Text Messaging, Why?

It is alleged that Joe claimed:

; I just got a new phone and was hit with a bill for text messaging and direct
; bill because of my son and Cingular not telling me I signed up for this
; garbage. This brings me to my question.

If you got a phone with txt messaging possible, you got the service on
a pay-per-use basis. If you want to block it, get an uncapable phone,
or see if Cingular can block it on the network end. Otherwise, bill
your son for the use, and maybe add a txt package to reduce the cost.

; Do you use Text messaging and if you do for what and Why? This seems like
; the most pointless and expensive feature ever added to a Cell Phone to me.
; It is a PHONE!, if the person can get your text message they can get your
; phone call. Why not just call the person? You could say more in a two minute
; phone conversation than you could spending thirty minutes sending 4 or 5
; text messages back and forth and the phone call would cost less.
;
; So I ask Why Text Message?

For the kids, because it's cool. For the adults, because there may be
times you need/really want to tell someone something where it would be
inappropriate or disruptive to talk out loud.

Me, I don't have much use for it, but I can see where it would be
useful.

--
Jeffrey Kaplan www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled Send personal mail to gordol

"Love? What does love have to do with marriage?!?" (Amb. Mollari, B5,
"The War Prayer")

---

› See More: Text Messaging, Why?

It is alleged that Joe claimed:

; You could not punch 7 digits and call the person and say "Hey not going to
; be there on time" faster that all the punching you would have to do to send
; the same text message?

My current and previous phones, both with txt/sms messaging, have a set
of "quick text" items. "I'll be a few minutes late" is one of them.
Makes it real easy to send such.

; >> So I ask Why Text Message?
; > Cause I can
; Now we have got to the root of things it is a toy for people that want
; something different.

It's a toy or a tool, depending on how it's used.

--
Jeffrey Kaplan www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled Send personal mail to gordol

"Is there something wrong with your hearing?" "No, it's just for a
moment I thought I thought I had entered an alternate universe or
something." (Amb. Mollari and Vir Coto, B5 "Chrysalis")

"Jeffrey Kaplan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> It is alleged that Joe claimed:
>
> ; I just got a new phone and was hit with a bill for text messaging and
> direct
> ; bill because of my son and Cingular not telling me I signed up for this
> ; garbage. This brings me to my question.
>
> If you got a phone with txt messaging possible, you got the service on
> a pay-per-use basis. If you want to block it, get an uncapable phone,
> or see if Cingular can block it on the network end. Otherwise, bill
> your son for the use, and maybe add a txt package to reduce the cost.

The only text messages I've received were from Cingular and they charged .10
each. So I had it turned off on both my phones.

bamp

>
> ; Do you use Text messaging and if you do for what and Why? This seems
> like
> ; the most pointless and expensive feature ever added to a Cell Phone to
> me.
> ; It is a PHONE!, if the person can get your text message they can get
> your
> ; phone call. Why not just call the person? You could say more in a two
> minute
> ; phone conversation than you could spending thirty minutes sending 4 or 5
> ; text messages back and forth and the phone call would cost less.
> ;
> ; So I ask Why Text Message?
>
> For the kids, because it's cool. For the adults, because there may be
> times you need/really want to tell someone something where it would be
> inappropriate or disruptive to talk out loud.
>
> Me, I don't have much use for it, but I can see where it would be
> useful.
>
> --
> Jeffrey Kaplan www.gordol.org
> The from userid is killfiled Send personal mail to gordol
>
> "Love? What does love have to do with marriage?!?" (Amb. Mollari, B5,
> "The War Prayer")

> Here's a flash: Everyone's not you!

True. I assumed everyone understood sarcasm (ya might want to look it
up). Evidently not!

:P

Barry - NY

Joe wrote:
> I just got a new phone and was hit with a bill for text messaging and direct
> bill because of my son and Cingular not telling me I signed up for this
> garbage. This brings me to my question.

First: how did your son manage to modify YOUR account? I'd change all
account passwords and make HIM pay for his add-on, and until he does, no
cell phone for him.

> Do you use Text messaging and if you do for what and Why?

I do. Text messaging is an excellent substitute for passing on messages
in situations where talking on a cell phone is inappropriate (meetings,
restaurants, movie theaters...). I think if more people did it in those
situations, there'd be less of a backlash in regards to cell phone
ettiquette.

SMS also works quite well for automated systems that need to make their
troubles known. If I have a server that's suffering a hardware issue, I
can either have it send an e-mail to inbox, which I might not check for
a while, OR send it to my cell phone, which I'll check immediately, and
determine whether it's something I need to act on right away.

> This seems like
> the most pointless and expensive feature ever added to a Cell Phone to me.
> It is a PHONE!,

See, people very commonly make the mistake of assuming that their "cell
phone" is a "phone." In the strictest sense, it really isn't. Instead,
it's a radio that happens to have a very elegant interconnect to the
public phone network. And that radio can do a lot more than just
transmit voice. So why not build that functionailty in?

> if the person can get your text message they can get your
> phone call.

Not always. If the other half is making the phone ring persistently
while I'm in the middle of a meeting at work, that's going to cause
problems on so many levels, that could all be avoided by me sending a
text message saying "I can't talk now, what's up?" and then getting a
response.


> Why not just call the person? You could say more in a two minute
> phone conversation than you could spending thirty minutes sending 4 or 5
> text messages back and forth and the phone call would cost less.

Wow, you type slow.

> So I ask Why Text Message?

Well, why use usenet? You COULD have called up family members and
friends and asked them the same question, but isntead you chose to type
out a rant on here. Why?

