Wal-Mart is getting in on the prepaid craze. With AT&T offering a unlimited talk and text plan for $60 per month, someone had to come around and step up their game.

Wal-Mart is starting up it’s own “Straight Talk” service that will ride off of TracFone’s service. The service starts at just $30 per month and a user can get unlimited talk, text AND DATA for $45 per month.

The service goes on sale starting October 18th. It will offer not only nationwide coverage, but it will also offer unlimited 411 usage.

Of course, like most other prepaid carriers, the phone options will be quite limited. You won’t see any cutting edge phones avaiable for purchase on any of these types of services. That probably has something to do with how cheap the plans plus data are. If everyone had an iPhone or another more advanced phone on the plan, then it would eat data and Wal-Mart would likely be losing money. However, with the not-as-advanced phones, these are great options for text-happy teenagers.

With prepaid plans like these popping up, I can definitely see post paid plans taking a hit. These aren’t just regional plans, they are nationwide plans with great coverage. For example AT&T is one of the only carriers that have coverage at my parent’s house in rural Mississippi. I was completely in the dark when I had T-Mobile and went to visit them.

I would like to see more competition with post-paid plans because that’s where the more desirable phones are. That’s what I’m after in the end…I want good coverage and a great phone for a reasonable price. That’s why I’m with Sprint. The price really overcame the company’s phone selection and the coverage is awesome when compared to the T-Mobile phone I had previously.

Would you switch from your post paid plan to a prepaid plan to get in on the deals? How about you prepaid plan people…How do you like your service? How much does a more advanced phone matter to you?

After seeing how well Game Stop is doing during the recession, it looks like Best Buy is going to try the same thing.

The electronics chain will begin to accept used video games for store credit at its stores across the country. The used video game market is estimated to be worth between 2 and 3 billion dollars annually. Best Buy has attempted to take the leap into used video game sales in the past, offering around 5,000 titles, but never made it past the test stages.

Game Stop has been able to do so well because the stores it chooses to purchase are generally small with little overhead and are located in places where Best Buy wouldn’t go.

One of the things I like about the Best Buy plan is that they are giving gift cards in return for the used games. The gift cards can be used on anything in the store, not just other video games. This could lead to some people trading in games that have been collecting dust to try to finally get that new cell phone accessory or digital camera

Some think that Best Buy entering the market could hurt Game Stop’s bottom line but not everyone agrees:

“While we believe that Best Buy’s entry into the used video game market will create a new overhang on shares of GameStop, we expect Best Buy’s initiative to expand the used video game market rather than take significant share from the specialty channel,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets.

Used video games are a very lucrative market for sellers, like used textbooks, they sell for just under retail for a new title. Used video games typically sell for $5-$10 less than a new copy and retailers pay nothing to the publisher for those sales. GameStop makes the majority of its money from the sale of used video games and most of its success is due to this.

These days it seems like everyone has gotten rid of their “home” phone service to pick up cell phone service. Well, not everyone is able to have a cell phone as their main source of telephone service because of the lack of service in their house.

So, how do people save money on their home telephone bills?

If you have a high speed internet connection, you can save money through a VoIP service like Vonage or Packet8. Both services stand alone from your computer and hook directly up to your router. For a monthly fee (usually around $30 a month) you can get unlimited long distance to the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. On Vonage, you’re able to call land lines in Italy, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Ireland also.

So, perhaps you’ve seen some of those ads on TV for the Magic Jack and are thinking that it could replace your home telephone service, well, as much as I love saving money (and it is only $20 a year), the service is sub-par in my opinion and will not be able to replace a home telephone service. Often when I talk to a family member who has a Magic Jack, their phone cuts out and since it is directly connected to a computer rather than the router, if someone is surfing the internet or downloading something, then the signal is weak or breaks up all the time. It has gotten so bad that I try not to call my family that uses the Magic Jack just because it is so difficult to understand what they’re saying when we’re on the phone.

As far as cell phone bills go, there are corporate discounts that the phone companies won’t tell you about unless you ask. AT&T wireless, Sprint, and Verizon all offer corporate discounts. All you have to do is a little digging on the internet to see if you qualify through your employer for a discount. There is a website for AT&T wireless Premier to see if you are eligible for a discount. If you do a little digging around, I’m sure you can find some e-mail addresses to get the discounts, but I won’t list them on this website. Sprint has a program where you can get discounts for knowing someone in the company, they offer some of their most popular plans for a discounted price, they also offer a corporate discount program. Verizon has a similar program to AT&T’s and HowardForums has a WIKI article with the companies that give discounts that can be found here.

No matter which carrier that you’re looking at, check around the internet to see if you can find a discount! Sometimes you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

There was a lot of new technology introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show at the beginning of the year. Now is the time when that new technology has started to come out and become available to the public.

