You've got a cell phone. Who needs a pager? Aren't they just for doctors and firefighters? Try this: you're in a noisy, crowded restaurant on a Friday night. How are you going to hear your table being called? How about a vibrating pager? Or your daughter is over at a friend's house. What are the chances she's going to call you and say when she'll be home? Leave her a message on her own pager - no, not a black one, a cool silver one that looks more like a tiny Frisbee. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Get the message?

To make sure you always get the message, pagers and the usage plans that go with them are readily available on the 'Net. Because there are so many options, it can be easier to compare online, switching between browser windows, than to take notes at each store you go to. Surf over to Radio Shack, Battery Plus and Shop Wireless. Rogers Wireless has the Amigo for the growing personal pager market and at Absolute Mobility you can sign up online for a pager plan, as well as do research on what's new and what's essential.

Wireless across the world

Pagers today do a lot more than just pass along a phone number. You can get numeric or alphanumeric paging, which is the difference between receiving just phone numbers, or numbers and text messages as well. Numeric paging allows you to enter digits directly through the phone. Text messaging requires an operator or the Web. Make sure your paging service plan offers this. Even if you're at the low end of the price scale, you can still get a lot for your money: text messaging, a holographic screen for easy readability, even a clock.

At the high end, it gets a little more interesting. Motorola offers reply capability. This feature lets you send preprogrammed responses back to the person who paged you. Great if you're on the go all day. And the latest in smart, high-end pagers? One that can communicate with every electronic device you can name - e-mail, fax machines, other pagers and telephones. Not to mention 2 way messaging. One of those things you didn't even know you needed until someone invents it.

All this and a cell phone too?

We asked Radio Shack sales manager Frank Wankam why someone would buy a pager instead of, or in addition to, a cell phone. "A lot of parents are buying pagers for their kids just to keep in touch with them. Also, they're relatively inexpensive. You can get prepaid pager cards in a block for 2 to 4 months," he replied. And the kids love those funky colours. Plus, you can't talk for 2 hours and run up the cell phone bill when you use a pager. The vibrating feature also means people can let you know you're wanted without disturbing the rest of the theatre.

The world at your belt buckle

There's also the advantage of e-mail. Wankam told us that the most popular pager at Radio Shack is the 2 way Blackberry http://www.blackberry.net/ pager made by Research in Motion http://www.rim.net/ of Waterloo, Ontario. Its neatest feature is the capacity to send and receive e-mail, for which it also has a QWERTY keypad.

All alphanumeric pagers have the basic features: backlit screens that store up to 50 messages and let you scroll a couple of lines or more to read your messages. Now some also have free news, weather and sports updates, as well as alarms. The latest wave is an Internet connection. Bell Mobility's Epager connects you to the Internet. That means you can forward e-mail to your pager and receive messages from any server in the world. Extra features cost more, needless to say, but one day we'll all own one in one form or another.

Stick with the plan, Stan

When you're looking for a pager, remember you're not just buying an electronic device - you're buying a service. That means you need a monthly plan. There are about a dozen to choose from. The cheapest is local numeric service, for numeric messaging only, and the most expensive uses a live local operator for alphanumeric messages. The convenience factor is that it lets you receive updates from the office without needing a cell phone. Every pager has a limit of how many characters you can use a month. Say you're allowed 2,000 a month. If you go over that number by the end of the month, you get charged extra.

Glossary

Alphanumeric pagers allow you to send and receive not only phone numbers, but text messages as well.

Backlit is a technique used to make flat-panel displays easier to read. A backlit display is illuminated so that the foreground appears sharper in contrast with the background. (From http://www.webopedia.com/)

Numeric pagers only allow you to receive pages consisting of numbers.

QWERTY is the standard key setup (the one we all have on our keyboard) and which is used for touch typing.

Quirks

Dick Tracy wasn't just a great comic strip. It was science fiction. Swatch http://www.swatch.com/ remembers. Its paging watch can store up to 20 messages. Seiko http://www.seiko.com/ goes even further. For a little extra you can get stock reports, weather reports and winning lottery numbers. Don't forget the hat!