response 160 of 290:

Feb 3 18:55 UTC 2006

Thanks for the info.  I found also Net10, 60 days of 300 minutes $30, which
comes to $15/month if you don't use more than 5 min/day.    5 cents per text
message.  No other fees.  Your $25 for 120 days is certainly the cheapest
for very low usage, but twice the cost per minute.  I don't know if Net10 lets
you use your own phone.  Kiwanis has very cheap used phones.  Net10 offers
$30 used (refurbished) Nokia phones with a choice of cover colors and 37 ring
tones.  (So you can hear yours in a crowd?).  No roaming charges for Net10.

response 162 of 290:

Feb 3 19:25 UTC 2006

 re #146:
 > I think Vonage offers a little widget that plugs into your network
 > and has an ordinary phone jack on it, so you can use whatever regular
 > phones you own.

 They do.  Those devices are commonly called "ATAs" (for "Analog Telephone
 Adapter.")

response 164 of 290:

Feb 3 19:57 UTC 2006

re #163
The first thing I did with this 7-11 SpeakOut was jam it up with crack
attempts.  Then, I called customer service at Nokia and get the PUK #'s.
Yay me. ;)

response 166 of 290:

Feb 4 06:44 UTC 2006

I handled that problem by running the modem with speaker continuously on. (AT
M2).

response 168 of 290:

Feb 5 03:04 UTC 2006

Net10 says you have to buy their phone, you can't move over the SIM.
Our friends have a cell phone already, they bought it 2 years ago used ($2?)
with cradle/charger) and once put some minutes on it with Verizon and used
it once or twice and lost interest.  I think we can get them another
rechargeable lithium battery in some shell for another cell phone, for $1,
at Kiwanis, and charge it so they can use it for 911.  He is on the computer
6-7 am and 4-6 pm and she is used to this.  He forgot there was no problem.
Today we stopped at Kiwanis to get a ride with him and Jim went to get a modem
and he asked me 'what am I waiting for?'.  'Jim'.  We tried to set him up to
browse without images and turn them on only as needed, and cache them for 24
hours, but he likes to see the latest stock charts and can't remember how to
load images so now we are back to the slow method again. We made him a script
'e' to go directly to email, but one to go directly to a login page sent Opera
into an endless loop (99.9% cpu usage).  He has four bookmarks and is happy.
We told him to tell all his friends to write him at his webmail instead of
grex but also made him a 'g' script to ssh to grex, where Jim set him up to
go straight into Pine email.  Now we are all set to make another such computer
for anyone else who wants to go on the internet in 30MB or less.

response 170 of 290:

Feb 8 20:53 UTC 2006

He should be able to turn it on and get a message from the local provider's
network.

response 172 of 290:

Feb 8 22:06 UTC 2006

dial a #
the voice message should tell you who the local cell provider is

response 174 of 290:

Feb 9 03:43 UTC 2006

push the red button and hold it down for 10 seconds, it should turn on.  You
wouldn't know anyone who has a used bike for sale cheap.

response 176 of 290:

Feb 24 09:20 UTC 2006

Tracfone (and probably other prepaid mobile phone companies)
use phones with custom firmware that prevents their use with
a different provider and prevents people from using phones
from other service providers.

Keesan: let me know if you need a Tracfone.

response 178 of 290:

Feb 27 01:45 UTC 2006

I should post a rant to the electronics conference about
equipment designed with defective charge circuits that can
cook a battery.

A wireless LAN should be a feature of my next home.  I will
even install one here if I am able to arrange broadband
service.  DSL would probably be least expensive, but as
mentioned in the telephone wiring item I'm struggling to get
a phone jack installed.  :-/

response 180 of 290:

Mar 6 22:01 UTC 2006

I would think so as how else would the wireless card get power? We also have
a Ethernet LAN for two Macs, but have a separate wireless adapter on the
network - i.e., not in one of the computers but plugged into the LAN. 

response 182 of 290:

Mar 6 22:55 UTC 2006

We don't have DSL service, the neighbor does.  We want to pick up his service
wirelessly and then wire our computers together with network cable.  We have
a hub.  We don't need 32 connections.  Someone gave us a box with a wireless
router and a wireless PCMCIA ethernet card and we have a PCMCIA slot in one
desktop computer.  Do we need the router or just the card?  We can connect
our computers via nullmodem cable and share a phone connection that way
(telnet from one to the other, or use kermit to connect).  

This is not important, we can just try to make DSL work on one computer in
the living room and listen to streaming audio with it. I am giving up on the
Detroit classical station, it has too many 30 sec noisy commercials and
traffic reports from 3:30 to 7:00 pm, which is when I would have listened to
it because the other stations stop playing music then.  

We could run the sound from the sound card to the digital piano as Aux in,
but I think it is optimized to sound like a boomy grand piano.  

First we need to get ndiswrapper working to use this wireless card in linux.