Paging sad losers

[Paul B]

Who here had a pager for work?

(Or for personal use if you're that sad ...)

I can remember thinking I was so cool (and important) for having one

Nick Fury used one at the end of Avengers Infinity War and I had to explain to my daughter what it was.

 

[Paul B]

Of course, when I got a Palm Pilot, that's when I was really cool.

 

[Kevin]

Our team was way excited when we got our Motorola T-900 two-way text pagers!

 

[Chris D]

At some point between 1999 and 2001 I had a Philips BT EasyReach pager which looked almost exactly like this:

As best as I can remember, it received SMS text messages so it was a way for my parents to send messages without having to buy me an actual phone.

I don't recall having it for very long before they finally caved in and just bought me a phone

 

[Paul B]

When I worked for Orange in the UK in 1994?, which was the first GSM1800 network in the country, my very first mobile phone which had a green screen and 5, yes 5! ringtones, didn't work more than 500 metres from the office.

 

[Mendalla]

I packed one for several years. Just a cheap numeric job from Motorola that just displayed the number the caller left.

Finally convinced people it was just as easy to just call my phone or email me (I was carrying a BlackBerry phone by that point).

 

[Mouth]

Who here had a pager for work?

Had? Many still do! A couple of years back, it was reported that almost 80% of hospitals still use, and predominantly rely upon, pagers for alerting and communication. I think your NHS tried to remove/replace them last year too, and got huge pushback from the medical industry?

had to explain to my daughter what it was.

I recently had to explain a walkman to master 10yo, I gave up after 60sec's and decided it was easier to use YouTube to show him

 

[TLDR]

I recently had to explain a walkman to master 10yo, I gave up after 60sec's and decided it was easier to use YouTube to show him

Easy.

An iPod is a dedicated device that does nothing but the Music app on your phone. With locally stored music, that is.

A Walkman is an iPod without display where the music is stored on cassettes.

 

[imno007]

I never had a pager myself, but I remember them well. I worked for an uncle who had one for business, so every time it buzzed or beeped we were off to look for a public telephone - remember those?

 

[Rhody]

I had to carry a pager for years, for work. My first cell phone was in 1989, and weighed a lot.

 

[Mendalla]

Easy.

An iPod is a dedicated device that does nothing but the Music app on your phone. With locally stored music, that is.

A Walkman is an iPod without display where the music is stored on cassettes.

Even the iPod might blow their mind, let alone the concept of cassettes. Jobs announced the iPhone in January 2007 so it's been out longer than the kid has been alive. To them, the concept of a device that only plays music will be like "why?"

I remember touring the old Cold War bunker that was built to house the Canadian government in the event of a nuclear war (it became a museum after the government closed it down) and pointing out old dial telephones and computers the size of household appliances to my son (then maybe 10 or so) and that kind of blew his mind. He was born in 1999 so the concept of dialing a phone number or of a computer bigger than a mini-tower PC was foreign to him.

 

[Mendalla]

Had? Many still do! A couple of years back, it was reported that almost 80% of hospitals still use, and predominantly rely upon, pagers for alerting and communication. I think your NHS tried to remove/replace them last year too, and got huge pushback from the medical industry?

Not sure how Canadian hospitals do on-call now. I know back when my son was little and the neighbourhood kids were coming over to play on his swing set, the neurologist who lives behind us was carrying the same model of pager as I was. My company, which does home oxygen and respiratory care, finally ditched them a few years back. Our field staff get an email (they all have email-enabled smartphones now) from our answering service, with an SMS follow-up, though for a while we just did the SMS.

 

[Kevin]

I had to carry a pager for years, for work. My first cell phone was in 1989, and weighed a lot.
View attachment 233401

That was my first mobile phone as well! Got it from Carrefour in Philly when they tried entering the US market.

 

[Cooking Ketogenic]

My first pager, gosh back in the '80's didn't even have a display or beep, it would just vibrate. If it vibrated then it ment my boss needed me to call him. Dang it @Brogan as this thread now makes me feel old!

 

[Digital Jedi]

At least, thanks to Infinity War, kids know what a Pager is now.

 

[Mouth]

Easy.

An iPod is a dedicated device that does nothing but the Music app on your phone. With locally stored music, that is.

A Walkman is an iPod without display where the music is stored on cassettes.

Mr 10yo wouldn't know what an iPod is