# Farmers/Ranchers and Smartphones



## Vol

87%.....

Regards, Mike

http://www.agweb.com/article/87-of-farmers-will-own-a-smartphone-by-2016-NAA-ben-potter/


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## IH 1586

Not yet for me. Won't get one until I have too. I'm just to cheap. Just started paying to text last year and half.


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## Chessiedog

IH 1586 said:


> Not yet for me. Won't get one until I have too. I'm just to cheap. Just started paying to text last year and half.


I didn't either till all my HS helpers 6 or 7 years ago were always texting me . So we added it to our phone plan then . I retired my casio GZone a few months ago for the new Iphone 6 . Mostly so I could see the weather in the field a bit better .

Should I keep baling or haul butt to the house . lol

I will say I like the phone but I don't like carrying it . Much easier to put the flip phone in my pocket .


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## mlappin

I don't feel right without my iPhone, kinda like the feeling you get when you realize you forgot to zip your fly and have been in public all day.

Check the weather, check the markets, google anything at anytime, stay in contact with hay buyers, stay in contact with the wife thru texts, pull up parts manuals, call and check on parts, etc... all without having to stop what your doing and find a landline.


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## Teslan

Chessiedog said:


> I didn't either till all my HS helpers 6 or 7 years ago were always texting me . So we added it to our phone plan then . I retired my casio GZone a few months ago for the new Iphone 6 . Mostly so I could see the weather in the field a bit better .
> 
> Should I keep baling or haul butt to the house . lol
> 
> I will say I like the phone but I don't like carrying it . Much easier to put the flip phone in my pocket .


I tried out my wife's iphone 6 in my pockets before I decided I could work with one without ruining it. Had an Iphone 4s before. Good phone also.


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## snowball

I'am in the 13% that would have one ! I'am like 1586, no plans for 1 either, 2 reasons I have to drive a mile up the rd to get service (PAIN IN THE....) and the name says it all SMART ph Leaves me out ... to many gadgets on them


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## Chessiedog

Snowball I understand the service part and all the gadgets , but there is a whole lot my computer will do that I don't use or even know how to , Same with the phone . It only took me about 3 months and looking on line to figure out how to use the reminder functions . lol . I'm not getting any younger and I do forget stuff for sure . So with that being what it is , it doesn't help my mechanical skills any . That's where a good picture comes in handy when taking something apart and trying to put it back together . lol I can usually get it apart but it's that going back together that can cause problems ! Or going for parts .


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## aawhite

Chessie...extra parts after putting something back together just means you shaved some weight, so better performance!


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## Dill

Texting saves me a ton of time on the tractor. Don't have to shut down everything to talk.

Also those with smart phones are the ones who are winning at auctions now. You can check on any oddball piece of equipment in the world.


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## Grateful11

I'm still using an iPhone 5, I really like the size. My brother actually bent his iPhone 5 leaning over a tractor with it in his front pants pocket. The iPhone 6, like our son has, looks a bit fragile to me and this is coming from someone that has been using Apple products since '95. I despise the big bulky cases, to hard to get out of your pocket, and use a silicone flexible case or a hard plastic one that has a kickstand.

We save $25/month for every line that we don't upgrade to a new phone once we got past the upgrade date on Verizon.

Those that don't have a smartphone yet might want to check into FreedomPop and see what their coverage looks like. I did some checking and it's not a Gov't phone. Not exactly sure how it works but if you're in an area that has good coverage it looks like great option.

https://www.freedompop.com/wireless-internet


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## snowball

Well I got to go with chessiedog it's all I can do to post on here would like to put a pic of my profile but to dumb to figure it out .And aawhite is right extra parts means less weight and obviously weren't need to start with cause it works with out them LOL The smart ph is nice if I only had a brain and service . I had a Tom-Tom once threw it out the truck window @ 1am. in OK city when it got me on a residential street with a 30' stock trailer and pickup . The cop showed me how to use it after he gave me a 100. ticket, I 'll just stick to a road map, I do know how to read yet !!! LOL


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## deadmoose

What's a land line? I had one of those before I went to college. As for me my phone is my computer. And camera. And other things as well.


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## Teslan

snowball said:


> Well I got to go with chessiedog it's all I can do to post on here would like to put a pic of my profile but to dumb to figure it out .And aawhite is right extra parts means less weight and obviously weren't need to start with cause it works with out them LOL The smart ph is nice if I only had a brain and service . I had a Tom-Tom once threw it out the truck window @ 1am. in OK city when it got me on a residential street with a 30' stock trailer and pickup . The cop showed me how to use it after he gave me a 100. ticket, I 'll just stick to a road map, I do know how to read yet !!! LOL


It still worked after being thrown out a window? Those Tom Toms must be tough.


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## snowball

I don't know Teslan. after he got me turned around and on the interstate I put the window down and give it a toss that ......g thing got me a 100 ticket and wasted a hour of my life I debut it survived a 65 mph toss my daughter still remembers that trip. I'am pretty low tech.


