I still use a white pages and yellow pages produced by AT&T. In fact, I use one or the other several times a week. I know it sounds backward, but I’ve been using those books all my life and it’s super-easy for me to pull up “plumbers” in the yellow pages by flipping to the “p” section, or look up my doctor’s office number in the black section of the white pages by flipping to “L” for “Lee.”
Locally, and I believe nationally, AT&T is trying to phase out phone books and direct us to their online resource, smartpages.com. I have used smartpages.com when I don’t have access to the actual phone book, and it is no match for the paper phone book. When I search for “plumbers” with my zip code, I get a listing for plumbers everywhere BUT my zip code, because those plumbers who choose to list themselves on smartpages can pay extra to have their listings appear at the top. No longer am I able to go right to “plumbers” and find a handy-dandy alphabetical list. And searching for my doctor using “Lee” and the zip code his office is located in also brings up results that aren’t my doctor and are variations of the name “Lee.”
The only part of the smartpages that seem to work for me is the people listing; if I know someone by name, I simply put it in the search box and come up with them usually at the top of the list, especially if I know their zip code.
So, there are some advantages to the smartpages, but not enough to rely on them completely. And in a power outage, when I need to look up the phone number to the electric company, smartpages isn’t going to help me out a whole lot.
I do know of people that never use a phone book, and I can’t imagine how they are getting their information reliably any other way. Or maybe this is just a case of “you’re doing it wrong.” I’d love to hear from readers here that are still using a phone book and why.