Erm... I bought a mobile phone
I was impressed with the Nokia E63 when it came out, a number of years ago. In particular, the option to use WiFi rather than the latest Pay Through The Nose generation of mobile telephony. I also liked the full qwerty keyboard rather than a greasy touchscreen that will fail to work after a year and will allow me to type in English rather than NewSpeak.
What I didn't like was the price. One of those magical prices that is much lower afore the product goes into a container ship in China but extortionately higher when it comes out of the container ship in the west. Another way the 1% make a living for themselves.
Recently, I sold a Belkin WiFi phone that I had used in Ireland, last year. Whenever, I wanted to call someone, I went to the local village, purloined someone's WiFi connection and made a call through Skype. The microphone was awful and people struggled to hear me, even if I yelled.
The sale of the Belkin phone and a few other pieces of junk from the attic left me with £50 to spend on a secondhand phone on eBay. The price of the E63 had fallen to that range. I chose a phone that had the magic words "no scratches", waited for the last 15 seconds of the auction, bid £44 plus the £6 delivery charge and bought myself a phone.
Although the phone has a Three network SIM with which people can call me on, I have the phone permanently connected to a WiFi repeater bridge that repeats an Internet connection from... well, somewhere else. I now have a presence should anyone wish to contact me. The phone allows emergency calls via the Three network, when I am out on the road, and I can connect to the Internet with a little "wardriving" when necessary.
After a few downloads, my E63 now has Skype, a Google chat and email apps and a search engine. What more could I need? Oh, there is also Internet radio. I always need a little radio.
All-in-all, a good purchase for me and a bad one for the 1%. Sorry chaps, go and fleece somebody else!
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