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## Chessiedog

snowball said:


> Well I got to go with chessiedog it's all I can do to post on here would like to put a pic of my profile but to dumb to figure it out .And aawhite is right extra parts means less weight and obviously weren't need to start with cause it works with out them LOL The smart ph is nice if I only had a brain and service . I had a Tom-Tom once threw it out the truck window @ 1am. in OK city when it got me on a residential street with a 30' stock trailer and pickup . The cop showed me how to use it after he gave me a 100. ticket, I 'll just stick to a road map, I do know how to read yet !!! LOL


My wife got me Garmin for Christmas few years ago . First time I tried it we had delivered hay and was coming back . thought i would use it to go to Harbor Freight store . It worked fine till it took us to in an apartment complex ,of course I had a 24 foot trailer behind me . Here's the kicker . Then it said to traverse across crounty ! Yea right . lol HF was on the other side of the aparments and you had to DRIVE in from the other street . My helper and I still get a laugh out of that !


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## mlappin

Have 4G LTE where I'm at, went to a LTE hotspot for home internet, have seen download speeds of up to 72 MB before, faster than the cable service in town.


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## aawhite

Anyone using their smarphone to accept credit cards? I see this as a real advantage. My wife sells home made soap and healing salves at a farmers market and several craft fairs. We take credit/debit cards thru her I phone and have logged a lot of sales that we would not have gotten without it.


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## cornshucker

Don't have one use son's every once in a while, guess when current flip phone goes which will probably be soon will get a smart phone.(Contract is up in May). beings we are on subject what is a good phone that is not an Apple product. Could use one to keep from having to run to run to house or shop to get certain information and couple of other apps that would benefit me. Also does any of you have Sprint network, company I work for had a deal we could get 15% off of Verizon and they are changing to a deal getting 25% off of Sprint network which would be considerable savings. Right now you can get either the 15% from Verizion or the 25% from Sprint but Oct. 1 they are dropping Verizion. Where we live you have to drive about 2 miles to get a signal with Verizon better off with an Indian smoke signal that a Verizon phone at our house. Friend has U.S Cellular and has good signal in our driveway. Guess that's the price you pay for living out in the boonies but well worth it. Going to get one in May and I know my reason is purely political which may be childish to some but it will not be an Apple product. So any other suggestions will be appreciated.


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## mlappin

I used to be a staunch PC guy as I grew up with Apples and got tired of things being so proprietary and expensive with them, even have built several of my own PC's. One morning when the last one I built refused to start and after trying a roll back, then trying safe mode, and trying a recovery disc but only kept losing ground I gave up and took it to the computer guru in town that does all the networking and other stuff for a local hospital, he messed with it for four weeks, hard drive was supposedly good, OS wasn't corrupted, etc. etc. etc.

In the meantime I was at the local mall and went into the Apple store, bought my first Mac mini, liked it so much ordered a slightly hopped up one for myself and gave the first one to the wife as she hated the PC she was using. Since then have bought a iPhone 5 and 5S, an iPad and the Time Capsule from Apple, all have worked flawlessly from the first start up, didn't require downloading updates or new drivers for three hours and recognized everything I already had, IE monitor, mouse, keyboard, printer, etc.

When Microsoft can release a OS that isn't buggy as hell, full of backdoors and generally secure as our border with Mexico then I might consider another PC but I highly doubt it.

My wife also likes her iPhone much more than any of the droids she had before that, happy wife happy life.


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## deadmoose

cornshucker said:


> Don't have one use son's every once in a while, guess when current flip phone goes which will probably be soon will get a smart phone.(Contract is up in May). beings we are on subject what is a good phone that is not an Apple product. Could use one to keep from having to run to run to house or shop to get certain information and couple of other apps that would benefit me. Also does any of you have Sprint network, company I work for had a deal we could get 15% off of Verizon and they are changing to a deal getting 25% off of Sprint network which would be considerable savings. Right now you can get either the 15% from Verizion or the 25% from Sprint but Oct. 1 they are dropping Verizion. Where we live you have to drive about 2 miles to get a signal with Verizon better off with an Indian smoke signal that a Verizon phone at our house. Friend has U.S Cellular and has good signal in our driveway. Guess that's the price you pay for living out in the boonies but well worth it. Going to get one in May and I know my reason is purely political which may be childish to some but it will not be an Apple product. So any other suggestions will be appreciated.


Samsung. Had motorola but they seemed flimsy. 2 broke.


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## FarmerCline

I guess I'm in the minority since I don't have at smart phone. I do have a basic flip phone and I wouldn't want to be without it. We do still have a landline but it never gets used.....just there for all the calls that you don't want bothering you on your cell phone......political calls, someone trying to sell you stuff, etc. I use a cell phone to make calls and that's it.....don't need the other things a smart phone has.....the only thing is I do like the step by step driving directions that shows your current location as your driving. As many times as my phone has been dropped, lost, washed, and ran over I'm not going to spend the money on an expensive phone. I guess I'm even more in the minority since I don't have texting on my phone. I'm probably the only 20 year old that doesn't have a smart phone or text, lol. I do have an iPad and that is what I use for a computer.


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## Bonfire

No smart phone here either. Just a Razor. I don't carry it. The only time its on is when I'm in the pickup.

mlappin mentioned Apples Time Capsule for backup. This house has both an Imac and PC. I use a Synology Diskstation for backup. It's Time Capsule capable. It is awesome. It does so, so, so much. Its basically a disk server. The Imac hard drive crashed a couple years ago. Got it back from the shop, restored a backup copy from the Diskstation, done. No hitch. Just like it was before. My Diskstation is a two drive (enterprise drive) model. One drive mirrors the other one (RAID 1 or 0, can't remember). if one drive goes down, you restore a new drive using the other drive. Big 1T drives holds lots of stuff. Digital pictures now days. I'm not going to lose a memory to a computer crash. And QuickBooks backups are a must. I have another Diskstation I'm going to install in the farm office to backup the backup in case the house burns down and the current backup melts down. The one in the office is a big one. It'll have 7 drives.


