The following is a short story or fable proving I don't know what about cordless phones, but
demonstrating that multi-frequency multi-mode cellular phones are free, so don't sweat the
frequency. It happened yesterday.
My Aged Mother was having trouble with her cordless phone- she couldn't hear well. So her
Engineering Son went out at Christmas and bought from a large discount store the latest spread
spectrum digital phone with a four line display, many interesting buttons, and a slick rounded design
in high-tech black. Nine months later it died.
The Engineer Son was called. "If you have a minute, could you look at it, but I'll understand if you
don't have time", he was told. So he immediately rushed over and discovered that the paperwork
on the phone had been thrown away, and a message would appear on the handset helpfully saying
'handset out of range' even though it was three inches from the base station. More importantly, he
also noted that the Aged Mother didn't see all that well, and those tiny buttons were confusing her.
He also noted that all those tiny buttons, particularly the 'programming' and 'menu' buttons confused
him, even with directions and a Masters degree in Engineering. In his opinion, the thing needed a
mouse and 17" display with pop up help menus to operate.
So he immediately went down the street to good old Radio Shack and bought the simple $60 digital
cordless phone with three very clever features, and two vitally important features. The clever
features were:
1. You can rest the handset in the cradle either face up or face down and it seats nicely and starts
charging Very good for Aged Mother who had a minor stroke.
2. It has only three big buttons, including the 'locate handset' , 'talk' and 'hookflash' feature buttons,
which are all she needs other than the dial buttons.
3. The last clever feature was that there were no other clever features. It was simple.
The vitally important features were:
1. It came in Aged Mother Off-White- she hated the black modern phone.
2. It there is a problem, the Aged Mother can go down to the local Radio Shack store and talk
with the helpful store people and not have to wait for her Engineer Son to come over; this is a major
Guilt Reduction Service feature, or GRS.
Now when the Engineer Son bought the phone, the sales staff, a Young Stales Lad decked out in
the latest style of trimmed beard, hair, and earrings, asked if I wanted a 'free' upgrade for a
cellphone. I said I was a retro type who used analog for the better coverage and had a full beard.
He said that I could get multi-mode phone free. I'm sure he didn't approve of my buying a white
phone, and I didn't have an earring, either. But I guess he had been trained to try to sell
aged old cordless folks the new multi-mode handset and cellular services.
The moral of the story: don't worry about frequency or mode of phones. A new phone is free. |
