Microsoft cordless phone

Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> writes: I rented a flat on Worthing seafront for a few months in 2001, which was equipped with a coin-op meter when I moved in. (Not for very long; the electricity company were more than happy to replace it.) I'd be surprised if there weren't still a few of them to be found in holiday cottages and similar. The modern equivalent is the prepayment meter -- which has an electronic "key" that appropriately-equipped shops can put credit onto. I lived in a rented house with that system for a couple of years. It's not an improvement on the coin meter: it's unreliable (ours broke twice, leaving us without electricity, and it's easy for a housemate to take the key to recharge and then forget about it), and it's much harder to find a shop with a key-recharging machine at 2AM than it is to find a ?1 coin. Both systems also ludicrously overcharge you for electricity compared to having a proper meter, of course... -- Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> <http://offog.org/>