Do you back up your phone contacts?

[ihearthuckabees]

Just thinking about how I now have a lot of contacts that are only in my phone, and I should have a back-up. Maybe I'm old-fashioned (i.e. old) but the thought of trying to figure out how to back it all up seems daunting. My instinct is to simply go through the phone and write up all the numbers into my non-digital paper address book, but it's making me feel like a Luddite.

Should i be doing something super technical instead?

No, having a paper copy seems perfectly acceptable to me.

Poundland has had (depends on stock and whether you have one nearby) some backup device for a pound, but I have several phones (on Orange, Virgin Mobile and Asda) and a copy typed into the PC (and sent to me as e-mail so stored elsewhere as well) is as good a copy as on paper, and can be accessed even when I am not at home to hunt for a paper list :)

In case others wonder about the multiple phones - I'm not a drug dealer, honest!

Virgin Mobile has free voicemail, so I use that for calls from other timezones and on my business cards

Asda PAYG costs only 8p/min to call landlines or mobiles, so I make calls to mobiles with that (for landlines I used 1899.com if possible, at 5p per call to 01/02/03 numbers)

Orange numbers in use for over 10 years (15 for one number) and have free text alerts for new e-mail, which are handy for me as I manage many domains, and having a quick text message when I am on the move means I will take a look at the message far sooner (eg before a meeting) without me needing to check for new e-mail at regular intervals.

I use something called Lookout which backs everything up for me.

Some networks have a facility to upload your details onto the site (O2 do, not sure about other ones)

Any chance you can just connect it to your PC and copy them across that way?

Paper copy is perfectly fine, but it's bloody time consuming to manually input all your contacts if you lose your phone.

"it's bloody time consuming to manually input all your contacts"

Given losing your phone isn't that frequent, it is perhaps worth "pruning" your contact list at that point, and anyone you don't remember instantly is someone you've probably not phoned for quite some time !

tetchy

May just do the time-consuming paper thing, as the thought of working out all the other things is too much.

NetworkGuy - OMG, 3 mobiles is making my brain hurt.

I am definitely going to be one of those old people that can't keep up with new technology (argh, mobile phones seem like new technology to me).