I was looking at the Bestbuy site and how the company offered cell phone owners the option to trade in their old handset for store credit. Essentially, the more recent your model the more money you could get. The interesting thing was seeing what they offered you for models that are non existent. Say cell phones that are 7+ years old.

For these, the site displays that in exchange for your phone they won’t give you credit but will instead plant a tree for you. I was thinking, while it does seem like a good way to dispose your old phone that you have no use of I can’t help to think just the way it is presented will make people unsupportive of the idea. How would you even know that they actually went through with planting a tree too?

I’m inclined to say that most people would rather try to sell it for say $10 themselves and knowing that someone else has a use for it.

I was watching a segment recently that talked about cell phone radiation as recently there was a study in regards to which cell phones emit the most radiation. As you know, this is one of those unproven topics in terms of whether the radiation is dangerous or not. This then lead to a conversation about these little attachments that you can put on your cell phone that apparently reduces the radiation.

I was looking at it and it was like this tiny sticker that costs like $30. I was just thinking, if you are trying to reduce things like the radiation on a cell phone wouldn’t you need to literally cover around the entire object? But, apparently there is a market for it. For this in particular too I think it would make more sense just to use a wired headset if safety was the main concern. Saves more money that way too doesn’t it?

This is one of those things too where you can feel like an idiot for buying these things if it is proven that there is no real harm in the first place or vice versa it can end up looking like a good investment. Usually when it comes to unproven things like these I simply just take precautions. Example, like this I usually prefer to use a headset and not talk on the cell phone if the home phone is right next to me. I know so many people that do that. No need to spend so much though.

It looks like virtually every news source that I saw today has something in reference to the DTV (Digital Television) transition where the old analog signals will be no more in the US. For some this means buying new equipment.

I just read another piece of news today as well where the transit system here will be getting rid of its paper bus schedules at various stops. This means people now must have a cell phone to get the schedule by texting a number. That just made me think how almost everyone is going to have to upgrade to digital devices sooner or later for everyday items.

This seems to be the worst time for some to start shopping too as all they hear is “you need to upgrade” and so they just walk into a store with a “I was told I needed this” state of mind. I would be inclined to say too that most often someone will try to sell you an item that is most profitable store wise too which you may not necessarily need.

One example I distinctively remembered before was that in one store there was this lady that apparently was asked to go to the store to buy a cable to hook up a DVD player to an average TV. Result? The salesmen definitely gave her the right type of cable, but they were one of those high end ones that literally cost like $70 to $100.

With examples like that, it’s always better to get someone in the know to help you buy any upgrades if people are saying that you “have” to have it now due to various circumstances. I know for myself if I started reading things like “You have to start eating foods with vitamin X” on the news I would definitely rather get a friend or acquaintance that is in the know of these things rather than going blindly into a store and buying things.

With the release the Palm Pre recently I was thinking whether or not I would want to buy something like that as for my next cell phone purchase I was thinking of a data phone. I never was too into the iPhone hype personally and another reason was that there was only one carrier that was capable of serving it here.

While researching about the phones I just remembered that two of the big cell phone service providers here, Telus and Bell, are going to upgrade its network using High Speed Packet Access (HSPA). And as it turns out, apparently right here in Vancouver we’ll get to test this out at around as early as September.

Without the technical jargon, this potentially means that this may change a lot of the cell phone fee structures for the better. At the same time, the main reason I thought about this is that my contract is expiring at around November. Usually companies try to get you to commit to yearly contracts months before your contract expires to ensure that you will stay as a customer.

However, in this case you may want to try and hold off and see what happens if you are a Canadian resident. The good thing is that I will still have a few months to compare everything before my contract expires.

Usually when it comes to hot items everyone has an urge to own the latest and greatest. Since I am planning to buy a new cell phone by the end of the year, today I was reading about that new Samsung i8910 Omnia HD cell phone which looked really nice.

I was then reading comments from other phone manufacturers on how no company ever gets first releases perfect as there is usually some kind of issue with it. I know a lot of people that actually avoid buying first generation products because of things like that as they don’t see the point in paying top dollars for something that a company can’t guarantee that you are buying the product at its optimal state.

I doubt you can really say that anything will be bug free when you buy it. By bugs I mean technical glitches and not literally like insects in your product for all the wise crackers. Although, I guess that attitude can save you a lot of money as usually by the time a company weeds everything out the price of the product will probably be extremely lower.

For me it mostly comes down to the cost and purpose of the item to determine how picky I would be in regards to expecting perfection.