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Smartphones
Dec. 15th, 2011 06:35 pmThis is somewhat painful for me to admit, but I've never owned a smartphone and I don't know enough about the market to be able to make good choices. I'm looking for advice, in the hope of being able to get something that will actually help me with my problems rather than just wasting a lot of money that I don't have to spare.
I am hoping to get something that will let me connect a computer to the Internet at home where I have lousy dialup as my only option. I am worried about whether that's actually a viable option, but as dialup is working less and less well for me, I am becoming more and more desperate. So I'd like to learn what I could really get, what I'd have to do to make it work, and how much it actually costs. (Which I do know enough to understand is more than the big print in the ads wants you to think.) I need to learn: which company is best to deal with, what phone and plan would work, does it actually work at my house, and what do I have to buy in addition to the phone and the plan to get my ancient Windows XP box to talk through it. My big problem here is that I want this to be my primary Internet connection, not just an occasional supplement. I'm really hoping to hear from people who have actually made this work.
If, after learning all the details, the verdict is that it's just not economically useful to use this as an Internet connection, my fallback position is that I'm looking for the cheapest option that allows me to do basic phone things (very few voice calls, but I need the option, a few dozen or a few hundred texts a month) and also lets me surf the web, take pictures, and maybe run an app or two. Is there a prepaid option for an Android phone? Has anyone actually used it?
I am hoping to get something that will let me connect a computer to the Internet at home where I have lousy dialup as my only option. I am worried about whether that's actually a viable option, but as dialup is working less and less well for me, I am becoming more and more desperate. So I'd like to learn what I could really get, what I'd have to do to make it work, and how much it actually costs. (Which I do know enough to understand is more than the big print in the ads wants you to think.) I need to learn: which company is best to deal with, what phone and plan would work, does it actually work at my house, and what do I have to buy in addition to the phone and the plan to get my ancient Windows XP box to talk through it. My big problem here is that I want this to be my primary Internet connection, not just an occasional supplement. I'm really hoping to hear from people who have actually made this work.
If, after learning all the details, the verdict is that it's just not economically useful to use this as an Internet connection, my fallback position is that I'm looking for the cheapest option that allows me to do basic phone things (very few voice calls, but I need the option, a few dozen or a few hundred texts a month) and also lets me surf the web, take pictures, and maybe run an app or two. Is there a prepaid option for an Android phone? Has anyone actually used it?