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Comment by toastal | Hacker News Reader

I remember that time before I had a smart phone, but while I had a laptop & before there was security concerns to bother password protecting WiFi access points. I used to stop by roadside hotels/motels & whip out the laptop to do any on-the-go research since it was free & I didn’t yet have a taste for coffee (or the money) to want to stop by a café. The other highlight was using SMS/MSS via email & doing $NUMBER@verzion.net or whatever the address was. The SMS rates were high & I was always carrying my laptop & usually could nab open WiFi somewhere.

Other WiFi-related anecdote is my Fujifilm camera (RIP capacitor) chose to do its app communications between camera & smart phone over WiFi. I’m assuming this was a range thing, but it was interesting being in the wilderness & joining a LAN to get remote control.

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I had completely forgot about sending MMS via mail! (Not Verizon, but my provider had a similar thing)

If I recall, some times the message would be delayed by quite a while, so it was not a reliable replacement for SMS, but still fun (and would allow me to send data from my PC to my phone).

Thanks for the memories

Did you ever get a text on a landline? Startled me the first time - some 90s era robotic voice reading it out.

The only time this happened to anyone I know was around 2005. I sent a txt to my brother and accidentally used his landline number and he picked up the phone and a robot voice said “I left your jacket at the Grampians” and then disconnected. Such a useless piece of tech!

In Slovenia I remember having had a "smart" landline phone in ~2009 that could send and receive SMS. ISDN?

Tom Baker used to be the voice used on British Telecom for a time.

Imagine accidentally sending a text to the wrong number and getting a dirty phone call from Dr. Who at 2 in the morning...

I did it out of necessity to save money. The delay was real, & I’m surprised dates tolerated it from me.

Later, I only had a minimal data plan (cheaper than with voice+SMS) + Google Voice & some forwarding app. I remember rushing from a Taco Bell $2 meal deal to a friend’s to take a job interview call after an email so I had enough data to actually finish out the interview.

Frugal times.

> The delay was real, & I’m surprised dates tolerated it from me.

Communications in general were much more asynchronous back in the days and people would just call if immediate attention was needed.

I used it until recently but carrier spam filtering has become so aggressive out of necessity, that message delivery is intermittent to unusable. As usual, spammers have ruined everything and this is why we can't have nice things.

I don’t find this to be true. I send automated “log your hours worked” messages via email->sms relay to 8+ coworkers and myself without issues M-F.

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