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popshed

Listed below are comments made by popshed between Thursday, 23rd July 2009 and Wednesday, 4th November 2009.

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Orange's 'unlimited' iPhone 1:30pm on 04 Nov 2009 It's the content restrictions that bother me more than the actual limit, unlimited or otherwise.

Since we're not supposed to stream radio at work, I was hoping to use the iPhone to listen to the radio or LastFM or whatever over 3G. But those T&Cs say I'm not allowed to do that as it doesn't constitute "mobile browsing" whatever that is.
Orange's 'unlimited' iPhone 10:04am on 04 Nov 2009 I too pre-registered on the orange site for an iPhone. I'm going to wait and see if they call me up at any point to see why I haven't placed my order yet so I can tell them exactly why.
Orange's 'unlimited' iPhone 5:40pm on 03 Nov 2009 O2 had a £25pm tariff just last month. I know because I was trying to justify the cost of an iPhone and had all the tariffs written out to work out the total costs.

Now that tariff doesn't exist. Combined with Orange essentially coming out with exactly the same tariffs and then hobbling the iPhone by preventing you from using it for practically anything, looks like I'm going to have to give it a miss for the time being.

This is so frustrating. I'm getting so pee'd off with mobile network operators, locking down phones, disguising real costs, outright lying about unlimited data rates.

I just want to buy a phone, pay an honest price for it, or at least have that handset repayment part made distinct in my monthly contract so that after 18 or 24 months it is clear which part of my bill no longer needs to be paid. I want complete separation of texts/minutes/data. I don't actually call people a helluva lot on my phone, I have a landline for that so a bazillion minutes are meaningless and a cost I don't want to have rolled into my monthly contract. I would pay for unlimited data.

By my rough reckoning, it MUST be possible to get an iPhone 3GS for £20 - £25pm with 100mins + 150texts + unlimited data, and then after 18 months that should drop to £5 - £7 for just the calls/texts and data could be had as an optional extra. At the moment I pay £5pm total for my phone because I finished paying for the handset 6 years ago. It's a shame that it takes threats to get the bill down to those levels.
Who wins from an Orange iPhone? 5:09pm on 28 Sep 2009 The news article states "You may see a £30 per month tariff versus £35, but I would not expect anything more."

There's already a £30 tariff on O2, that's why I've been trying to reconsider the iPhone again. An iPod Touch'll set me back > £200 anyway for decent capacity, I need a new phone and that's going to cost me at least £20pm on a contract so it's no longer that big of a leap to £30.

Just the mere fact of having two carriers will hopefully mean that at the very least the lock-in at the end of the contract is over.

I do think though that this whole "tariff continues at the same rate" after your contract is up is something that needs to be challenged like the bank charges. I'd be tempted to threaten small claims court to recover the difference between repaying the cost of the handset and the actual real tariff costs. It should be fairly easy to work out the average cost of the phone alone by looking at all the various tariffs, then just deduct that from the monthly cost. Reasonableness comes into play, and if a judge thinks it's unreasonable for a phone company to continue charging the same price when it's clear you've been subsidising the cost of the handset for 18 months then I can't see how they wouldn't find in your favour.

I'll let you know how I get on in a couple of years.
Who wins from an Orange iPhone? 1:54pm on 28 Sep 2009 I wish telco operators would be forced to be more honest about ongoing costs when the contract expires. I shouldn't have to resort to empty threats about taking my business somewhere else just to get a discount off my bill each month instead of needlessly upgrading my phone.

If I've paid off the HP on my phone through the contract, then those payments should be removed from my bill as soon as the contract ends leaving me with the honest pricing for the line rental/minutes packages.

This is partly what's putting me off moving to O2, would they essentially hold me to ransom after 18 months as I can't go on to use the phone anywhere else anyway?
Who wins from an Orange iPhone? 1:32pm on 28 Sep 2009 I've been trying (and failing) to justify the cost of getting an iPhone. I've had my current phone for nearly 7 years and the joystick pad thing has been borked for the last 2. I'm in the market for a new iPod so I was just gearing myself up for another round of comparisons.

Does this announcement actually apply to the 3GS? I thought that this was the end of the 2-year exclusivity deal for the original iPhone, and that the 3G and the 3GS had equally long exclusivity deals from the date of their respective launches.

If Orange are going to be offering the 3GS then I guess I'm going to have to wait to see what they come out with.
Where has the summer gone? 10:29pm on 05 Aug 2009 Many times we have been told that one swallow does not make a summer, so we cannot ever blame a particular weather event upon climate change. Fair enough.

But two dreadfully damp summers (possibly 3) in a row and a very cold winter between, and if memory serves I think the other winter (2007-8) seemed to drag on a bit, it may not have had the snow but I recall thinking it was unseasonably cold until at least May. I can't help thinking there's an underlying larger cause.

I'm not a meteorologist by any degree and there's a certain amount of tongue in cheek to my own personal conspiracy theory but I'm positing here in a certain amount of desperation for answers since there seem to be none generally available.

I think a contributor above has confused the Jet Stream with the Gulf Stream, but there is a link between the two isn't there?

As I understand it the high level winds of the Jet Stream drive the low pressure systems across the atlantic, and more often than not of late, straight into our faces. Now, there's this regular weather phenomenon known as the Azores High, which I think is caused by rising sea temperatures in the mid Atlantic as the sun heats it up during summer. It lies due west of Africa and looking at the graphics on TV recently it is supposed to push the Jet Stream further North above the tip of Scotland, thereby improving our weather prospects.

If the flow of warm water from the Gulf Stream had slowed considerably or stopped entirely due to a large influx of colder denser water from the North Pole as it melts away during summer then the warming seas might not reach this far north and wouldn't help the Azores High to build in our direction to give us some lovely high pressure.

That's what it looks like to me. The only data I can find (and believe me I've searched the internet very thoroughly) relating to the status of the Gulf Stream Conveyor is no more recent than a 2006 survey which showed that it had slowed considerably. Projections over a decade ago predicted we would likely get "stuttering" of the conveyor within 30 years (citation needed), and I can't help but think that those projections were wildly optimistic. I think we may be there already.

If the Gulf Stream Conveyor were to stop completely then Britain would be plunged into a new ice age and our economy would tank in a way that would make the Credit Crunch look like a picnic in the park. I think that's more than enough reason for the information to be suppressed.
The spinning of Spinvox 10:42am on 24 Jul 2009 We need a service that translates Twitter messages into voicemail. Why? So we can have a blog post about it.
Where has the summer gone? 12:07pm on 23 Jul 2009 Is this not the third year in a row when the jet stream has been "unusually further south than in a normal summer". Seems like this IS the new usual.

Does the Gulf Stream (higher temp waters) affect the position of the jet stream? What's up with the Gulf Stream, there's been no new data released about the flow rate for 3 years. Coincidence?
'I could go out here to 53rd and Broadway and get people to say hi to me' 11:27am on 23 Jul 2009 MINUTIAE!

That was the word I had on the tip of my tongue this morning before it left again.

Pointless minutiae of people's lives.

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