Pam's new phone

Pam bought a Siemens phone in Carrefour just over a year ago. That was a big mistake! To accomplish the most simple task you had to get the instruction booklet out. For example why did it have a phonebook and an address book and which one should you use? How do you send the same SMS message to more than one person without having to re-write it and where were the pictures that she took stored? The worse feature was the battery which would only hold charge for just over a day.

So yesterday Pam bought a new Nokia because she likes Nokias. Laura gave Pam her old Nokia to use in the UK and she found that a lot easier to use. But not all Nokias are the same - this one has a different menu system. My theory is that they make the menu systems different so that you are forced to spend time with your new phone getting to know it. The menu system on this new phone does seem a lot easier than that Siemens though so hopefully she won't be swearing at it quite so much. For one thing it has just one phone book - that is a relief in itself!

Of course phone menus are a lot simpler to use these days. I still remember how complicated it was to even make a call on my first phone. In those days the menus resembled Microsoft DOS and you accessed them with complicated series of button presses. Now you have a grid of graphic icons and a joystick to play with. Oh the brave new world! Giving you a spanky interface though has allowed them to introduce spanky new features like "Push to talk" , "Flash messages" and "Web connection". Although Pam can be pushy when she talks, I hope she doesn't try flashing her messages.