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Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Have a Pager? Do You Find It Useful?
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.
Why not buy one of those easy-to-find extra battery USB-charger things and carry that with you instead?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Where I work in downtown Seattle, cell coverage doesn't work at all below ground or in our office building if you're not near a window. We have to still use pagers.
Battery Cases, Expansion Battery packs, Modified flux capacitors, Arc reactors, Cold fusion... so many ways to charge?!? You could even rig a charger off a potato if you really wanted to. Anything is better than a pager.
I've got a landline, but basically only because my work requires that I have real phone service. I don't keep a cell phone either as in my situation it'd be a waste 99% of the time, or more.
A phone cannot be carried into a secure area. A (one-way) pager can.
I mean, I haven't even heard of firefighters or doctors around here using pagers since sometime around the early 00s. Didn't even know they were still a thing.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I am part of a couple of groups that use SMS (sent from an email list server) for notifications. ...
Sometimes it works great, sometimes they are delayed 30min, 1hr,
Its amazing the phone companies can charge so much and offer so little.
You can get cheap dumb phones with long battery life, or you can even get one with AA batteries (like SpareOne). That will give you both voice and text functionality and spare you the embarrassment of asking someone to page you (at least I would feel awkward mentioning pagers to my clients).
Also, you could setup a simple email to SMS gateway, so you can get a text message whenever somebody emails emergency@yourbusiness.com.
In a nutshell, your phone battery will drain quickly only if you keep using it as a smart phone, i.e. using data, wifi, bluetooth, having your screen on all the time, etc. If you keep a dedicated mobile phone for emergencies only and use it primarily for texting, you will have all the benefits of a pager while remaining in the 21st century.
You can push a dumb phone battery to a full week if you do it right, and to me at least, charging a phone over weekend or in the car is easier and cheaper then swapping batteries.
Not sure how you manage to have a phone with less than a half day of life.
My guess is that the OP is like a former boss of mine who would complain constantly about the shitty battery life of new phones yet would never charge his phone until it shut itself off because the battery ran low.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
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
Many emergency services such as fire departments, Offices of emergency management, etc still use RF pagers. The system is part of or tied in with the dispatch system. By removing third parties in the communication signal chain, the pager systems provide latency free, and high availability for dispatch systems. They also work well for emergency services because they are geographically limited by the pager transmission antenna coverage. which usually coincides with the emergency services coverage area. For the OP's situation there are usually two options: a local RF network, or satellite pager systems. The local networks may or may not have better coverage, just depends on your local pager provider. Sat pagers tend to have nationwide coverage, but reception is limited by access to the sky. Those choices may or may not be suitable for your needs. RB
I know people don't RTFA, but at least RTFS.
www.wavefront-av.com
He's a Bernie supporter. He's holding out for free energy.
One of my friends carries a pager when he's on call for work (a municipality, and he'd most likely be contacted about a toxic spill). He just clips it to his belt and forgets about it.
The pager has several advantages over a phone. The most critical is that it's a shared device that gets passed between the on-call staff. That means there's no risk of someone forgetting their phone at home, running out of battery or having an incorrect number listed on the staff contact form. Emergency Services has a single contact number that should always work.
True, and so 0.0001% of the population will benefit from this.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
extra battery USB-charger things
Yup, I would definitely agree with this.
My setup up is:
- 10'000mAh USB powerbank (good for ~4x full recharge of the smartphone)
- small compact USB wallwart that can still deliver at least 1'000mA (2'100mA model in the same build size are starting to appear).
- USB roll-up cable (take very little place and doesn't tangle)
With that I'm good to go every-where for long period of time. I can recharge the smartphone on the go with the powerbank.
Or plug it into the wall, or even into the electrical outlets available in most european trains to recharge the battery.
That has really helped me once I've switched from old dumbphone (holds charge 1 week at least) to modern smartphone (is very heavy on cloud usage, charge holds 1 day under heavy 3G usage)
Equipment is still compact and doesn't eat up too much place in pockets/bag/backpack.
Note that lithium batteries are a delicate technology.
It's better to either go to a well known brand, or at least buy from a well known shop so it's easy to have warranty in case of defect.
They might all be produced in china, but at least you can reach someone who is liable for the build quality.
Avoid buying lithium batteries from shady seller on ebay (or taobao, etc.) who promise you 30'000mAh for 20$ (might explode !)
NOTE:
Of course, it helps to live on a continent where the standard power connector is compact and easily interoperable (and are all 100-240V range by default).
Bad luck for you if you live in the UK and its humongous power connector.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I used to carry a pager not too long ago. But in recent years nobody bothered to "call me" on the pager. I think reason is many people don't know what or how it is used. i.e. call my pager number, after hearing a few beeps then key in phone number you want me to call and then I will call you. Is this procedure still taught? Only need a few sentences at most for instructions. But maybe pagers gone way of dial telephones, plop one in front of somebody under 40 and they will have no idea what they are looking at.
It seemed AAAbatterY didn't last very one, since it rarely received calls many times I forget to wear it. When I find after some time, battery is not only dead but leaked. So I have clean out the battery holder, kept doing this several times eventually didn't put a battery into it. Meanwhile the gal came through the office doing property inventory asked if I still use the pager. I had to find it in my junque archive, I turned it in. Last week got the message item has been disposed.
mfwright@batnet.com
An extra cheap non.smar phone easily lasts a week on a charge.
I've carried a pager for over 25 years (systems programmer, then systems admin(VMS, Linux, SAN...)). I like the pager for several reasons: 1) after so many years it is guaranteed to wake me up (and more importantly, it doesn't wake up my wife). 2) it will respond in places that my phone won't reliably get a signal. 3) battery life. 4) clips to my belt and forget it's there.5) if I go on vacation, I can leave it behind. Most paging systems will pass email notifications to the pager; at this point most of my pages are one system or another crying for daddy to help.