Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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Why unlock phone?
[Read the article: Meet the iPhone hackers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is true that you might lose some features by using this phone with a SIM from a different provider, but reasons to want to do so are:
1. So that you can use the same phone with different SIM cards in different countries. (International roaming charges are fearsome.)
2. You may have an existing contract with another provider--like T-Mobile for which you have got increasingly better terms over the years, and you may not want to change your number or go through a lot of hassle in transferring it to another provider.
The same kind of problems exist with all these kinds of gizmos, like mp3 players.
I have a Toshiba Gigabeat mp3 player, and with the hacked Rockbox operating system that I have put in to replace the original system, the performance is enhanced in numerous ways. For example, the files can be catalogued by file name, it can now be charged through the USB port, and the sound files on the device are no longer encrypted in a proprietary format, photographs display better, it can run movie clips (very badly as yet), you can design your own while playing screens, and many other enhanced features. The device is now much more valuable to me than when I bought it.
Of course, ATT hopes to gain customers from rival providers, and no doubt it will. The days when you built a better mousetrap and the world beat a path to your door have long since gone (if they ever existed) and businesses will always resort to subterfuges to get you locked in. Why, the satellite TV company just called me as I wrote this to let me know they can install a receiver system and TIVO for me tomorrow FREE! Pity I don't watch TV and can't benefit from such largesse.
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@ KyMunkitt
[Read the article: "The Trap"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is certainly a lot of truth in what you say. As a young baby boomer (I hate that term, but what can you do?) we saved on haircuts by growing our hair long, wore army surplus clothing or hippy gear because it was cheap, hitch-hiked round Europe because... you get the picture.
Certainly average Americans waste an incredible amount of what they earn, so you can certainly live better if you ignore the lemming mentality that is so pervasive.
I am not a mean person, but I like to spend what I have on others rather than on stuff for myself. Having lived for the last three years in a house with no furniture except a chair, a table and a bed, I really splashed out last month and bought a sofa/loveseat/armchair set, coffee and end table, a glass dining table and four chairs, another armchair, and an nice big L-shaped desk. $1200 the lot at the used furniture place down the road, yet you could have had it all at the new furniture store for nothing down and paid three times the price.
When I replace my car I will pay the dealer down the road $250 to buy a car for me in the auction and pay cash, then I won't have to pay huge collision damage insurance premiums, which I would if I boughy my car on credit with no down payment.
Where I really see conspicuous consumption is in Wal*Mart, of all places, where I get my groceries. While I mostly buy things like meat, fish, vegetables, flour, sugar, eggs, spices, I see that most of the floor space is devoted to expensive processed and preprepared meals that cost nearly as much as takeouts, talking of which, are another huge area of overconsumption. People also spend a fortune on drinks, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, especially paying higher prices for well known brands which don't taste any better when you are drunk. (I don't drink alcohol.) Personally I usually drink iced tea, which I make a gallon at a time from teabags at about 30 cents a gallon.
Although I sound like a total skinflint, I have actually made more than 30 leisure trips overseas in the last three-and-a-half years, the point being that even on a middle class average type salary (61K last year), if you prioritize you can still have some pleasures, even if you don't have it all.
When I was young, college education in the country where I lived was almost free, but only a tiny percentage of the population (about 3%) was getting a college education. Now that the percentage is some much higher, maybe 45% having at least some college, it is unrealistic to think that every one who gets a degree must be above average. Too many Americans are living in Lake Wobegon. And if opportunities are really so limited, how come so many people who can't even speak English want to come here?