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| Powered by Telcel |
Until we moved to Mexico in September, 2005, we were unfamiliar with the workings of cell phones. We had to buy one, as there were no land lines reaching the remote outposts that have bookended our home life here. Only the large house down by the railroad tracks, which we house sat for 4 1/2 months, had a landline phone.
There are many Telcel tiendas in Pátzcuaro, about one on every block in Centro, and on every other corner. What criteria to use in selecting the best shop?
We guys might as well choose by which has the most attractive young women who almost inevitably run these stores.
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| Not your usual, everyday Telcel salesgirls |
The user interface was cryptic, but with exploration, we were able to gain a basic knowledge of the workings.
A second phone was needed when we moved out here to The Sticks. How else could we communicate over distance when one of us was in the house and the other was away?
I purchased a second Nokia. The relatively simple model had been superseded by a somewhat snazzier one. It looked cooler with its central cursor key, but the interface was actually more recondite. But that one suffered a fall, and though he crystal was replaced after an agonizing, 6 weeks wait, after which I eventually took it to a different store for repair, the phone was never the same as before. For one, the screen lost its backlighting. The interface remained inscrutable and prone to rebellion as settings changed on their own, calls were made without my involvement, and overall, it was a Piece of Crap.
A few weeks ago, I decided that I couldn't stand it any longer, so I shopped for a new phone.
I chose a Telcel tienda which I knew would be really good, because A—a, the young woman in charge, is very attractive. Sorry. No photo.
Eventually, with her help, I chose a coolly elegant LG model with a flip cover, a mini window in the cover to see time and date and other activity, a camera, a very nice compact design, and it only cost me $999 pesos. The Nokias had run about $480 back in the day.
I was delighted for the moment. A little later, I discovered a few shortcomings. The charging port is a mini-USB port with a skinny, hard to open cover. We have had to use a jeweler's screwdriver to open it.
The operating instructions are only in Spanish, on a single sheet of paper, unlike the extended, bilingual User Manual that came with the Nokias. (yet inscrutably recondite.)
The LG came with only one, obnoxious rock and roll song ringtone installed, but of course, the user can add more. We'll get to that.
The camera is easy to use, but I still haven't been able to access the files on my computer. We'll get to that.
O.k. Lets get to it. To transfer files between phone and computer requires that the back of the phone be slid off, and a tiny pinkie fingernail sized SD card be slid out. The phone kit comes with a regular sized SD into which you slide the mini SD card. The ensemble slides into your card reader. A volume (disk image) shows up on the Mac's desktop. Inside are some subfolders, some of which seem to relate to what you can view on the phone screen, after clever navigation through the shoals. Others seem to have no relation.
I won't describe the entire, tedious process of creating a ring tone, then dragging it to a folder, ejecting the disk image, reassembling the phone, finding out that it's turned off, restarting, navigating back to the Profiles screen, selecting the correct setting (a significant achievement in itself) and then only to find that the imported ringtone is an "invalid file". But eventually, I got one to work. However, I may have inadvertently deleted it yesterday.
Although I can see the lousy photos on the phone, I can't locate them when the disk image is mounted on the Mac.
However, this is probably an effort not worth pursuing.
I have one last question: if the LG phone has a mini USB port for charging, why the hell can't you do file transfers via the same cable?
Oh; one more question: where do the get the software designers for such user unfriendly interfaces? Dropouts from software designers' school?
I will admit, though, how cool I feel when I flip the cover open and then snap it shut.
What I really want is an iPhone, but the cost of hardware, and especially, the contract plan rates are way out of my budget. I guess that if we gave up eating out in restaurants so often, I could swing it. That prospect is highly unlikely.