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## Bonfire

Hmmm, I wonder if Hillary Clinton was using a Diskstation as her mail server while she was the frequent flier SOS???


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## IH 1586

snowball said:


> Well I got to go with chessiedog it's all I can do to post on here would like to put a pic of my profile but to dumb to figure it out .And aawhite is right extra parts means less weight and obviously weren't need to start with cause it works with out them LOL The smart ph is nice if I only had a brain and service . I had a Tom-Tom once threw it out the truck window @ 1am. in OK city when it got me on a residential street with a 30' stock trailer and pickup . The cop showed me how to use it after he gave me a 100. ticket, I 'll just stick to a road map, I do know how to read yet !!! LOL


I use mapquest to print out directions and carry maps when I travel. Can't stand those things. Like to read road signs for myself not have some idiot computer tell me how to drive and distract me.

Still have the landline, I only give out my landline number. Don't need unwanted people calling my cell.


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## Vol

cornshucker said:


> Don't have on Also does any of you have Sprint network, company I work for had a deal we could get 15% off of Verizon and they are changing to a deal getting 25% off of Sprint network which would be considerable savings. Right now you can get either the 15% from Verizion or the 25% from Sprint but Oct. 1 they are dropping Verizion. Where we live you have to drive about 2 miles to get a signal with Verizon better off with an Indian smoke signal that a Verizon phone at our house. Friend has U.S Cellular and has good signal in our driveway.


Tim,

Best service I ever had here in E TN was US Cellular.....by far. US C did not carry apple smartphones a couple of years ago and my son just had to have a apple so we switched to Verizon to get apple smarties. Had Sprint one time for a year.....worst service I ever had.....HERE.

Regards, Mike


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## mlappin

Bonfire said:


> No smart phone here either. Just a Razor. I don't carry it. The only time its on is when I'm in the pickup.
> 
> mlappin mentioned Apples Time Capsule for backup. This house has both an Imac and PC. I use a Synology Diskstation for backup. It's Time Capsule capable. It is awesome. It does so, so, so much. Its basically a disk server. The Imac hard drive crashed a couple years ago. Got it back from the shop, restored a backup copy from the Diskstation, done. No hitch. Just like it was before. My Diskstation is a two drive (enterprise drive) model. One drive mirrors the other one (RAID 1 or 0, can't remember). if one drive goes down, you restore a new drive using the other drive. Big 1T drives holds lots of stuff. Digital pictures now days. I'm not going to lose a memory to a computer crash. And QuickBooks backups are a must. I have another Diskstation I'm going to install in the farm office to backup the backup in case the house burns down and the current backup melts down. The one in the office is a big one. It'll have 7 drives.


I'm anal about backups after one of my PC's had a hard drive fail, and I do mean anal. Once I month I have a Western Digital MyBook that my Mac Mini gets backed up to then that goes right back into the fireproof safe. ALL our pictures are backed up to both the Time Capsule and the MyBook, and they are also on Photobucket and Facebook as private albums. Tax info is backed up on the Time Capsule, the MyBook and a thumb drive that goes into the fireproof safe with the MyBook. Everything is also backed up on iCloud as well.

It's no fun re-creating years worth of tax records from scratch.


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## snowball

I do the same as 1586, after I gave my Tom Tom a proper send off . I like to read my tax dollars on the big green signs I got a mini razor and had forever, 6 yrs ago there was a 20 yr girl that called it a dinosaur !! wonder what she would call it today ? I know my phone is in better shape than she is today !!!! LOL


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## Dill

We got rid of the landline 12 years ago. Big improvement, you guys have any idea how many polls and political calls we get in NH? We did have problems with calls dropping the last few months with verizon. I bought a range extender that works via wifi, it works well.


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## IH 1586

mlappin said:


> I'm anal about backups after one of my PC's had a hard drive fail, and I do mean anal. Once I month I have a Western Digital MyBook that my Mac Mini gets backed up to then that goes right back into the fireproof safe. ALL our pictures are backed up to both the Time Capsule and the MyBook, and they are also on Photobucket and Facebook as private albums. Tax info is backed up on the Time Capsule, the MyBook and a thumb drive that goes into the fireproof safe with the MyBook. Everything is also backed up on iCloud as well.
> 
> It's no fun re-creating years worth of tax records from scratch.


I found out this past summer that everything I was backing up for the last many, many years was a waste of time as the devise was obsolete. My tower would not turn on and took it to a local computer shop to retrieve info. Turns out that it was only my power supply that was bad. While working with him I told him everything is saved on a zip drive. Was informed that those are obsolete and he would be unable to retrieve data if I needed it. Luckily my system had version 2 of win 98 on it so he was able to upgrade computer so I was saving on a flash drive. He also free of charge installed several cards into it to speed it up. He said nobody uses them so they might as well go to use instead of the trash. So 2+ hours and $60 later I had a faster and flash drive capable win 98 to continue using for the farm books. Told him I would be back in 15 years to get a new power supply. The $60 included the flash drive and extension cord for it.

