I’m seriously thinking about buying one of these Sprint lovelies that will let me convert my 32 GB iPod Touch into something that resembles a smart phone. I’d like the ability to send my wife an e-mail or two or catch her on the phone (this device would let me make calls via Skype) while on the bus to and from work – Tuesday’s half-hour-late arrival home while she was at the bus stop waiting for me is a good reason why.
But I’m cheap.
It’s not the $80 outlay for the device, which slides right onto my iPod Touch. It’s the $30 a month for the 1 GB-limit data plan through Sprint to actually make the device work that’s making me balk. Now, as smartphones go, that’s a relatively reasonable monthly fee for what you get, but as we’re very used to not having a monthly charge for any telecommunications device outside our landline, I’m not sure I can justify the expense.
OK. I’m sure: I can’t justify it. It’s just not in the budget for the few times I might use the service. That’s $360 a year that could easily be funneled into something more constructive, such as paying down our mortgage or Michelle’s tuition – another installment of which we’ve got coming before the year is out.
Still, that’s just at half the monthly cost for an iPhone. Or any other fancy-pants smartphone. This could be may way in.
So I’ll put it in the maybe pile, the pile perhaps I can dig into if I eventually get at teaching gig at BYU-Idaho, part-time. If I kept the data use manageable, I could justify using a Peel to keep up on my teaching duties while on the bus, so I’ll keep that in mind. It would allow me to use dead time in a much more productive way, especially as the Peel also – theoretically – can act as a wi-fi router, so I could use my laptop to communicate with my students through this little device.
So we’ll see what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment