Clark is amazed at how quickly the prices on tech items keep dropping. Right now, he wants to shares a historical note that he's actually very embarrassed about. Back in the '80s when he owned a chain of travel agencies, he had a pager that would go off all the time. So he'd pull off the road, find a payphone and drop in a dime to make a call.

He later got a huge, clunky carphone secondhand for $1,025. Getting it new would have cost him nearly $2,500! Then he had to pay an installer a few hundred dollars to wire it up in his car. In addition, he paid $35/month for service, plus 35 cents/minute for usage. There were no free minutes back then and he couldn't call long distance.

Contrast that with Clark's experience when he was recently in England and had to get a new worldphone. He went to the Carphone Warehouse chain and bought an unlocked phone for $14. He also purchased a chip to go in the phone that let him call back to the United States for 6 cents/minute. Wow!

If you're going to Europe, you should know about LycaMobile.com. They sell ultra-cheap chips that you can use to call back for practically zip -- some 6 or 10 cents/minute.

In related news, T-Mobile is releasing the first phone that will operate on the Android platform. Clark compares this to the next revolution after the iPhone. Whereas the iPhone is a closed system, the Android phones allow the use of open-source software with its limitless possibilities. T-Mobile is selling their phone for $148 at Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, Clark's been hearing about iPhone customers using their phones as a substitute for home Internet service and disconnecting the latter. The penny-pincher loves that they've found a way to take a money burner like the iPhone and turn it into a money saver!