There is finally word about the Palm Pre coming out soon. The New York Times said yesterday that the phone would be coming out the first week of June. The phone, which has been hailed as the device that may very well save Palm from the brink of bankruptcy, has a new and “revolutionary” operating system called WebOS. Palm hasn’t created a new operating system in many years.

Then there is another mobile device gartering some attention: the new Acer Aspire One netbooks have new features like a multi-gesture touchpad (think iPhone like gestures for a laptop touchpad), a card reader that reads many different formats than just SD or Memory Stick Pro, and one of the largest screens for a “netbook.” At just over 11”, the A0751h is starting to cross into the ultra portable category where 12” laptops can sell for well over $1,500. However the A0751h keeps its price at around $350 MSRP.

With the introduction of new technologies, it is becoming more and more difficult to draw the line at what is a computer, what is a cell phone, and the difference between a netbook and a ultra portable laptop. Sure, when you look at a cell phone, you can see that it is a device that is subsidized by a cellular carrier, GSM phones have SIM cards…But, now there are netbooks that are being subsidized by cellular companies (that even require SIM cards for AT&T). Then there is a whole new category of MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) that are handheld computers that are able to do most of the things that netbooks can do. Look at the picture at the top of the post…

This is a MID, but it doesn’t look too different from a HTC Tilt, or Touch Pro. These MIDs are really blurring the line between cellular device and PC and it’s not like it would be too difficult to put a cellular receiver in any of these devices to make them a cell phone.

I think that one day soon, the computer and the cell phone will be one device. Kind of like how there aren’t as many people carrying around cameras anymore since their phones’ cameras have fairly good resolution (or in the case of the Samsung Memoir for T-Mobile, it has an 8 megapixel camera attached). I wouldn’t mind having a device that did it all…camera, phone, computer. I already have a laptop I leave at home, a Palm Centro for my phone calls, a netbook for taking to school and traveling, and a digital camera…being able to have all of these devices in one place would be great.

I think the announcement was made in haste because Google just announced Google Book Search. Book Search is a free service for mobile phones that is basically ebooks on your cell. Amazon did not release which phones it would be offering the Kindle books for or when…I think it just wanted to stay relevant next to Google’s free service.

I don’t really understand how people can read entire books on a screen like that. I can’t look at a computer screen for more than an hour, let alone read an entire book on one.

I couldn’t agree more. When compared to ads like AT&T’s melting snowman or exploding turkey or even Alltel’s clay caricatures of the other cell company’s sales reps, Sprints ads of Dan Hesse walking through the street or sitting at a diner are boring. With him also saying very obvious or generic things like, this could be the only phone you ever need… There really isn’t a lot of draw to the ailing cellular company.

I think Verizon did a better job with a guy walking around asking “Can you hear me now?”At least it was memorable

Source

So my mind has been changed as far as the iphone goes…I’m sure it has something to do with the application that lets you shake the phone to pick a restaurant.

However, today Verizon announced that it will be releasing the BlackBerry Storm on November 21st.

The BlackBerry Storm is the first touchscreen BlackBerry available. It will be available on Verizon on 2 year contract for about $200, then the monthly fee.

My Palm Centro cost about $150 on contract and $35 a month It has a touchscreen…and a keyboard. However, I can’t shake it to find a restaurant at random…

I will say that the touchscreeen BlackBerry is very interesting, but I will stick with my Palm for awhile until something new, and VERY innovative comes out.

So what’s wrong with Sprint?

As a Sprint subscriber (yes, I know. I should probably go into hiding for admitting that now), I am disappointed with the marketing tactics used. Sure, maybe in political advertising attacking your opponent doesn’t work, but when you’re trying to gain some market share in the cellular industry, sometimes you have to point out every weakness of your competitor. Look at Verizon…they are one of the top 2 cellular companies in the US, and their ads are specifically targeting Sprint. Poor little Sprint Why wouldn’t Verizon pick on At&t? Well, I believe that Verizon is trying to move as many CDMA (At&t is GSM) customers to its side as possible…

If Verizon Wireless can put Sprint out of business, that is one less carrier it will have to compete with.

I think Sprint can make a comeback. Hopefully.

They’ve been constantly losing customers to larger carriers AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile is also catching up to Sprint. The only thing Sprint has going for them right now is their huge network and free roaming. They have recently sold off all their towers so they could rent them (it makes since because they don’t have to pay to fix them when something goes wrong).

I still have Sprint because I was grandfathered in on the old SERO plan, it’s basically the most amazing cellular phone plan that ever was.

I have no loyalties though, if Sprint decided to drop me, I’ll switch.