iPhone in case of outages

I’m an Apple guy through and through, but I have not shared in the enthusiasm for the iPhone. I almost never talk on the phone more than 100 minutes per month and hardly ever text anybody, and with the unit itself running $400 and the rate plans starting at $60 per month I really can’t justify the expense.

However, this morning I’ve seen a concrete case for owning one. Up until five minutes ago our cable and broadband were out. And we were trying to plan a trip to the Indy Zoo but the weather was iffy. With no TV or computer, we couldn’t check the radar; and with broadband out, we couldn’t even use our Vonage line to call up potential alternate destinations.  (But of course having a cell phone solved that last problem.) If I’d had an iPhone, I could have used the 3G capabilities of the phone to bypass our broadband outage and get to Weather Underground to check the radar as  well as call other places up to get their hours.

I still don’t think it’s worth $400 + $60/month just to have a device that can be useful for contingencies like this that rarely happen, but there’s something to be said for an internet device which has two independent means of accessing the web, so that one is usable if the other fails.