When I went to pay he asked if the price was fair. I told him it was a lot cheaper than I was expecting. He said it wasn't fair that I pay for him not remembering how to work on the old system. His daughter did a lot of work as that was the system she grew up with.


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## snowball

we kinda of have a land line , no hard wires just tower service with a little black box and a 8" antenna call unlimited to the US for 20. per month though US Cellular works good and no phone book either.


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## Bgriffin856

Have had this smartphone since July and still don't know how to fully utilize it. Unlimited text and calling and a set amount of data for the same amount a month as my simple cheap phone which is through Verizon as all of mine have been. Buy the phone pick a package and pay it every month no plans and its simple. Kinda nice to have everything you need in one unit you carry with you all the time. Use mine for weather, haytalk, google, texting and calls. Also pictures best use is when working on something you can snap a picture before you tear it apart and then in steps then you know how to put it all back together. Not to mention you can keep a track of animals and crops as well and its all dated. Lots of simple handy uses


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## mlappin

I went that route as well, no land line that is. Have my mobile hotspot for internet access for the macs and my iPad, then use a home base so our old cordless house phones can be used over the cellular network. With dropping Embarq/Centurylink or whatever they are calling themselves now and bundling it all thru AT&T I'm saving about $50 a month and have download speeds roughly 20 times faster than what the DSL from my old service provider could deliver.


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## luke strawwalker

Chessiedog said:


> My wife got me Garmin for Christmas few years ago . First time I tried it we had delivered hay and was coming back . thought i would use it to go to Harbor Freight store . It worked fine till it took us to in an apartment complex ,of course I had a 24 foot trailer behind me . Here's the kicker . Then it said to traverse across crounty ! Yea right . lol HF was on the other side of the aparments and you had to DRIVE in from the other street . My helper and I still get a laugh out of that !


Read about some dude that drove off a freakin' uncompleted overpass (or partly demolished, can't remember which) because he was followin' his navigation system instructions too slavishly...

Takes all kinds I guess... LOL I still have to laugh when the things out of date and it shows me driving across fields or whatever that have since been paved with new roads... and the thing completely loses it's mind when you pull off into the farm and head for the woods behind the back 80 or whatever... LOL

Later! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker

cornshucker said:


> Don't have one use son's every once in a while, guess when current flip phone goes which will probably be soon will get a smart phone.(Contract is up in May). beings we are on subject what is a good phone that is not an Apple product. Could use one to keep from having to run to run to house or shop to get certain information and couple of other apps that would benefit me. Also does any of you have Sprint network, company I work for had a deal we could get 15% off of Verizon and they are changing to a deal getting 25% off of Sprint network which would be considerable savings. Right now you can get either the 15% from Verizion or the 25% from Sprint but Oct. 1 they are dropping Verizion. Where we live you have to drive about 2 miles to get a signal with Verizon better off with an Indian smoke signal that a Verizon phone at our house. Friend has U.S Cellular and has good signal in our driveway. Guess that's the price you pay for living out in the boonies but well worth it. Going to get one in May and I know my reason is purely political which may be childish to some but it will not be an Apple product. So any other suggestions will be appreciated.


I have a Droid Maxx... it's nice-- not too big, not too small. I wouldn't want one any bigger though. I think it's easier to use than my BIL's Iphone *whatever*... (don't recall the number). I've farted with his phone enough on parts runs when we're on the road when I'm up helping him with planting or harvest to know I don't like the Apple stuff as much as the Droid, myself...

I'm sorta like snowball... though I've never tossed a Garmin out the window. Course I came close when I first got a smart phone! Someone will find this funny...

I'm NOT what you'd call an "early adopter" when it comes to technology-- I'm not the type to go get every "latest and greatest" gadget when it comes out... I prefer to let other *fools* (ahem) pay $1000 bucks for the lousy first-generation models (remember when CD players, VCR's, DVD players, and flatscreen TV's first came out, and how much they cost, and how TOTALLY PATHETIC they were by today's standards?? I know a guy who bought a CD player when they first came out, paid over a GRAND for it, and you can get a better one for $19.99 at the Dollar Tree nowdays... LOL) Anyway, I like to "stick to what works" and "move up when I have to"...

I was slow to get a cell phone... my wife had one for three or four years before I finally "inherited" her old flip phone and she got a newer style. I stayed with flip phones until this last upgrade about a year or so ago... trying to find a flip phone was about like trying to find hens teeth there for awhile, and the phone plans didn't want to mess with them. SO, when we upgraded, I told Betty, "get what you like and what you think I can operate-- I trust your judgment!". So, she got a sweet deal on Droid Maxx's under her upgrade plan, so that's what we got.

SO, suddenly I'm faced with this new smart phone-- umm-kay! NO buttons-- that's novel... touch screen- cool (I guess). Oh, button on the side to turn it off and on, and volume buttons... okay, that's something. Hmmm... ah, you "wake it up" by pressing the "off" button quickly once... okay. The screen is locked. SO, put your finger on the "lock" button and just slide it upward on the screen-- that unlocks it?? Okay... SO, Betty shows me this neat thing-- "watch this"...

