I
may be the only adult left in the country without a cell phone, but I don’t
have one, don’t want one, and will not be getting one. On the other hand, there
are times when I need to communicate with people who don’t regularly check
their email (like most young people), and I’d like to be able to send and
receive text messages from my computer. Is there any way to do this?
This question applies both to the
small portion of the population that doesn’t have a cell phone, and to those
who do but are too cheap to pay for texting. (Unless you get unlimited texting
as part of your cellular plan, you’re paying way too much for it.) One solution
for sending texts (it doesn’t help for receiving, however) is to send an email
to a specially formatted email address, specific for each individual cell phone
providers (for example, phonenumber@txt.att.net, for AT&T Wireless
customers; or phonenumber@vtext.com, for Verizon Wireless customers). The
problems with this solution include the fact that you must know which carrier
your recipient uses, and there’s no simple way for the recipient to reply.
Although this technique works, it’s hardly optimal. (To use this solution,
search the web for “Send email as text to <xxx>”, where <xxx> is
the name of the provider, like AT&T or Verizon.)
There is a better universal and
free solution, of course: Google Voice. This is a free service that allows you
to text to any phone number that can receive texts. When you use Google Voice
to text someone, the response comes back to you as email. You can respond to
the email response, and it goes back to the recipient as a text—in other words,
you can carry on texting conversations with someone using a phone, and they
really won’t know that you don’t also have a texting-capable phone.
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