back in the pre cambrian era
The company requested we all get phones. They would pay for x amount of usage, and we would pay the balance of the bill. This allowed us to get cool phones. and the company took care of enough of the bill that the cost to us was very minimal.
These days the company provides phones, otherwise I wouldn’t even have one- but back then, having a phone was the hotness- my first phone was a bagphone, which I used a lot, but when the company instituted this policy I went out and got me one of them fancy new Microtac phones. With the extended battery, you could get twenty or thirty minutes of talk time!
And you could store- If memory serves- ten phone numbers!
Alternately, lest anyone laugh at the crudeness of these phones, you could use them in a pinch to hammer in tent pegs and as a close combat weapon.
We had to turn the phones in when we got done with them, so I imagine they’re using them to hammer in tent pegs in China now.
In the slightly post-Cambrian era, a friend upgraded his phone and gave me his Microtac, which served me well in my job as an on-site computer technician. I kept that phone for four years, until I moved to Iowa and realized I would no longer need to call the office since I would be working AT the office in my new job.
I still have the thing, though I’m not exactly sure why, except that it’s somewhere in the morasse in the basement. At this point it’s kind of cool to have it: “This is what cell phones were like in 1991!”
If I find it now, rather than recycle it, I’ll probably put it on display for my nieces and nephews. Heh.
Display is the only place it will work, too, since it is analog.
Yep. Unlike, strangely enough, the pager I still have from that era. Turns out THOSE still work–or do if you take them to the appropriate venue for activation and pay for the service, that is.
I’ve had bag phones, brick phones, flip phones, and now smart phones.
Never got a Micro Tac as it did not have the range or talk time of the slim brick I had at the time.
Had pager’s as well. Carried them and when I got a page I could use the bag phone to call whomever.
I still have some of those things in a drawer some where.
I want the device Kirk had, something in a pin that is tap activated, voice aware and has third person video. Now that would be cool.