"OKAY GOOGLE NOW!" she says... the phone says "hi, what would you like to do today?"... "CALL HOME!"... the phone says "calling HOME..." and the land line (which we still had at the time) starts to ring... I answer it and she hangs up. "CALL BETTY!" and the phone says "calling BETTY" and her phone starts to ring... wow, this is cool... she hangs them both up and hand me my phone-- "they put your contacts in there from your old flip phone, so your good to go!" Alrighty then! I've joined the jet-set now! RIIIIiiiiggghhhhtttt...

So, next morning-- true story... Next morning, Betty and Keira leave at six for school. It's just cold as h3ll (for us anyway) and the wind is howling and I pull the covers up and go back to sleep... for a little while. Next thing I know, the lights go out, ceiling fan quits, lights, clocks, furnace, everything... Great... landline won't work because the power's out to the cordless phone... CRAP! Okay, no prob, I'll use my handy new smart phone... I pick it up, wake it up, unlock it, and promptly figure out I don't know how to do a [email protected] thing on it! RATS! I need to look up the power company number to report an outage, because I don't know if it's just us, the feeder line we're on, or the whole darn area... RATS I don't know how to connect to the internet! Okay... lemme try this thing Betty showed me... "OKAY GOOGLE NOW!" I say loudly... the phone starts mocking me, "I'm sorry-- I couldn't hear you, can you speak louder!" "OKAY GOOGLE NOW!!!!" (louder)... the phone is a comedian... "It's loud in here-- can you repeat your command??" "O K A Y G O O G L E N O W !!!!!!!" I practically shout... "How can I help you today??" FINALLY! Now we're cookin' with gas... "CALL BETTY!" I loudly proclaim... "I'm sorry, I couldn't understand you-- please repeat request" "CALL BETTY!!!!" "Call Bet E. .... Sorry, there's no Bet E." in your contacts!" "CALL BETTY!!!!!" "Call BENNY-- Sorry, there's no "Benny" in your contacts, please try someone else!" "[email protected] phone, you're trying my patience!" "I'm sorry-- I don't understand your request... please try again!" "URRRGGGHHH!!!! STUPID PIECE OF SH!T!!!!" "CALL BETTY!!!!!" (at the top of my lungs)... "I'm sorry-- I can't understand you, please repeat your request"... "GD sumb!tchin' POS MF'ing frickin' piece of Chinese JUNK!!!! CALL FRIGGIN' BETTY!!!!!!!!!" "I'm sorry, there's no BENNY in your contact list-- please try again!" At this point I'm half a heartbeat from throwing the F^#%ing thing THROUGH the wall... It's been 20 minutes by now, and the house is already getting [email protected] cold... "CALL BETTY!" I try in desperation, nearing defeat... "Calling BETTY"... FINALLY, you frickin' piece of junk... it's ABOUT [email protected] TIME!!! (ring... ring.... ring...) "Hello... the Verizon customer you are calling has a voice mail box that has not been set up yet or is full... please try contacting your party again later... thank you and goodbye! (click)... "SUMB!TCH!!!!! You sorry (half page rant NSFW or little ears here, inventing new curse words at this point) stupid F'n POS..." GRRRR!!!!!!

I flop back on the bed in disgust... a few seconds pass... (ring... ring....) "Okay, how do I ANSWER this stupid POS!!!" "I'm sorry, I didn't understand your request, can you repeat it please?" "I WASN'T ASKING YOU, YOU STUPID F***ER!!!" "I'm sorry, I didn't understand..." GRRR... (ring.... ring....) "lemme see... Press the power button, wakes up the screen... slide the lock button on the screen, unlocks the phone... check... (ring... ring... STOP...) "SH!TTT!!!! SON OF A F***NG B**CH!!!" "I'm sorry-- I didn't understand your request..." GRRRR!!! Flop back on the bed in disgust... a few seconds later... (ring... ring... ring...) "okay... press power, check, slide the button on the screen, check... "Could you speak up, I can't understand you!" "OH, STFU YOU STUPID POS!!!" screen's lighting up, good... okay, it says "Betty" at the top of the screen-- YAY!!!! Now how do I answer it... press the green phone button at the bottom?? Okay, nothing's happening... DAMN! (ring... ring...) (pressing the stupid green phone button on the bottom of the screen madly... STILL NOTHING!!! Finally accidentally "slide" the green phone button sideways while trying to mash my thumb through the screen, not caring if I totally destroy this POS at this point... "Hello?? Bear, are you there??" "BETTY!!! YES!!! I've been trying to reach you for half a freakin' MF-ing hour!!! This GD POS MFing A-HOLE (continue rant) GD phone wouldn't call you no matter WHAT I tried..." "what did you need Bear??" "The power went out... I can't call the power company to report the outage... h3ll I can't call ANYBODY with this total POS... bout threw it through the [email protected] wall!!" "Calm down-- here's how you work it... see the little phone book at the bottom of the screen??" "Yeah" "here's how you work that... (long description here) Okay... I'm gonna hang up now, and call the power company... I'll call you back in a few minutes if you can't call me... okay??" "OK... but this friggin' thing better work-- be sure you call me, because I don't know if I'll EVER be able to make this [email protected] thing work!!! The "Google Now" thing only seems to speak YANKEE-- it sure as h3ll doesn't understand TEXICAN!!! STUPID SUMB!TCH!!!!" "try talking softer to it dear... it doesn't do well with yelling or whispering... slow and enunciate, like a child..." "Yeah, sure... sumb!tchin' POS..." "It'll be okay... I'll help you more later when I get home..." "Okay... bye" "Bye, call you in a few..."

