Having returned the low powered monster bagphone back to my old V60i on
Alltel, I made the mistake of driving by the store to pay my bill,
yesterday afternoon. They have the store designed so I have to walk by
the neat new phones to get to the payment desk.

Well, short version, I ended up with a new Motorola E815 CDMA-only color
phone/camera/video cam/etc, etc, etc...$70 on a 2-yr contract. I liked
the big screen and LARGER-THAN-USUAL case I can get my MANLY meat hooks
around. The fact it WASN'T slippery like my V60i always was trying to
open it was also a plus, too.

Today, after mistakenly fooling around on alltel.com's Axcess data
webpages, I somehow ended up back at the store where this beautiful
blonde in the tight skirt talked me into Axcess TV:
http://alltel.com/axcess/tv.html
(Click on the phone display to see how it works....)
The $9.95/month isn't the REAL price because it eats up your cellphone
airtime while you're watching...per minute! Under clicking "What do I
need", it tells you about the OTHER $10/month charge for unlimited DATA
delivered to the TV so you can actually afford to WATCH it for more than
5 minutes. So, the real price is $19.95...plus tax loads, of course.

It's NOT HDTV and has a very slow frame rate because Charleston, SC,
STILL doesn't have EVDO broadband (late April is promised, now) on
Alltel. Florida boaters will get lots faster frames than I do. The
picture is formatted for a cellphone and is VERY nice. Every few
minutes, Alltel tries to get you to stop hitting the data server so hard
by stopping the downloading and asking you if you wish to continue. You
have to press a button to get it running for more time...which sucks.

Now, ON TOPIC, boaters seem to be looking for a way to get Weather
Channel and cable news from the anchorage. THIS IS A GREAT WAY! $20
extra on your Alltel bill isn't exhorbitant for the lots of megabytes
this service is going to eat. The picture, of course, is "personal". If
you have a PDA phone, the picture's bigger than mine. But, it's not
totally useless. With my glasses on, I can easily read the text on Fox
News Channel...even the fine print on the ads. Having cable TV in your
pocket, anywhere you go, is really cool, probably more useful than
cellphone's awful internet services.

Wow...Japan just had a 7.1 EARTHQUAKE offshore! No news yet on tsumani
warnings... Maybe this will take their minds off poisoned dead pets for
the last 5 days....

Larry
--
Message for Comcrap Internet Customers:
http://tinyurl.com/3ayl9c
Unlimited Service my ass.....(d^