On Friday morning at 10:30 am, the customer line outside the Verizon Wireless store at the Bridgewater Commons Mall stretched to about 40 feet long, two to three people wide. The store was already open, and a Verizon employee was metering people in towards the counter where service people were already engaged in selling service plans for the newly announced BlackBerry Storm.
This cell phone is the first touch-screen BlackBerry, and it is Verizon’s answer to AT&T’s iPhone designed by Microsoft exclusively for AT&T Wireless. Both operate on a 3G network. It’s too early to tell how much Verizon will be able to temper AT&T’s head start with the IPhone, but the introduction of the new BlackBerry just before the holiday shopping rush should have an impact.
AT&T and Verizon’s service plans with these new devices are not inexpensive; both offer pricing that is either the same or close. It depends which service plan you choose. For example, the Verizon Family SharePlan will give you 700 minutes for the first two lines combined in an all-inclusive voice, unlimited text messaging, unlimited Mobile to Mobile, e-mail, data and video umbrella etc., for $119.99/month.
The comparable AT&T Wireless Family Talk plan seems to be pricier. According to my reading of the AT&T Wireless web site, 700 minutes with a two-line offering will cost you $129.99/month. But that does not include text messaging which is another $30 for unlimited messages, or 20¢ per message if no plan is selected.
AT&T provides Rollover minutes on voice; Verizon does not. Examine all plans carefully before you choose.
Showing posts with label rbergeron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rbergeron. Show all posts
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Palin’s Popularity
The reaction to Palin since she was chosen as McCain’s running mate has been at polar extremes, much of it virulently negative. I don’t know why. To listen to some people, you’d think that Alaska is a third-world country.
Antagonists either stigmatize her or treat her as though she has no grey matter between the ears. Even Kathleen Parker, a prominent conservative columnist, has come down hard on Palin. The piling on continues. Let me share with you what I think:
Sarah Palin is intelligent. That’s right, intelligent. Without smarts, you don’t get to be a governor and to survive and thrive in the political battles which she won in Alaska. Her detractors would like to label her as the brunette version of a dumb blonde – both sexist insults, but political correctness restrains them from saying what they think. She is tough. After getting bushwhacked several times in a couple of unprepared TV interviews, she jumped right back into the fight, seemingly stronger than before, a quick learner.
She is even-tempered. Not once have I seen her lose her cool under relentless campaign pressure. She evokes jealously: Palin has had the guts to have succeeded in a man’s world while simultaneously achieving what women do splendidly – being a loving wife and mother. That has got to stick in the craw of the dying breed of 1960’s-style feminists. She can be self-deprecating; that was evident in her appearance on Saturday Night Live.
She has a magnetic personality and is the best- looking woman on the campaign circuit: Is she supposed to apologize for that? Is she supposed to put a bag on her head? The woman has charisma and is using it almost effortlessly to her advantage. And why not? Others only wish.
OK! OK! She doesn’t have any international exposure and foreign policy experience. She hasn’t hobnobbed with the Washington, D.C. cocktail party crowd. She isn’t a national economics whiz. She doesn’t come from an ivy-league school. She doesn’t charm the New York Times. She doesn’t have the sophistication of Northeast intellectuals and the approval of Hollywood narcissists.
Nor has she taken bribes; or slept around like so many of our prominent Washington officials; or become addicted to drugs, drinking and drunk driving, like a few D.C. Senators and Representatives from prominent families; or aborted a Down Syndrome baby; or taken to abandoning a practicing faith; or rejected her daughter for getting pregnant; or gone along to get along with her own Republican party caught up in scandal and bribery in Alaska.
Whatever else may be said, the woman has integrity.
Antagonists either stigmatize her or treat her as though she has no grey matter between the ears. Even Kathleen Parker, a prominent conservative columnist, has come down hard on Palin. The piling on continues. Let me share with you what I think:
Sarah Palin is intelligent. That’s right, intelligent. Without smarts, you don’t get to be a governor and to survive and thrive in the political battles which she won in Alaska. Her detractors would like to label her as the brunette version of a dumb blonde – both sexist insults, but political correctness restrains them from saying what they think. She is tough. After getting bushwhacked several times in a couple of unprepared TV interviews, she jumped right back into the fight, seemingly stronger than before, a quick learner.
She is even-tempered. Not once have I seen her lose her cool under relentless campaign pressure. She evokes jealously: Palin has had the guts to have succeeded in a man’s world while simultaneously achieving what women do splendidly – being a loving wife and mother. That has got to stick in the craw of the dying breed of 1960’s-style feminists. She can be self-deprecating; that was evident in her appearance on Saturday Night Live.
She has a magnetic personality and is the best- looking woman on the campaign circuit: Is she supposed to apologize for that? Is she supposed to put a bag on her head? The woman has charisma and is using it almost effortlessly to her advantage. And why not? Others only wish.
OK! OK! She doesn’t have any international exposure and foreign policy experience. She hasn’t hobnobbed with the Washington, D.C. cocktail party crowd. She isn’t a national economics whiz. She doesn’t come from an ivy-league school. She doesn’t charm the New York Times. She doesn’t have the sophistication of Northeast intellectuals and the approval of Hollywood narcissists.
Nor has she taken bribes; or slept around like so many of our prominent Washington officials; or become addicted to drugs, drinking and drunk driving, like a few D.C. Senators and Representatives from prominent families; or aborted a Down Syndrome baby; or taken to abandoning a practicing faith; or rejected her daughter for getting pregnant; or gone along to get along with her own Republican party caught up in scandal and bribery in Alaska.
Whatever else may be said, the woman has integrity.
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