Power was out and house was cold, so I said "screw it" and got up, got dressed, and went to Shiner to feed cows... at least I'd have heat in the truck... along the way I figured out how to teach it to recognize MY voice, and retrain it from Betty's voice, which they'd done at the store... course the sumb!tch STILL doesn't speak Texican, so I have to talk like John Wayne after a lobotomy or something... LOW, SLOW, and NO BIG WORDS... LOL But I can get the voice recognition thing to work halfway most of the time, except it only has a "hippie" lexicon, and doesn't understand farm terms-- have to enter them once by hand and "press here to save" so it'll remember them next time... Betty gave me a little more in-depth tutoring on the thing that night, and within a few days I was totally comfortable with it... and AMAZED how much stuff I could do with the thing...

I had a 'learning curve" even with the stupid flip phones, so the point is, if *I* can do it, ANYBODY can... if all else fails, hand it to a 6 year old... they'll get it to work-- just don't let them have it TOO long, or they'll be doing online Texas Hold-Em on a Vegas website placing real bets, downloading Hamsterball XXXIV onto your homescreen, and ordering pizza for lunch all at the same time! Once you have one and get comfortable with it, and the stuff you WANT to use it for, it's really rather indispensable... I LOVE being able to get the weather anytime, anyplace... market quotes, look stuff up on the web, play solitaire on the john, take and send pics in texts, email, calculate moisture shrink on grain, keep track of field activities and records on the "FarmLogs" app (I can even see how much rain they got at Shiner or even the BIL's place in Indiana from my phone, or the home place in Needville, from anywhere, anytime, and it even tracks the rainfall amounts and dates for you and plots it against the ten year average! I LOVE that!!!) It's just a matter of learning something new... about like when I had to learn how to split shift a 13 speed or drive a powershift tractor... (all we ever had was 5 speeds and 2 speed axles in the old grain trucks we had, and 8 speed straight gear transmissions in the Ford tractors we farmed with). Takes a bit of a learning curve, but it CAN be done... even us "old farts"...

Play with the more tech-savvy family member's, friend's, and neighbor's phones, have them walk you through it, and see what you like and don't like...

Best of luck! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker

IH 1586 said:


> I use mapquest to print out directions and carry maps when I travel. Can't stand those things. Like to read road signs for myself not have some idiot computer tell me how to drive and distract me.
> 
> Still have the landline, I only give out my landline number. Don't need unwanted people calling my cell.


That's what we used to have when I was driving a school bus several years back... we'd get our "field trip packets" and there'd be a MapQuest printout in the thing... usually totally worthless... 3 pages of directions for every turn and stop and exit and stuff, but the actual "map" was usually this little 3x5 inch square thing at the top of the first page... usually with the outline of Texas on it, with a dot where the school is and a star where you're going, and a teeny squiggly line connecting the two... BIG FRICKIN' HELP THAT IS!!! Texas is a darn big place... heck the "star" at the destination was bigger on the map than the entire city of Houston (our usual destination) and it takes one two hours to cross Houston in a car at 70 mph, from the outskirts on one side to the outskirts on the other, the stupid pit is SO sprawled out!!!

I'm driving a bus with 60 screaming kids on a four lane freeway doing 60 mph and getting passed and cut off by every idiot with four wheels, and I'm supposed to be reading DIRECTIONS?? YEAH RIGHT!!!! "Have the teacher tell you where to go; they're responsible for their trips" says the boss... "YEAH RIGHT, til you get some dingbat that gets lost in her own friggin' closet!!" says I... "Ummm... your exit is aways up... ah, OH WAIT... Oh, Exit here... (as you pass it) No, I'm sorry... it was back there, about 2 exits back... sorry... we can turn around over there behind that store, don't you think?? (and ended up going down a one car alley with a 5 foot jog in the middle of it with 3 buses behind me and a power pole on one side in the worst part of Houston, expecting to get shot any minute!)

Yeah, RRRrrriiiigggghhhttt... Gimme the "stupid phone" "distracting" me with ACTUAL INFORMATION ANYTIME!!!!

Later! OL JR


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## luke strawwalker

Vol said:


> Tim,
> 
> Best service I ever had here in E TN was US Cellular.....by far. US C did not carry apple smartphones a couple of years ago and my son just had to have a apple so we switched to Verizon to get apple smarties. Had Sprint one time for a year.....worst service I ever had.....HERE.
> 
> Regards, Mike


We started with Verizon in the flip-phone days... got to where you'd drop a call three times between the house and town five miles away, and HUGE black zones with no service whatsoever...

Switched to AT&T... like night and day... we had good service, except at the inlaws in Indiana... course NO phones work good at their place, for some reason... I joke because *IF* I'm sitting right beside one window in the living room, and *IF* the chicken is standing on one foot out in the yard, then about half the time I can get *some* level of signal sufficient to make a call or receive a text... sometimes my phone will go off in "burst mode" up there, if I walk by the window just right-- and I'll receive 5 texts or messages at once... (I downloaded some sound files to augment the crappy run-of-the-mill sounds on the phone for receiving messages, various alerts, ringtones, etc... and programmed my Droid so when I receive a text, I get a bosun's whistle sound and Chekov from Star Trek saying "Bridge to Captain Kirk!" like on Star Trek... A voicemail alert is the Enterprise computer voice (Majel Barrett Roddenberry) saying "There is one message waiting for you", when Betty calls I get Darth Vader saying "What is thy bidding, my Master??" from "The Empire Strikes Back" movie... When the old folks call, I get the Starship Enterprise "Red Alert Klaxon" from "Star Trek" (because I KNOW there's going to be some serious BS about to come down whenever they call...) My brother's call rings the "Uncle Rico" tune from "Napoleon Dynamite" movie... etc... everybody's got their own ringtone, and "unnamed callers" have their own ringtone (the "Imperial March" from "Star Wars") so I don't even have to look at the phone to know whether or not I want to answer it... very handy when I'm working...

