Iphone 4s or 5?

[nature boy]

you can just keep switching back and forth from rogers to fido then haha

[geForce]

[nature boy]

yeah, but you'd be able to get a cheaper (but just not as cheap) phoneevery 2 years.

oh wait, you can do that now. why don't you apple fanbois just renew for 1 year so you can get the newest tweaked iphone every year? i'm sure some other fanboi would buy your one-year-old, completely obsolete phone for a few hundred bucks when you're done with it.

[geForce]

Oh man, you don't know...
Right now, there are people selling 3 year old used iPhone 3G for $150. And people are buying them!!

[geForce]

[joel]

i am barely willing to shell out fido's new 25$ hup fee for an obsolete 0$ phone...

[nature boy]

i don't change phones that often. maybe every two years or so. not like my cousin who changes every phones every 6 months.

[nature boy]

a friend posted this on facebook
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/mike-daisey-go ... 03907.html
interesting read. interesting thing is that he says he doesn't care if you buy an iphone, just know where it came from.

[geForce]

I think in this day and age, if you DON'T know that a majority of our North American consumer products are made in China and you haven't seen all the various different sweat shop manufacturing lines and brutal working conditions there, then you'd have to be pretty sheltered or sorry to say it, but you'd be pretty ignorant. We've been bombarded with news about this type of thing way back when Nike, the first major name brand to be outed for using sweat shops in China to make their shoes and clothes back in the 1980's. There's been no shortage of brand names using Chinese labour since then either. The working conditions may have improved since the 80's, but not by much. Also, it's not like the "Made in China" sticker is hidden on all the products we buy.

Is this the failure of a manufacturer? Or is this a failure of China? Or is this a failure at all?
If you look at it this way - if North America pulled all manufacturing out of China, or never started using Chinese labour to begin with, then where would China be today?

Would you rather have millions of Chinese people struggling to survive and scrouning for food? Or would you rather have Chinese people making money working, albeit in crappy conditions, but at least able to buy food and get some sort of shelter?

I'm not excusing myself for not caring about these types of atrocities, but such is the world we live in today. Cause and effect. If it's not one thing, it's another. The person doing this awareness campaign might be trying to fix one type of suffering, but you don't know if the results of those actions will improve things, or just make them worse in a different way.

I remember reading a story back when I was in school in one of my marketing classes about Nestle. They manufacture this powdered baby formula and was donating to Africa. They wanted to help starving African families feed their babies, and their intentions were completely honourable. However, so many babies were getting sick and dying and they found out later that it was because the African moms were using dirty, bacteria-filled water to mix the powdered baby formula with... an example of noble intentions without considering the bigger picture.

[Duncan]

so i cancelled alicia's iph4s reservation... i found out that there's a $50/mo minimum voice+data plan requirement to get the 4s... well, that simply isn't worth it because i can get alicia on the $25/mo voice plan and get a $10/mo flex data plan and that'd be plenty for her. That means that if i adhere to the $50/mo minimum, i'd have to overload her plan with an extra $15/mo worth of stuff she doesn't need/use. Over a 3 year contract ($15/mo * 12mo * 3yrs) = $540 extra that i wouldn't have needed to spend! PLUS i have to pay $159 for the damned phone... that's a total of $699 for the phone! wtf... I might as well buy the phone out right AND have it factory unlocked... if i did that, 2 years down the road, i could sell the phone for maybe $400 bucks (based on what i see the iphone 3gs and 4 going for online) and buy another new phone that's not slow as hell...

So i figured i'd get the $35/mo (voice + flex data) plan that i wanted and get alicia the iph4 for $99 instead... but heck, i think the iph4 is minimum $50/mo too!!

So now i'm hooped... i cancelled my 4s reservation (when i almost had it shipped because i was in position 317) thinking i could get the 4 instead, but now it looks like if i want to get alicia an iphone, it'd gotta be either buy an unlocked 4s w/o a contract or contract up fro $50/mo for 3 years... ugh...

wwj00d?

[Wetundies]

All Smart phones require a min $50/m plan. Verizon is selling the iphones unlocked.

[joel]

how much is the unlocked 4s?

[Duncan]

16gb=$649
32gb=$749
64gb=$849

[joel]

well if you are set on getting the iphone 4s seems like the better choice is the 50/m contract since the difference over 3 years is only 50$ but you'd have gotten 3 years of additional services...

and the cost difference between the 4 and 4s is only 60 savings, which may be worth the year newer tech.

but if you honestly want to know what I would do, I would do a 2yr 25/m plan (no data) and get a free phone... but i am guessing that's probably not one of the options you are considering.

[Duncan]

actually, we're leaning towards getting a 2 year $25/mo contract with no data just to get a free phone like you said... alicia doesn't need data so it's kinda pointless.. i was only gonna get her data if she got the iphone4s... oh well.. time to look for another bday gift for her... lamez