Monday 11 June 2012

What a lovely surprise

About four or maybe five years ago my Psion 3C died.  I actually had a second one and was able to download the backup onto that and carry on as before but the incident made me realise that I needed to move on. But of course nothing similar to a Psion now exists; the only solution was a smartphone. So I bought one, an android Motorola Dext on Pay As You Go.

I spent about three months trying to come to terms with the new technology. The thing was, I hadn't bought it to use as a phone but as a data repository. In fact, to this day I haven't made a call on it other than to top up. My early attempts to convert all my data files from the Psion set up were fruitless so in the end I had to key in all the info entry by entry. That alone took about three weeks. 

Now we have a wireless network in the house the Dext is always on, but set to "airplane" - in other words the G3, or G anything, is turned off. When we're away I turn on the 3G and usually consume a fair amount of money over a couple of days. The connection charge never goes over £2 in any 24 hours but the continual connection and disconnection with various networks deducts a sum - I think it's 35p - and it's surprising how quickly the pounds can drain away.

Last weekend I topped up with a customary £20 so that I could access traffic data on the journey and keep up to date with emails. Imagine my surprise when we returned and I checked the balance. £20.20! How did that happen?  To find out I actually read the latest of the texts from Orange. It turns out that they're giving me a free 500Mb of data every time I top up with £15.  And what's more it would appear that the charge for connections seems to have been waived.  This is one happy bunny!

P.S. This welcome news come hot on the heels of the trojan-ridden PC saga. The damage turned out to be so severe that a complete reformat was the only answer.  I didn't lose any data but I lost hours and hours having to redo all the settings and reinstalling software. That alone is a very good reason for being extremely careful not to contract anything nasty.

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