Is This 4mm Thick Emergency Phone the Ultimate Backup Plan for Wireless Outages?

[fourier jr]

A land-line telephone that can be put in a paper envelope and sent to someone by snail-mail? There would be knowing nods, winks and guffaws all over the gallery. People shooting cellphone videos of it and e-mailing them to YouTube.

But British industrial-design firm Priestman Goode isn't kidding. Its Post A Phone is meant as a "failsafe backup" when more sophisticated wireless technology goes off-line.

http://www.thestar.com/article/268958

 

[Evo]

Interesting story fourier, someone has found yet another way to make money off of the uninformed.

That is the stupidist thing I've ever heard of. If you plug it in, but you don't have an active landline, it's not going to work. I have an $8 phone that has caller ID, auto-dialing, mute, etc... but again, if you plug it into a dead landline, it's dead.

If your cell phone goes out momentarily, are you really going to wait for a phone to be mailed to you, only to find out that, ooops, I don't pay for a landline, is that why it doesn't work?

And if you have a landline (you have DSL for instance) why wouldn't you go out and buy a $5-$8 phone to keep around the house anyway? That's just common sense.

 

[Moonbear]

What an odd thing to think people would buy. Those who are "used to" landlines will already have a landline phone. And as Evo pointed out, if you don't have a landline service, what good is this thing going to be? But, if you have to wait for the thing to be mailed to you, you might as well run out to the store and get your broken cellphone replaced the same day if you've otherwise been relying on a cell phone. I actually keep my cellphone as the backup for my cordless home phones (since they rely on a plug to work...the cellphone is backup for power outages or outages of the landline phone). Between a cell phone and a landline, the entire area would have to be in a major blackout for me not to have one or the other to call from (and then nothing is going to work). I have a car charger for the cell phone, so am not depending on house electricity for it to work.

Many people I know have completely done away with their landlines...something like that won't help at all in that case. Actually, the one thing that keeps me from switching to VoIP instead of a landline is that the cable goes out more often than either the electric or phone (I've never had a phone outage, and while the power often blinks during storms, only once or twice have I had an outage that lasted as much as an hour...during which the cellphone still works). But, if I did switch, I'd still have the cellphone for backup if there was a power or cable outage.

By the way, if you need someone to mail you a phone, how do you call them and ask for it?

 

[out of whack]

Related tip: keep a wire coat hanger on the back seat in case you lock your keys in the car.

 

[Moonbear]

Related tip: keep a wire coat hanger on the back seat in case you lock your keys in the car.

Oh, and don't forget to send out those emails to let your employees know the mail server is down.

 

[hypatia]

That would of worked out well when I had a apartment that was only 5mm big.