Yes, it would but most last for days on a single charge, can be recharged many times from a laptop via a USB cable (but that would eventually run down too), and could be recharged from a car adapter which would be enough for weeks and weeks of charges - probably years if one were willing to start the car for a bit every now and then to keep the car battery charged. It also would be no problem for people with backup generators (I don’t have one of those but again, I’m in an area with minimal severe weather).</p>
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I can hear my cell phone (iPhone) through much of my house but of course, not everywhere depending on where it’s at. However, because of work, I tend to have the cell phone near me most of the time and can almost always hear it ring including in places where the landline wouldn’t work well unless I carried the cordless phone (which btw won’t work in a power outage) with me but I don’t since it’s kind of bulky. My cell phone, which is small and light, I carry with me when I head to the back 40, into the garage, up to the mailbox, out to the store, etc.</p>
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Yes, in a major emergency, like a big earthquake or our huge brush fires or something, the cell network would likely be overwhelmed but actually, so can the landline and this has happened before (the landline phone systems is designed for a max number of concurrent calls which is a far lower number than the actual phone lines out there). I guess I’m not too concerned about that since it’s unlikely to happen very often and if I’m going to call anyone it’d likely be to contact one of my kids - both of whom only have cell phones. If you’re concerned about power outages make sure you have at least one landline that’s powered by the phone network and not dependent on house power like my cordless phones. </p>
<p>I know there are good reasons for some people to hang onto the landline but the more I think about it the more I think I don’t really need it and wouldn’t mind skipping that bill that’s loaded up with item after item of various ‘regulatory fees’ making something that I don’t use that often much more expensive than it s/b.</p>
<p>And on the health concern about the radio transmissions of a cell phone - I agree that people s/b concerned enough to take a couple of simple precautions like using a bluetooth headset or the speakerphone for the longer conversations. Even having the phone a few inches away from the head reduces the intensity of the radio waves hitting the head considerably.</p>
<p>I am one in the 50+ group who gave up my landline more than two years ago. I transferred our old number to my cell phone so we didn’t lose it. The one downside is that 911 calls can only be traced back to the cell tower, but I haven’t really worried about it. The one thing I miss is the way my mom (for example) would call and one of the kids or DH would answer and chat with her a few minutes before handing the phone over to me. But really, that wouldn’t happen in this day and age because no one else would pick up the phone since they get all their calls on their cells.</p>
<p>I always figured I could use the car charger if we lost our power for long.</p>
<p>Hope this isn’t a dumb question but I always thought that the cell phone only charged in the car while the car was on…thus, I’d need to leave the car on or drive around for awhile (maybe a long while) to charge my cell phone. Am I wrong–will the cell phone battery charge when the car is off?? (appreciating my anonymity here!!)</p>
<p>SodiumFree, thank you for the vote of confidence. I’ll check it out this week-end. When I glanced at the instructions, there were some terms that I wasn’t familiar with; hence, the intimidation factor. Also, I do worry that I’ll mess something up and my emails will all end up in limbo and I won’t be able to get them back!</p>
It depends on the car. More and more cars (most new ones) have ‘power outlets’ in them that remain powered even when the ignition switch is off in which case the cell phone would still recharge. Even many (but not all) older cars have the ‘cigar lighter’ live when the car’s powered off. It’s easy to check - just plug in the car adapter with the car off and see if your cell phone indicates it’s charging.</p>
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I don’t know where they’re at on it but cell phones with GPS capability were going to have that tied into the cell 911 service to be able to locate the phone to within feet. However, if I were to dial 911 on a cell from my house, realistically I could probably manage to give them the address.</p>
<p>Perhaps because you live in one of the parts of the country that have no towers whatsoever. [Wired</a> 12.02: The Quiet Zone](<a href=“http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/quiet.html]Wired”>The Quiet Zone | WIRED) A couple of years ago we went to Green Bank to see the radio telescopes, and the only service our cell phones received within miles of there were very weak analog signals - and we had to be at the top of a mountain to even get those. Happykid still has a “Quiet Zone” T-shirt from that trip.</p>
<p>I had a great deal of difficulty tapering and discontinuing CompuServe several years ago. My H had been bugging me about it for years, but I had a sentimental attachment from the pre internet days. They had the nerve to send me a bill when I just stopped paying after sending numerous emails.</p>
<p>Even with bluetooths, people often have the phone on their body, particularly men. Most men, and many women, carry their cell phones in a pocket right next to their body, in fact, often near their reproductive organs. Some years ago I was involved in a fight to keep a cell tower from going up across the street from an elementary school (we won because the judge thought there was enough information to warrant concern. We also were responsible for the school board taking a position on the issue.) There was a lot of concern about a tower being that close to growing children. Maybe it’s having done some reading at the time, but I’d just feel better if these had been around for 50 or 60 years. I’m pretty convinced that the emergence of so many trends in health – girls entering puberty at younger and younger ages, the rising rates of autism and certain autoimmune disorders, the fact that certain cancers are seen at younger ages, etc. is related to how much the environment has changed in the last few decades. We seem to have plunged into a love affair with wireless technology without a whole lot of information about long-term effects.</p>
<p>Read the article below and it reminded me of this thread from a few days ago. </p>
<p>Turns out that people in your situation are essentially the only thing keeping AOL alive. In short, the article says 80% of AOL’s profits come from subscription fees and 75% of its subscribers don’t actually need, or even use, the service (i.e. like you they’ve long since had another way to access the Internet yet still just kept paying the monthly fee to AOL). </p>
<p>Has anyone else been affected by the “snag” that AOL has been having on a small portion of their email addresses? Apparently they had a problem with a server during routine maintenance :rolleyes: and access to email was completely cut off for about a day. When it came back, some emails were missing. For me, it was if it reset to Nov. 30 - no saved emails after that, and I think anyone sending email during the down period got undeliverable messages. We have four AOL addresses and this only affected one of them, not my personal one. I also have Gmail, but like my old old AOL screen name. I do believe they will eventually restore the missing emails, and it only caused me minor difficulties, but it is a good warning. Make sure that you don’t have anything irreplaceable only accessible via email!</p>
<p>Yup, Marilyn, the AOL email snafoo affected one of our email addresses yesterday. Fortunately it was not a primary account and was inconvenient but not a total disaster. I would love to migrate all my AOL stuff to one of my other emails, but AOL does not make that easy to do, and I have so many things attached to the AOL email that I would be afraid to move completely without some sort of effective forwarding procedure. Anyone know of one?</p>
<p>AOL has often been a serious PITA when I use it when posting here on CC. It frequently gets really slow to respond (its not my computer or my internet connection), and the little circle thing at the top just spins and spins. It takes me forever to get back in to correct the gazillion typos I make when posting. Sometimes it gets “stuck” and if I get pulled away to do something else, by the time I get back, and AOL has started to behave again, I may have missed the window of time to edit my typos. Most of the time I can eventually get in to correct the typos and the telltale “edit” line is noted at the base of the post. Othertimes the typos remain for posterity.</p>
<p>AOl deleted, for lack of a better word, my saved mail, inbox and sent mail. I’ve been getting emails about them in the process of fixing it (not holding my breath) but so far it’s going on 3 days.
The only thing I want is my saved mail, some items I didn’t copy on my PC. I have 3 email accounts and will just keep this, (when it is hopefully fixed) for my “bulk” mail.</p>