Do you spend much time talking on your Real phones

[Weco355aman]

In today's world very few people want to talk on the phone. I used to spend a fare amount of time on the phone, after most people dropped there landline my talk time  has been reduced by 90%. All of The Cell phones voice quality sucks so bad that I refuse to spend much time visiting on the phone. The voice quality is that of the 20's.
This could be fixed but the public seams not to care, just send a email and leave me alone is the message most people are saying. I find this sad that people don't want any personal interaction, At work we now has Samsung phones and I they are far worst sounding than apple phones, I know that I may be one of the last few people
that cares.
Phil

[RB]

Right there with you bud!
seems nobody gives a hoot about much of anything these days.
if it does not directly effect me, I don't care what happens. seems to be the opinion of most folks today.
unfortunately, these poor souls are missing 90 % of life now, and are too consumed by facebook etc... to even be aware of whats goin on right in front of their faces.
I heard a very good line recently, it went...
Have you gone anyplace interesting lately??? to look at your phone??
poor slobs! life is going right past them, and they are too ignorant to see it.
I wonder how long it will take for language to be forgotten entirely?

[Babybearjs]

That's why I hate cell phones.....

[Phonesrfun]

It's even worse with a hearing problem.  My work phone is not much better.  An IP system that we spent a lot of money for, and sometimes its no better than a cell connection.

[RB]

IP phones are great!...in theory.
too many variables, and lots of network traffic.
and if you are lucky, and have a cisco router,
you get to experience throttling back on the network when traffic is high, to maintain the phone connection!
a vicious circle!

[shortrackskater]

I'm trying to make a point of actually calling people on any one of my multiple antique phones. The problem is... everyone just texts now, so 90% of the time, I get the recording. And yes I've noticed the audio quality isn't so great  - "can you hear me now?" Of course, that happens with my own cell phone depending on where I am in the house. But even I'm caught up in the convenience of texting so I'm guilty of being self-conditioned to texting but I'm tying to revert back to the old days of actual voice conversations, where there can be no doubt on what someone means since you can HEAR their voice and tones.  What a concept!

[jsowers]

I have nothing but old rotary and touch-tone phones in my house and I don't own a cell phone, so every call I make or receive is on an old phone and they have worked for me for 32 years. Most of the calls I get at home now are from telemarketers and once I slammed down the handset on my light beige 2702 so hard it cracked the plastic all the way across the right-hand side! Take that, Rachel at cardholder services!

I used an iPhone at work before I retired and I used to complete my work orders with it. But I refuse to have one at home or on the road. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to type on an actual keyboard using all ten fingers.

We had Cisco IP phones at work, Cisco Routers and Switches too, and they were OK most of the time, but every now and then we could have some real goofy problems and I helped solve many of them. The IP phone system saved us tons in long distance and out of area line fees and we did all our own installs. At one point we had two different area codes in our county and five different telcos. The cordless IP phones were a trip. I carried one out in the schools. They depended on wireless access points and got flaky all the time, so that you could hear whoever was calling but they couldn't hear you, or vice-versa. Or it would suddenly lose signal and you'd have to walk toward the hallway where the access point was.

"Can you hear me now" was an everyday occurrence. I don't miss those one bit. Cell phones were very spotty inside the schools or our office since many of them had metal roofs and were not near cell phone towers. Some guys carried three phones--the cordless IP, their work cell and their personal cell.

[twocvbloke]

To be honest, I hate using phones (oh, the irony, I know!!), just hearing one ring sets off a sense of dread that I can only assume is based on having to deal with complete morons and "I'm the expert" types on the other end when working at a computer shop, so every time the phone rang, I dreaded answering them, and that spilled over into home life and continues to this day...

And as I say, it's quite ironic, I have all my vintage phones, there's the actually used phones (a cordless trio set and a BT Relate 200 wired phone), and there's my 4x Android phones (3x spares, one main), but I hate using them for actual phonecalls, love playing with them from a technical perspective, but using them for their intended purpose, nope, no likey...

Apparently it is actually a problem which I think they call telephone anxiety, and there is treatment for it, buuuut, I prefer to be "that guy" that never answers people's calls unless I know the reason for it beforehand...

[Greg G.]

Depends on who I'm talking to.  Email, texting, and other modern communication medians have certainly cut down on the amount of actual voice conversations over the phone in the last few decades.  Frankly, the modern medians have been a blessing.  I remember the days being stuck on the phone with a boring person who just wants to gossip and waste time, then have to lie to them about an emergency to get them off the phone.  Sometimes that was only temporary because they would call you back (pre-caller id days) to find out what happened, continue the cycle!

[dsk]

I have made a setup at home with an old mechanical PAX and phones in many rooms. Use it every day. Will be less when our son loves out in the end of the year.