Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

It is amazing how far technology has come.

Norwich called yesterday (I had heard about a particular shop there, but I also just wanted to look around). It’s a few hours away from where I live, so was a day trip. The kind of day trip that’s one point brave and two parts foolish: I had never been there before, had no idea where anything was, and – since I was getting the train there – it came with a very real risk of getting lost.

Thankfully, I didn’t get lost. Every bit of that is down to my phone, which has Google maps on it, and a tremendously useful GPS.

It’s with phones, much more than anything else, I think, that this James Bond-ish quality of the modern technology really comes into its own.

Of course, there are some things that business and office telephone systems can do better. There are some that can do all sorts of ridiculous things – much more than the simple offering of broadband. And that’s another mark of how far technology has come.

It’s a little bit like the tech that the new BT television systems are offering: TV on demand, and some I’ve seen are even offering 3D capabilities, that sort of thing. And if the movie experience in the cinema is anything to go by, that is going to be something worth keeping an eye on: I remember being forced to blink and move back slightly when objects were flying out of the screen towards me, the other day.

But smartphones are still the thing that impress me the most. What they can offer you in something so small, stashed away in your pocket is quite frankly mind-boggling. Most of it comes down to internet on the go. It is the stage for everything else to build upon.

It’s not like that mobile broadband you can get, where you shove a usb stick into a laptop, and tend to battle with fluttering, unstable connections and tediously slow speeds. It’s easy. It’s simple. It’s automatic.

And there is a beauty in that. I think I’m more impressed with my mobile than I was with my first Panasonic digital cordless phone, which was a bit of a lifesaver, if you recall.

I thought I would do one more blog before bed (and boy, am I looking forward to bed after last night). Because I had a few friends round for drinks this evening, and, strangely, they were very complimentary about my phones. Which is an odd thing to be complimentary about, I think, but there you go.

At least they were complimentary about something. But it’s one of those things that just sort of caught me; made me smile. And so here I am, rambling about it.

I told them I was with BT. And that BT are pretty rubbish. But then I suppose when you live out in the middle of nowhere, most phone and broadband services will be pretty bad. Still, it was more the handsets that they liked; what, with their fancy (though unused) buttons, and a look about them that says: I do more than ring people. They are those fancy dect cordless phones.

They had never considered buying telephones online before, which is where I got my ones from. There is a phone shop in our local town, and it’s usually well-stocked, and pretty good for whatever you need. But the possibilities with online are limitless. You can browse tonnes of phones, and eventually find that extra special hub or handset.

Sometimes, they even throw in deals. Discounts on business and ADSL lease lines, and that sort of thing. And, of course, the big ones to look out for are internet deals, because there are so many bargains to be had that save you money. Certain UK ISP’s, like Zen, are often good for that.
But when I go into a shop… I don’t know. If there are no deals advertised, I don’t feel confident enough to ask for a discount or to haggle or barter. Which is why, often, online is the way forward – for me, at least.

I have not had the best of days today, and it was made worse by a phone call I’ve just had from BT. Let me just say that it really annoys me when you get called by your service provider about deals and offers. When I was at uni, it was Virgin – they called me on a number of occasions about some sort of package where I could get television and phone included, whereas I only had the broadband. The thing is, it is rather easy to cancel broadband when you finish the year and move out – but the phone, and the TV is another matter. And then you have to consider the fact that there is always a minimum contract agreement, which would go on far longer than my tenancy.

It might sound pathetic, but it just annoys me. Being called by BT, with them offering me some supposedly fantastic deals on their new BT home phones, it annoys me. I have been using BT here for a while now, and they have been okay. The internet is sometimes quite slow, we sometimes get stung on the occasional phone bill, but for the most part they have been okay. But that doesn’t mean I want to get called about new phones. If I want new phones, I can shop around for them myself.

There are so many specialists and websites, and shops out there – places like this telephone system website – that make it so easy to get that sort of thing anyway, that now more than ever you don’t need people selling you things down the phone. It’s the same with internet. You have telecoms and the like, but more than that, you have television adverts, you have the internet in general: you can use the internet to research the internet, and find the deals you want. If you want sdsl internet, you can research and get sdsl internet.

So rather than go through the process of turning them down, I simply hung up. And after the day I’ve had today, it felt quite good, too!