RobertR
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Dec 19, 1998
- Messages
- 10,675
I find that it makes such a big difference to have technological devices that I very much think of them as a need. Doing without the Internet, for example, is unimaginable to me, even though I didn't use it until 1994. More "mundane" examples would be the telephone (who would want to be without one, especially in an emergency?) and the calculator. In the case of smart phones, the technology is still new enough for me (I've had mine about a month) that it still has a big "wow" factor, and it's rapidly becoming a feeling of "how did I ever do without it?", just as happened with the Internet. I'm fascinated with just how much technology is packed into it. I spent less than a hundred bucks (I used the balance on my VM account from my previous plan), and for that, I always have a phone and a camera and a music player and a GPS device (things I didn't have to pay extra for) and access to the Internet. It's true that the small screen limits general browsing, but mobile apps (I still wish HTF had one) mitigate that problem very nicely (for example, sigalert.com is just as easy to use for checking traffic on the phone as my PC). But what really sets smart phones apart is the concept of downloadable apps, making them able to do countless other things. For example, I was thinking about getting the Amazon Kindle. Not any more, because a book reader app puts that kind of technology on the phone as well. Being an engineer, I love having one of the most powerful HP calculators in the phone. The apps concept makes the "can do" list enormous. Asking if I "need" these things is like asking if air conditioning is needed when it's 100 degrees out.