How do Baby Boomers handle business on a cell phone?

Hi Todd, great to hear. Was interested in people's thoughts on the topic. Now I have yours. Thanks for taking the time.

As a baby boomer real estate broker who deals with many fellow baby boomers (as well as with those young whipper-snappers we spawned), the cell phone has become a regular carry-around object for me, much like a wallet ... which has been in my pocket since early adulthood.

Like most baby boomers, I prefer the real-life communication of a voice-to-voice phone call, although I am now genrally comfortable with leaving a "message after the beep", then later laughing with my friend or colleague about how we seem to trade telephone messages more and more these days.

That brings me to the other major use for the phone, a feature that at least one baby boomer resisted ... that impersonal, cumbersome thing called "texting". Whether it be the onset of arthritis or a generation-gap thing, this babyboomer does not find typing with two thumbs or with one index finger to be practical.

Afterall, the QWERTY layout was designed for fast tying on a regular-sized keyboard. And I also get impatient with that telephone-style layout of alphnumeric characters wherein I need to press the number "7" four times, at just the right split-second intervals, in order to generate the very common letter "S".

Fortunately, my new phone contains an application that allows me to talk into its "speech-to-text" feature, making the use of text messaging much more useable. Nowadays, this old babyboomer has been made to feel up to speed with his monkey of a grandson (the one who has that generation's super opposable thumbs ... thank you, Charles Darwin).

Today, I will send an email to my one daughter using my home-based computer, I'll send my other daughter a text message via my cell phone, and my old high school buddy will receive an instant message (via home-based machine). Most business correspondence is by email, again from my home machine, or by voice communication (cell phone) if I am out and about.

In essence, the cell phone allows me to communicate with people in a manner that is most conveinient for THEM. The advantage of a text message is that it immediately alerts the recipient in a way that doesn't interrupt that person's day (as a phone call might do), and it gives the recipient a quick way to respond at his or her earliest convenience, once again, without interrupting the day of the person who initiated the first text message.

I know that the phone can do other stuff for me, like be my musical juke box or I can use it to watch entertainment videos, but I personally do not take advantage of those features. I rarely use its camera, opting for my high-end regular digital camera, instead.

I like the phone's alarm feature, but found myself in the kitchen yesterday, grabbing an old-fashioned "turn-the-dial" timer out of the drawer in order to remind me that the sprinkler was on.

Interestingly, it took less effort to set that manual timer than the number of keytrokes required to set my cell phone's timer, albeit the latter one is more accurate. On the other hand, that rudimentary analog box went "click-click" on the counter, a reassuring sound that the timer was working, a comforting thought, at least to this baby boomer.

Occassionally, when I am out and around, I will use my cell phone for its Internet access, but probably not nearly as much as others. This is not entirely due to my being an old geezer. The screen size becomes the reason I prefer to do most of my Internet surfing, research, etc. on the home machine, with a big screen and access to things such as a printer.

So here is the experience of this somewhat typical (I think) baby boomer: I existed without a cell phone for most of my life, but now ALWAYS carry what once intriged me as a dictionary-sized "car phone" introduced not all that long ago.

It used to be just a phone, but is gradually replacing my watch, my camera, my hand-held calculator and my map atlas. In areas where it does not replace current technology, it tends to enhances similar experiences, such as when used as a mini TV, as a radio, or as an eletronic book.

Many baby boomers believe that our generation is the brightest and best of all time, fully capable of moving forward into the future on all fronts. In that light, I believe that baby boomers are prepared for the cell phone to eventually merge with the wallet.

Perhaps of greatest significance (and maybe the essence of my reponse to this question) is that the cell phone gives part-time working baby boomers FREEDOM. Just get rid of the land line or simply forward the business line into your cell phone - and go fishing. And at the same time, the cell phone takes the baby boomer's feedom away ... it's your wife calling !!!