I do not have a cell phone.  I do not want a cell phone. It’s bad enough my job makes me carry a pager.

I, on the other hand, have a cell phone because I don’t want a landline, but it would be hard to get by not having a number that people can use to reach you. To me it seems archaic in this day and age to pay for a landline that charges extra for long-distance and is fixed in one location.

I would like to have an iPhone but there is no way I’m going to spend $500 on any phone unless it cures AIDS and cancer, and feeds the poor. I never did understand the idea of signing up for a two-year contract (totaling $1,000+ on the low end) to get the privilege of purchasing a new phone for anywhere from $50 to several hundred dollars on top of that. And like Internet service, it’s running over infrastructure that is already well-established, and any supposed scarcity of resources (minutes, bandwidth, paying for text messages, whatever) is mainly artificially generated as a way to bleed more money out of the customer. For a two-year contract AT&T should be giving me the phone.

[quote author=“David Nelson”]To me it seems archaic in this day and age to pay for a landline that charges extra for long-distance and is fixed in one location.

Archaic or not, I do not feel any need to be accessible at all times and places.  A landline is less expensive, even accounting for long distance (for which I use prepaid cards), especially when bundled with internet access. For some, I can see the actual NEED (as opposed to simple want/convenience) of having a phone where one can be reached - and or “reach out” - where ever they happen to be.  I am not one who has that need, and I have no desire for the “convenience”.  So I go the cheaper route.

As far as those sitting on the fence about the iPhone, here is an incredibly detailed analysis:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/iphone-review.ars/1

[quote author=“zewazir”]Archaic or not, I do not feel any need to be accessible at all times and places.  A landline is less expensive, even accounting for long distance

We have 2 cells and no home phone. Though I agree with what you’re saying we decoded to go with two cells on the most minimal plan we could find for several reasons: We’re using broadband through the Cable. By going with the cheapest family plan with minimal minutes we the price wasn’t that much different than a land line home phone, especially using a calling card to contact relatives in the States. Because we just moved here and are renting right now we’re likely to move several times in the next couple of years, it’s one less thing to switch. Lastly, as I’m trying to get my career running up here I have prospective employers calling and it’s a very good thing if they can reach me anywhere.

All that said though, I can see in a couple of years once we are settled a bit better we very well might drop the cells depending on what are needs are and the cost. They are annoying little things. Actually, that’s my biggest complaint about cell phones; that you ARE in contact all the time. I just do not think I need to be reachable everywhere. For example, last weekend my wife and I were enjoying a leisurely stroll along the harbor in Nanaimo. The boats and sea planes were coming and going, we were chatting and window shopping, it was a very pleasant time. Then her purse rang. She pulled out the cell and had a 30 minute conversation with a friend in Colorado who “just decided to call to see how things were going” while I cooled my heels waiting. Yes she could have cut the call short but she had been wanting to talk to this friend for a while. Grrr!

Cell phones are fine and useful but I just find them annoying most of the time.

I voted After a couple revisions, maybe.  I’m not a giant fan of all in one devices, and my current ipod and current cheap cell phone still work.  The two primary reasons I have a cell phone are for free long distance and to give people a number to call me at work that doesn’t require going through the company switchboard.  The iPhone really looks cool, and I take one if someone magically appeared to give me one, buy I can’t see buying one now.