Texting

I was talking to a friend the other day about using text messaging to communicate with people. He is a Dad of 5 kids and uses texting to talk with his kids while they are away. He went into a very convincing discussion about how his children could be on a date or at a movie and he could still be in contact with them through text messages. He knows where they are and what they are doing. He uses it the most with his teen age daughter and says it has kept them close. I queried him about how many message he or she would send per month. He said that he tries to keep her from sending more than 3000 per month. WOW, that is like 100 texts per day. I don't think I could even thumb and finger out that many pithy comments if I tried. I asked him about how much it cost to have the text service and he just replied that he has a plan with unlimited texting.

Anyway, a few days later I decided to try out my texting skills while taking my daughter to Sun Valley for a clogging performance. So, I sent a text message to Deanna every once in a while letting her know where we were and what was happening. I sent text's like this, "Were almost there", "its raining", "We R stopping at McD's". She would reply quickly and it was quite fun. After about 5 text's she sent this message, "Did you know it costs $.05 per text?". Well, that did it for me, I was done sending texts.

Today, I pondered over the idea that with our cell phone plan, maybe we had free texting between phones on the same network, "Sprint". So I called. I found out that Texting is not free between Sprint users, AND, THEY CHARGE $.20 PER TEXT FOR BOTH SENDING AND RECEIVING!!!!! WHAT!!!!!

Anyway, I thought it was Blogworthy, so I wrote it up and posted it.

Article from the New Era about Texting.