Thing is, ATT was working really well for us for a couple years... then it went to h3ll seemingly overnight... I used to get four bars nearly everywhere all the time, suddenly I couldn't get but two bars sitting in my chair by the window, and over at the farm shop, I had NOTHING... If I went out and stood by the road, I COULD SOMETIMES make a call... maybe. Otherwise, pfff... The clincher was when I was on my way to Indiana... I was on I-30 between Little Rock and Memphis, talking to Betty on the phone... the call dropped, and I lost ALL SERVICE for about 100 miles or more before I had enough signal to call her back... ON A MAIN FRIGGIN' INTERSTATE!!!

She tried Sprint but their coverage was worse than ATT... I could usually get a call out on the Shiner farm or receive one, but not with Sprint... only in downtown Shiner did I have any coverage at all... screw that! Took them back and got Verizon after about a week or two, and we're about 95% happy with them... they REALLY improved over the "old days..."

Still, it's "very regional" as to what company has the best coverage in your area... there's coverage maps online which is a good starting point. Asking around the local area for who folks think has the best coverage never hurts either, and remember to check other places you go fairly frequently as well... PITA to find they have ZERO coverage or very crappy coverage when you need it!

Later and good luck! OL JR


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## Chessiedog

Yep Luke coverage can be spotty I think anywhere . Have Verizon works most the time . Look on their map shows I should get 4g hmm no I don't .

What I really like is when I'm sitting in the house with 3 or 4 bars and get a voice mail . Phone didn't even ring ! It's not the phone because my other phones have done the same thing . Or there is a spot down the road that had little to no coverage ,then it got better , now it's back to the way it was . What's with that ?


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## RockyHill

Had not heard about FreedomPop until here. The coverage map looks like it would work for me. Going to a smartphone will be a big step up from my Tracfone flip phone. Hope I won't have as much fun as Luke strawalker had. Looks like a lot of older smartphones will work.

Which phone would you recommend? I do want one that will fit in a belt holster instead of shirt pocket.

Shelia


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## Grateful11

Well Shelia I know several people with Samsung Galaxy's and they like them so probably either one of those would be good. It would probably depend on what size screen you want. I've had 2 smartphones in about a 5 year period, an iPhone 4 and now an iPhone 5. I plan on keeping the 5 for as long as I can because I like the way it's built with a fairly hefty aluminum chassis and seem to take a fair amount of abuse. I don't particularly care for the new iPhones. My son had never had a new iPhone and got a new iPhone 6 recently and likes but I still like the size and form of my 5 better.

For folks on Verizon:

We save $25 per line for not upgrading to a new phone when it came time to upgrade last year with Verizon. They don't advertise that a lot but it's there if you call them and inquire about it but you have to have 10Gb of data per month. 10Gb cost $10 more than what we had but it saved us $40 so it was a no brainer.


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## luke strawwalker

Chessiedog said:


> Yep Luke coverage can be spotty I think anywhere . Have Verizon works most the time . Look on their map shows I should get 4g hmm no I don't .
> 
> What I really like is when I'm sitting in the house with 3 or 4 bars and get a voice mail . Phone didn't even ring ! It's not the phone because my other phones have done the same thing . Or there is a spot down the road that had little to no coverage ,then it got better , now it's back to the way it was . What's with that ?


I was told by someone "in the business" that about the time ATT went to sh!t for us they switched how the network operated for the 4G/LTE signals... something about bandwidth and power and all that jazz... and that basically to increase the bandwidth for faster internet on smartphones, the actual cell coverage strength decreased for the actual phone signals... figures I guess... Good an explanation as any I suppose... cut the phone signal strength to the CELL PHONES so my nephew can download "Hamsterball 98" to his phone faster... yep, good trade there... LOL

Had a buddy on a rocket forum who worked for ATT at the time... he sent me a bunch of insider stuff because apparently at the time they were moving in a new direction and were supposedly being encouraged strongly to strengthen "consumer relations" and "customer satisfaction" and all that... he sent me contact info for some ATT guys who would "fix the problem"... Well, after piddling about swapping emails and logging where and when all I was having problems for about a month, all I ever got out of them was the usual "sorry for your bad experiences, but thank you for being our customer-- we value your input" type CRAPOLA and nothing was getting any better, so we dropped them like a hot potato...

Later! OL JR


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## haybaler101

Smartphones are absolutely essential now for me. I can sit on the beach and completely monitor and manage my turkey barns. Turkeys even have their own cell number to text me if there is a problem. Use ATT hotspot for home internet service and ditched the landline 4 years ago. I think I am paying for 10'phone numbers right now between myself, wife, 3 kids, mom & dad, my IPad, and 2 numbers for the turkeys.