--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

Joe wrote:
>>Ummm ... cause I needed to pass a quick message to someone like 'be a few
>>minutes late' , that did not neccesitate a voice call.
>
>
> You could not punch 7 digits and call the person and say "Hey not going to
> be there on time" faster that all the punching you would have to do to send
> the same text message?

Not always.

Let's say they can't get to their phone right away. Well, now I have to
wait for the voicemail to answer, go through the voicemail greeting,
wait for the beep, speak my message, and hang up, hoping tat th message
is even relevant by the time they retrieve it. Then the person at the
other end has to see the voicemail icon on their phone, dial voicemail,
enter their passcode, and retrieve my message.

OR,

I could type out "hey, gonna be a few minutes late" and flash that
message on their phone's screen. All they have to do is glance at the
phone, and they've got the message.


>>Ummmm... maybe they are in class or in a meeting or some other place that
>>you do not want to interupt them, but need to get a message to them.
>
> Don't these phones have voice mail and caller ID?

Caller ID doesn't convey the urgency level of a message, and a voicemial
message might require an immedaite response, something that will be more
disruptive if I have to call them back, then to jsut send a text reply
and be done with it.

>>Cause I can
>
>
> Now we have got to the root of things it is a toy for people that want
> something different.

More like, we have a luddite on our hands.

But that's fine; you don't HAVE to use text messaging. Just because a
phone is equipped with a feature doesn't mean taht you MUST make use of
that feature. After all, do you feel you HAVE to use the airbags on
your car, because it'a feature that's there?

--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

Jer wrote:

> For my business, important messages don't travel by email because
> they're too important to be trusted to an automated transport system.
> When I'm expected to know something, I get called so receipt is
> confirmed and an opportunity for a response is provided in real time.

Funny, where I work, e-mail is preferred in certain circumstances
BECAUSE it is comfirmable, and a record of details in a particular
agreement or conversation can be documented and verified. A phone call,
on the other hand, is more for informal communication, because no record
exists thereafter. If I alert a vendor to a serious problem with a
contract they've drawn up that needs to be fixed NOW, I can shoot an
e-mail to them, and have a record of my sending the message, with all
included details. With a return receipt (or a reply), I can document
that the other party received the message. A phone call, on the other
hand, can be easily denied, or the details of the conversation obscured.
Even with a cell phone call record, a person could say we simply we
talked about the weather.

Even this article I'm posting to usenet will far outlive anyone's memory
of any phone calls I might have made today.

Any business worth their salt will have backup and recovery strategies
in place for their e-mail.




--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

> if the person can get your text message they can get your phone call.

Here's an example of why a text message is preferable over a call. I
often MMS message my co-worker in Argentina (he has a Miami cingular
account). It costs me pennies.

A telephone call to Buenos Aires would cost me a minimum of $3.00 and
probably a lot more.

Barry - NY

Isaiah Beard wrote:
> Jer wrote:
>
>> For my business, important messages don't travel by email because
>> they're too important to be trusted to an automated transport system.
>> When I'm expected to know something, I get called so receipt is
>> confirmed and an opportunity for a response is provided in real time.
>
>
> Funny, where I work, e-mail is preferred in certain circumstances
> BECAUSE it is comfirmable, and a record of details in a particular
> agreement or conversation can be documented and verified. A phone call,
> on the other hand, is more for informal communication, because no record
> exists thereafter. If I alert a vendor to a serious problem with a
> contract they've drawn up that needs to be fixed NOW, I can shoot an
> e-mail to them, and have a record of my sending the message, with all
> included details. With a return receipt (or a reply), I can document
> that the other party received the message. A phone call, on the other
> hand, can be easily denied, or the details of the conversation obscured.
> Even with a cell phone call record, a person could say we simply we
> talked about the weather.
>
> Even this article I'm posting to usenet will far outlive anyone's memory
> of any phone calls I might have made today.
>
> Any business worth their salt will have backup and recovery strategies
> in place for their e-mail.
>

I suppose it depends on the particular level of employment and tasks
involved. I'm certainly not an attorney of any stripe, but my
communications with my peers and the office are mission critical and
require absolute confidence that the message is not only delivered
confidently and completely understood at the time of delivery, but any
replies are held to the same immediate standard. All the people
involved with this level of communication are executive in nature and
considered trustworthy to the nth degree. Having said that, there may
be some that discount my professional take on that issue, and that's
okay because I'm certainly not going to tell anyone how to run their
business - but I will tell them how I'm going to run my business. In my
hood, falsifying details among peers is painfully expensive on a good
day, but will instantly threaten a long-standing career on a bad day.
Willful errors or omissions that jepardize one's professional and/or
personal integrity are not forgivable. I'm currently unaware of any
exceptions to this policy.

Now, with regard to email, yes, there are standard processes in place to
deal with both legal and logistical issues related to internal retention
policies, and I presume that if the legal beagles felt they needed to
access a backup, they're certainly within their mandate to do so.
Considering the nature of that particular issue, I can't say I'd even be
aware of any such event because other, more capable, staff have their
own mandates, and I have it on fairly good authority thay're a lot more
busy than I am.

It sounds as if our professional communications are quite likely
dissimilar, but also we both seem to have the right tools to accomplish
our tasks.


--
jer
email reply - I am not a 'ten'

not sure, but there was some reason I had 1800 of them last month! lol

sign up for one of the media plans, it's much cheaper

Well, I don't know about cingular phones, but on the phones I have
owned, all I had to do was hold down the voice mail button for two
seconds, to hear my voice mail. If they can't get to their phone right
away, a voice mail message and a text message will have the same
relevancy.

well it would seem that way, but for most people text are cheaper than minutes. I know if I'm over on minutes, that 1 minute to check my voicemail would cost me .37 cent where text overages are only .5 cent! Of course if all else fails send me a dern MMS since I get unlimited! lol