I'm on a Tracphone and mostly satisfied. Best feature is the cost. I pay about $100 per year and the minutes roll over. I did the extra cash up front for "lifetime" double minutes... that is life of the phone. First phone I had was not very good... second was more expensive and more powerful. At the moment I have over 2000 minutes because I don't use them all... may have wasted my money on the double thingy. Downsides! They will kick you off the air if it is busy. Not dropped... they just won't let you call or it will say "emergency only". Most of the time it works just fine but not at all during lunchtime when everyone is calling someone. Texting is poor because of the cheap phone but it does allow it. Texting is popular around here because we have weak signal and text will go when voice won't. I think they ding me 1/2 minute per text. I don't use it much but it is a nice option... helps to have a friend that will let you send a couple practice texts while learning how. I really like the voice mail! My home voice mail was often a pita... machine broke or ran out of room. Almost worth the phone just to have the mail. Tracphone has some really cheap phones. About $15 should get you the lowest which comes with a few starter minutes. If it works for you they have better phones available on the website. If you buy minutes for the cheap phone then get a better one they will transfer but that deactivates the old phone. I will probably watch this thread as I'd like something a bit better. Just waited 90 minutes to make an important call because the airwaves were "congested". Suppose the call got made... and emergency service was available if that had been the situation. : ) lyra

After years of monthly cellular bills (starting since the 1980's) that would always seem to increase for "who knows" how many various reasons, I went with TracFone several years ago and am very happy. I use a cell phone as a telephone and nothing more. If I need more time I can just buy it, and each time I do, it extends service for another 90 days from the last end date. I'm good now until way after the Mayan calendar ends! I have a TracFone Motorola W376G which comes with lifetime double minutes. So, minimum 60 mins @ $20, gives you 120 minutes and 90 days of service. If I'm doing a lot of traveling on business, I buy more time in whatever quantity I need , and when not, I just don't worry about it. The only thing I found in setting up one of the phones (my wife has the same phone too) is that I was having some problems and their "standard 800 number support people", located outside of the USA, couldn't solve it. I found that there is another unadvertised 800 number that gets you into their Florida offices with very capable people - don't have it off-hand but you can Google around to find it.

chisue, as I keep telling people the first concern is whether you have reception where you need it. Then consider price. Assuming you're going to only use it in Chicago, most anything will be fine for you. They'll have excellent coverage. But if you travel, all bets are off. For seldom used phones, prepaid is usually the way to go unless someone has a plan they can clone a phone or get a second phone and share minutes. When I had Virgin, once the phone was purchased and set up, I could automatically add $15 worth of time every 3 months which makes it at that point $5/mo. T-mobile has their "gold" thing that after you add $100 the per minute drops and you can add just a $$10 card. TracFone, if you shop can come out cheap. Pricing depends a lot on what you're willing to do to get a better deal, and how long are you willing to commit to something. There's no one "cheapest" As I said before, Virgin and my Audiovox phone was undoubtedly the clearest I've had, however it also had the smallest coverage area. Even in a metro area there would be issues inside steel buildings, low areas and the like. But, being digital, when it had a connection it was super-clear. GSM was probably second clearest, and covered second worst. CDMA the third clearest but 2nd to the best coverage area and TDMA/analog was the poorest clarity but best coverage. TDMA and analog have been shut off so I use CDMA. A GSM isn't bad but I'm also talking about my locale and those areas I travel frequently. One thing I forgot to mention is some of the CDMA TracFones will charge double minutes for roaming, which is why I bought the phones I bought. As far as phone durability, that of course varies by the phone. All companies change phones often. But if you don't use it much, durability wouldn't likely be a concern. Also on clarity, that can vary too, depending on the area you're located, whether you're in buildings or outside and a bunch of other factors. Again, for seldom used, it wouldn't seem that this should be too big of a concern. One thing that comes to mind. Target has phones on clearance often. Virtually all come with starter minutes. Tracfones will get 10 minutes if you activate by phone or 20 min if you activate online. You can buy a small card and buy extended time to keep it going. Also, occasionally you'll run across a phone on Ebay with time on it at a good price. One thing with a cell, even prepaid. You might as well use the minutes. It's essentially free long distance and with most, the time will carry over. I'm at the point that I have enough time that most all my LD calling is on the cell, and I make some other phone calls on it when I'm out, for convenience. Since I have the time, I might as well use it.

There's many different Verizon coverages. Well actually, the same is true with all providers. Verizon cut back their area significantly for all accounts activated after February. For example, there's America's Choice version 1 & 2, InPulse, etc. And for some reason, the prepaid is always a more restricted coverage. They don't want to give the tightwads the same coverage as the more profitable areas, I guess. Probably think they'll hook people with prepaid and then opt for the postpaid to increase coverage. Doubt that'll happen. So far it doesn't seem to be happening either. And interesting too since the prepaid market is where their future is for adding customers since the postpaid market is virtually saturated and people can't change too often because of the cancellation fees in the contracts. It's irritating, but that's the way it is. The coverage map for PagePlus shows essentially the Twin Cities metro area is covered and St. Louis County in northern MN. Technically the rest of the state has "coverage", however, it's at the $1.99/min roaming rate. Way too rich for my blood! I don't mind some roaming charges for traveling since I don't use the phone much, but I'm not about to spend $2/min. Additionally you have to tack on the cost of a decent tri-band phone and PagePlus is out of my budget. SimpleFreedom has cheaper (about 50¢/min) roaming but they're discontinuing a lot of their service with no credit back to the customer. They have the option to sign up with another carrier. So I wouldn't mess with them at this point. At least without more research. Although the Sprint PCS coverage isn't great around here, I'm finding that it's not all that bad compared to the others. At least they cover the major freeways and some highways where PP, Cingular and others don't. And I do tend to stay on the major highways. And since I like the phone I got for Virgin, I might just hang on to it. But I'm still tempted to try out USA1rate and see if their coverage is what they claim. The prepaid coverage leader overall would have to be TracFone, unless the maps are accurate for USA1, but TracFone's rates are pretty high unless you play games with transferring back and forth between a couple of phones and/or beg people to sign up to get referrals. I can justify what I'm spending for a phone. Could justify a bit more to have better coverage even at roaming rates. But I'm not crazy. Argh! I've been looking around again. Head's spinning again. Why don't I simply slam my hand in the car door? Be more enjoyable than trying to interpret their websites!