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## luke strawwalker

haybaler101 said:


> Smartphones are absolutely essential now for me. I can sit on the beach and completely monitor and manage my turkey barns. Turkeys even have their own cell number to text me if there is a problem. Use ATT hotspot for home internet service and ditched the landline 4 years ago. I think I am paying for 10'phone numbers right now between myself, wife, 3 kids, mom & dad, my IPad, and 2 numbers for the turkeys.


Okay... I'm getting a bad picture here...

(ring ring!) "Hello?"

"gobble, gobble!"

"What??"

"GOBBLE, GOBBLE!!!"

"What, Tom?? Timmy fell down a well and needs our help right away?? Lemme get Lassie and we'll be right over!!!"

LOL

My niece went to Purdue and majored in poultry science... we were talking about it one day and I said, "so ya wanna be a chicken doctor??"

"Sort of... maybe." SOoooo... I get this little devilish sense of humor once in awhile... So I said,

"How do you do a medical exam on a chicken??" I say rather nonchalantly-- almost rhetorically... "Hmmm... I guess you just grab the chicken and hold it like this..." (pretending to hold a chicken in my lap). "Does this hurt??" (pretending to thump the chicken with two fingers like the doctor does mashing on your guts when you go in to the doctors office)... "Brrr-ock, bock, bock"... "Does this hurt??" (thumping the other side of the imaginary chicken with two fingers like the doc does your guts in the office exam) "Brrr-ock, bock, bock"

Then I reach back, make like I'm ramming the two fingers right up the chicken's butt... "Does THIS hurt??" "BAAACK! BER-CAAAACCK! BOCK, BOCK, BOCK!!!!"

LOL We all had a good laugh out of that one... 

Later! OL JR


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## haybaler101

luke strawwalker said:


> Okay... I'm getting a bad picture here...
> 
> (ring ring!) "Hello?"
> "gobble, gobble!"
> "What??"
> "GOBBLE, GOBBLE!!!"
> "What, Tom?? Timmy fell down a well and needs our help right away?? Lemme get Lassie and we'll be right over!!!"
> 
> LOL
> 
> My niece went to Purdue and majored in poultry science... we were talking about it one day and I said, "so ya wanna be a chicken doctor??"
> 
> "Sort of... maybe." SOoooo... I get this little devilish sense of humor once in awhile... So I said,
> "How do you do a medical exam on a chicken??" I say rather nonchalantly-- almost rhetorically... "Hmmm... I guess you just grab the chicken and hold it like this..." (pretending to hold a chicken in my lap). "Does this hurt??" (pretending to thump the chicken with two fingers like the doctor does mashing on your guts when you go in to the doctors office)... "Brrr-ock, bock, bock"... "Does this hurt??" (thumping the other side of the imaginary chicken with two fingers like the doc does your guts in the office exam) "Brrr-ock, bock, bock"
> 
> Then I reach back, make like I'm ramming the two fingers right up the chicken's butt... "Does THIS hurt??" "BAAACK! BER-CAAAACCK! BOCK, BOCK, BOCK!!!!"
> 
> LOL We all had a good laugh out of that one...
> 
> Later! OL JR


JR., you hit the nail on the head. When the turkeys text me with a problem, my ringtone gobbles!


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## luke strawwalker

haybaler101 said:


> JR., you hit the nail on the head. When the turkeys text me with a problem, my ringtone gobbles!


IMHO picking ringtones and goofing around with it is half the fun of getting a smartphone...

Even with my old flip-phone, I could assign everyone to one of a handful of "groups" and then pick a ringtone for each "group".

My folks were in a group all to themselves. Their ringtone was "Sanford and Son"... because, just like Fred G. Sanford, my parents CONSTANTLY play for sympathy ("son, I'd have done that for you like you asked, but you know I can't do that with my ARTHUR-ITIS" (arthritis). If my old man had a motto, it'd be "Never fix right what you can "jury-rig"... I swear if he EVER fixed anything right rather than just [email protected]$$ it, I can't remember it... I can say of my mother that "Sam Walton made his first million off her" and if she had a motto it'd be "never spend money on the farm that can be spent at Wal Mart!" Makes it very interesting to keep a family operation going with those two in charge lemme tell ya!

I chose the theme of "Sanford and Son" as their ringtone because I don't hear from them unless 1) they want something, 2) they want to complain about something, or 3) they want to whine about how I "should be doing this or that" or "didn't do this or that" or "doing too much of this or that" and INEVITABLY "spent too much money doing it", or 4) suggesting the stupidest, [email protected]$$ed kaka-mamie way of doing something to save a buck rather than just spend a little more and doing it RIGHT, ONCE...

Now their ring tone on the new smart phone is the "Red Alert!" klaxon from "Star Trek"... because I KNOW that some sh!t is about to fly whenever they call me... LOL

BIL gets a kick out of my phone saying "What is thy bidding, My Master??" in Darth Vader's voice when my wife calls... "yes dear??" LOL Seriously she's not bad; and she's usually "the voice of reason" to my "oh, h3ll, what now!" attitude towards life, but still... little humor never hurts...

Every time I get a text, my phone plays Chekov from "Star Trek" saying "Bridge to Captain Kirk!" with the bosun's whistle in the background... BIL gets a laugh out of that too...

Turkeys call the phone gobbles... that's cool... I like that!

Later! OL JR


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