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Where Have All the Pagers Gone?
oddRaisin writes "After recently sleeping through a page for work, I decided to change my paging device from my BlackBerry (which is quiet and has a pathetic vibrate mode) to an actual pager. After looking at the websites of Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, I'm left scratching my head and wondering where all the pagers went. I can't find them or any mention of them. Pagers of yore offered some great features that reflected the serious nature of being paged. They were loud. They had good vibrate modes. They continued to alert after a page until you acknowledged them. I didn't have to differentiate between a text from a friend and a page from work. Now that pagers seem to have become passé, what are other people doing to fill this niche? Are some phones better pagers than others? Are there still paging service providers out there?"
Look out - they're right behind you!
Why, the same place all the slide rules went, of course.
--Q
He wants his manifesto back.
Read Pynchon.
Because this is slashdot, he should build a robot which can receive and parse incoming messages and wake him up if the message is important. The robot should be designed to make coffee and pancakes as well, why not? Building a robot shouldn't take long, and it'll be a lot cooler to have your own robot than some silly pager. Build a robot to do it!
I have an old defunct pager that still lights up when pressed. I keep it on my belt when I want people to think how important I am. Sometimes I'll bump the button so it lights up and I can then say: "They really need me, sorry but I have to go."
in case I catch the stupid
Too late.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I mentioned your problem to my wife.
She graciously has offered to send you her pager. Just post your address in response to this post. We will even, as a public service, pay for shipping.
I can attest to the fact the unit is plenty loud. As a bonus, you will get plenty of pages for problems that an engineer should never be called for and should have been handled by customer support.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Wait... do you PAY to RECEIVE text messages? Soon you'll tell us you charge for incoming calls as well. Oh... you live in the US. I'm truly sorry.
Great, now I have this song going through my head: "Where have all the pagers gone? Long time passing. Where have all the pagers gone? Long time ago..."
I'm sometimes tempted to text back "Double dumbass on you" or something else inflammatory -- then sit back and watch the 6 o'clock news. But that would be evil.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
http://www.americanmessaging.net/paging/index.asp
I believe verizon sold/spun off their paging service to American Messaging. We use still use pagers for notifications.
On the plus side, not only are they reliable, but my pager gives me some serious street cred, Every thinks I'm a drug dealer, or still living in 8th grade.
I've known employees who have dropped them in the toilet and they still functioned afterwards
Oh well. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
When I was doing a stint in field service a few years back I had 2 Moto pagers. After 3 weeks of being paged incessantly, driving all over NY and NJ on no sleep, and living out of the service van. I got utterly fed up, pulled off the next exit on the NJ Turnpike, found a bar, ordered a very tall vodka & vodka, and dropped all three pagers into the full glass. After 15 minutes of soaking in 80-proof and lemon wedges, they damned things still beeped at me from inside the glass. I'll never forget the sinking feeling of that failed Rebellion, watching my Pager Cocktail vibrate across the bartop.
There is no escaping from field service, from New Jersey, or from Motorola pagers.