *LOVE* the fact that a Pager at 3AM at least gives me a bit of time to wake-up and go to the toilet compared to being called directly and dump on a phone bridge with 10 other people wanting an answer *RIGHT NOW*.
I also have shitty Cell reception where I live, but Pager reception is A-1
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You're allowed to not answer your phone right away, too.
Emergency Services (Score:5, Informative)
Spy agencies use typewritters (Score:2)
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How does one zoom to ones heart content on paper maps on books?
They are generally shitty quality.
Portable chargers.. (Score:2)
Invest in a portable charger and pay once versus a monthly fee for a pager.
Bada bing, bada boom.
They can still be useful (Score:2)
Pagers tend to have better reception than cell phones, at least fairly recently when I last looked this up for my own curiosity. Also, many paging companies have "TAP" servers that you can dial into with a modem to send pages. This is could make a nice last-resort fallback for when a data center has lost network access and you can still provide outbound alerting via a backup landline.
Heck yeah, I write in shorthand daily (Score:2)
Also, if I was volunteering for a political campaign I'd be using a different phone and number entirely. In my volunteer work I use the $13/mo. plan from Page Plus for this purpose and it's just fine.
As far as dead tech goes, I write in shorthand, definitely dead tech at this point. I do it because I enjoy writing by hand a
I wouldn't do business with a pager based company (Score:2)
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I seriously would not do business with any company who had as a point of contact, a pager number. In the age of smart phones (with battery packs and alternative charging methods) why go backwards, in a worst case have an older cellphone that lasts days.
Yeah, just because the pager is far more reliable, phooey on that old stuff...
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And sails are far more reliable than diesel engines; clearly modern international shipping is just a fad following what's new and shiny.
It's called weighing the benefits. The benefits of a modern smart phone far outweigh the limited benefit of a reliable pager for the vast majority of scenarios.
Pagers shared in work group for emergency contact (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my friends carries a pager when he's on call for work (a municipality, and he'd most likely be contacted about a toxic spill). He just clips it to his belt and forgets about it.
The pager has several advantages over a phone. The most critical is that it's a shared device that gets passed between the on-call staff. That means there's no risk of someone forgetting their phone at home, running out of battery or having an incorrect number listed on the staff contact form. Emergency Services has a single contact number that should always work.
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You can have a single contact phone number that forwards to the persons on call cell phone based on the time of day, day of the week, or whenever you switch shifts.
And that's why you don't work in emergency services. Reliability Engineering is a thing, and every additional link in the chain adds additional failure points.
I like Google Voice, and Skype forwarding, and VOIP conference switches, and all that too... But a physical hand-off is much more reliable.
Sure, why not? (Score:2)
I know people who carry old fashioned pagers, and have done so for years. Yes, they also have smart phones, but cell service in many places is shit, and pagers have been part of the support infrastructure forever.
And, believe it or not, people still use land lines too. I know it's shocking to the kiddies, but it's true.
Do you people all think this technology became obsolete because you can get a freakin' app?
Where I live your chance of cellular coverage is iffy, and I'm in the burbs, just in a spot with b
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Actually, in many countries, the pager infrastructure has been shut down. Where I live, the pager infrastructure was turned off around ten years ago. Nobody cared.
Are you sure you're not confusing that with analog cell service? That has indeed been shut down in most places, with very, very few exceptions globally (mostly in extremely rural areas where people haven't wanted to go to satellite service). Pager frequencies in a lot of places is still going very strong, for precisely the reasons indicated in the discussion.
That's even moreso the case depending on government needs in your jurisdiction. If there are Important Civilian Responsibilities, then the pager networ
Pager networks are still a thing? (Score:2)
Nice try, time-traveling DEA agent from 1985 (Score:2)
Oh! DeLorean is paging me. brb.
Diversify and get a phone that does not suck (Score:2)
Client calls come into a pbx, ring the cell and desk phone etc etc etc. Mind you my desk phone is an android tablet with poe and a real handset/speaker phone so things like contacts just work and bluetooth.
Second get a phone thats does not suck, working with a nexus 5x and better battery life fast charging for that every 36 hours or so. I do miss my qi charging still.
So what do you do when.. (Score:2)
So what do you do when the pager goes off.
Do you run and find a pay phone?
Do you reach into your pocket for your cell phone?
What do you plan to do when the customer captures your cell phone number
and just calls you back?
A pager does have value because the coverage was nearly universal.
They are reliable.
A classic pager just displays numbers to call back or pre-shared code numbers.
The day I got a text/message pager that could give me a message "All OK" in contrast
to a call back number that was run to find a
Disable the Facebook App (Score:2)
forgot I had a pager (Score:3)
I used to carry a pager not too long ago. But in recent years nobody bothered to "call me" on the pager. I think reason is many people don't know what or how it is used. i.e. call my pager number, after hearing a few beeps then key in phone number you want me to call and then I will call you. Is this procedure still taught? Only need a few sentences at most for instructions. But maybe pagers gone way of dial telephones, plop one in front of somebody under 40 and they will have no idea what they are looking at.
