How I'm Keeping In Touch By RachelReviews on Oct 28, 2009 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

I live in a rural, mountainous area. I've had problems with my cell phone not having the best reception. When people in my house use the landline phone, it's necessary for me to use my cell phone to call out. Also, it's important for me to have a second line for when people call me from the landline (Or from other places) to reach me on my cell. The issues I've been experiencing on my cell are countless dropped or lost calls, garbled or broken up conversations, etc. It gets really frustrating. One day I thought of giving walkie talkies a try. I bought a set online and they came pretty quickly in 5 days or so. They have a rechargeable handset that they go in when the battery gets low. They have a range of 18 miles and come with a 1 year warranty.

I had a hard time setting these up. I thought I read the instruction manual that came with them well enough, but it took me and another person a couple attempts including a break to get them operate. This will sound super simple when I explain it, but when you are trying it with someone else and you're in separate areas of a house things can go haywire. The key with these is to never press the "talk" button while someone else is talking. It's hard to know when someone else is talking when you're in another room nowhere near them, but you get the hang of it. If both people are simultaneously pressing the talk button, no transmissions (Speech) will come through. There are 22 channels on here. I've tried 2 so far and they sound similar in terms of reception. There is some interference and static, but thankfully, there aren't any dropped calls like with my cell. I find it annoying that you have to press and hold the "talk" button to communicate with another caller. If your thumb slips, only part of your message will go through and you'll have to try again. Also, my thumb gets sore with all that pressing! And, when each transmission goes through a loud beep happens. One big plus about buying these is that I'll cut down on my cell phone bill.