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Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Have a Pager? Do You Find It Useful?

Posted by yaelk on from the call-me-beep-me-if-you-want-to-reach-me dept.

New submitter Chance Callahan writes: I am starting a business, helping a friend with his own startup, and volunteering regularly with a major political campaign (#feelthebern). One thing I have noticed is that my phone likes to die at the most inconvenient times and leaves me out of touch with people. With the business I'm starting requiring clients to be able to get ahold me quickly, I have been seriously considering getting a two-way pager. It's much easier swap out a AA battery once a month then to worry "will client X be able to get ahold me in the event of an emergency?" So, Slashdot, the million dollar question is, in the age of cell phones, do you have a pager? Do you still find it useful? Do any other "dead-tech" tools still play a big role for your communications? For example, fax machines are still big in Japan, and a lot of people keep landlines, too.

5 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Yes considering how poor cell coverage is! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This. Cellphones, like wireless Ethernet, use frequencies that are just too high to penetrate. I think our pager system is 26MHz, and works even in the bottom of our parking garage.

  2. Gives you time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm on call from time to time (one week a month, for a full 7 days) and I *LOVE* the fact that a Pager at 3AM at least gives me a bit of time to wake-up and go to the toilet compared to being called directly and dump on a phone bridge with 10 other people wanting an answer *RIGHT NOW*.

    I also have shitty Cell reception where I live, but Pager reception is A-1

  3. Re:Who still uses pagers? by dmr001 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm a doctor, we still use pagers, and they suck. On the plus side, an AA battery lasts a month, and reception is not usually an issue. On the minus side, no one seems to be making pagers anymore, so we get reconditioned units. I long for my old indestructible Motorola pager. Buttons get jammed and latches fall off the "new" ones, the display is less than reliable, and I can customize the beeping to grating, annoying, and nerve-wracking.

    We are beginning to investigate smartphone based solutions, which, in order to be compliant with US privacy regulations have expensive recurring monthly charges, and will involve installing and maintaining microcells in our hospitals.

  4. Re:Who still uses pagers? by sribe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why doesn't someone developing medical devices see this as a market and develop a pager for the medical industry if pagers are no longer being made?

    It's not the pagers. It's the paging systems. The market has dropped greatly, so maintaining transmitter towers, repeaters, the whole system, is a hard business to be in. Reliability is exactly why some large medical systems run their own metro-wide paging systems.

  5. Re:Seriously?? by FaxeTheCat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    An extra cheap non.smar phone easily lasts a week on a charge.