It seemed AAAbatterY didn't last very one, since it rarely received calls many times I forget to wear it. When I find after some time, battery is not only dead but leaked. So I have clean out the battery holder, kept doing this several times eventually didn't put a battery into it. Meanwhile the gal came through the office doing property inventory asked if I still use the pager. I had to find it in my junque archive, I turned it in. Last week got the message item has been disposed.
Still ticking (Score:2)
I'm at a medical center where pagers are still in use. Why? Pagers work in the basements and don't drop signal when you're inside a large building away from a window. We can request an upgraded 2-way pager, but most at best a pager will alert you and you can either pick up a phone or move to location where your phone has a signal. Under trial are VOIP phones that use our local Wi-Fi for staff on the floor to have texting & voice. During a prolong blackout, paging continued to work long after cell
Not an option around here... (Score:2)
Pager is more reliable (Score:3)
Never had one. (Score:2)
I have a pager (Score:2)
Ug... yep (Score:2)
Hate to admit it but, yep... I carry an alpha pager with me as well as a phone. Why? Because pagers have a much better coverage area, and are generally more reliable. It is used not only for emergency alerts (system down, etc) but also inside the huge building by people to alert to call them (they don't supply cell phones, nor do I want a "work" cell phone, nor do I want my users having MY phone number).
I hope to rid myself of it one day... cell coverage has improved so much over the years. If I could f
texting and a spare battery (Score:2)
Some years ago, us sysadmins went from pagers to cell phones, with the alert system sending SMS via email, which is very close in function than what we used to get from pagers. I typically set the phone to some loud and obnoxious sound for a text, something that will wake me up. People who know me, know the very specific noise it makes.
One critical disadvantage we noticed right away is that cell phones don't last very long on a full charge. Even in the days before smartphones that last less than a day on
Samsung Note 4 and better phones have... (Score:2)
...an insane long standby time.
When I full charge that thing, it can take a call or text for like two weeks. Maybe using that mode is worth a thought. It's still useful for web browsing, e-mail, text, etc...
(And yes, I tested that on a long trip, no charger. Got 10 days, no problem, took a few calls, answered a few e-mails, various SMS.
How to integrate? (Score:2)
Re:Seriously?? (Score:5, Insightful)
A phone cannot be carried into a secure area. A (one-way) pager can.
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True, and so 0.0001% of the population will benefit from this.
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Perhaps don't go into secure areas when you're worried about your startup clients contacting you?
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I know people don't RTFA, but at least RTFS.
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I know people don't RTFA, but at least RTFS.
Lol, this is slashdot, not some "news" site with interesting and informative articles.
I'd have to give back my "Never Read A Summary" badge if I started reading summaries all willy-nilly.
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The summary makes as much sense as: I find that my bottled water frequently runs out since I've started shampooing on the go. I am about to start hiking in the desert and I wonder if I should carry saline IV bags to try to treat my inevitable dehydration that will occur after I've shampooed 3 times in the morning. Will you make me feel better about my analysis?
Smart hikers will just recycle their urine. Carry some powdered Kool-Aid to give it some flavor, and you'll be all set.
Re: Seriously?? (Score:2)
>I really don't see what advantage a pager has over a phone these days
Look at the Verizon coverage map. You only exist in the red areas. Some of us need to exist in the white areas.
But be sure to multiplex all alerts to pager and SMS - pager frequencies have fewer holes but they can exist. I've never missed an alert that went to both.
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Put simply: pagers are amazingly reliable, and have nearly perfect coverage. In ideal circumstances, a pager adds nothing to a phone. In real-world circumstances, it does.
After all, if you're sitting at your desk where you made sure you have good cell phone coverage, you also have email and IM and so on, and the phone itself is almost redundant. But when you're at some random customer site, or driving through some place cell coverage is sparse, or in a variety of little cell-coverage dark spots, the pag
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Put simply: pagers are amazingly reliable, and have nearly perfect coverage.
This is true, but after carrying a pager for years I switched to a phone and never missed it. If I get a text message it'll pop up as soon as I'm back in coverage.
For critical notifications, yes, it would be (is) better, but I think that relatively few people overall require that kind of service. Doctors and other emergency personnel, people on 24-hour call...sure. But for 99.999% of use cases I think it's not an issue. I'm not telling anyone not to carry a pager, I just think that it's a niche requirement
Re:Seriously?? (Score:4, Informative)
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Pagers can be much smaller than a cell phone and have a much longer battery life.
Re:Seriously?? (Score:4, Interesting)
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If by ~30, you mean more like 10, then yes. You can get fancy ones for 30 or more, but you can get a simple one that's just a power stick you can plug things into for crazy cheap. I never go anywhere without one or two of them charged and stuck in a bag, just in case.
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Yeah afaik there is no company that even provides pager service in my area. I don't remember ever seeing someone with a pager around here in years past either.
So I think we just jumped from smoke signals to cellphones and skipped over pagers. Although I do believe some areas around here are still using smoke signals.
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Sometimes I break in and shout "you're all faggots!" and listen for the fun!
do they ask "what are YOU doing here anyways?"