I'll keep my land line at my house active as long as possible.

I have three small kids and I need something absolutely reliable in case of an emergency.

While I do absolutely love modern mobile tech (Droid!), I prefer using a land line while at home. I simply don't enjoy having long conversations on a mobile phone. The newest phone at my house is a Nortel Meridian M9616CW which was (for me) the ultimate geek phone in the mid 90s. They seem to fetch a good price:

http://www.telephonegenie.com/customer/product.php?productid=16149

The rest are all Western Electric, Automatic Electric and ITT phones from the early 40s - 70s that I've collected and repaired. They all work perfectly (even rotary dialing) on the Cox Digital phone service.

As the article mentioned, POTS is preferable in disaster areas. I live in an area of New Orleans that didn't flood in Katrina. The only way I was able to contact people in my neighborhood who stayed for the storm was on their land lines.

In the area of New Orleans where I live (and didn't flood), the only way for people to communicate with the outside world was with land lines and old phones which are powered completely off the line (no wall warts).

Much of the cellular system didn't work. The remaining working systems were nearly impossible to use.

I hate using cell phones for more than a few minutes and always use a land line for long conversations. I also need to keep the land line for our alarm systems.

I was amazed to discover that my collection of 40s - 70s rotary dial phones dial perfectly on the Cox Digital phone system.

As someone else mentioned, how about a Commodore 64, Apple II or Atari 400/800 with a floppy drive?

You can get these machines very cheap on Ebay or free if you look around. They're extremely durable and easy to fix. Best of all, they're easy to understand. You insert a disc, apply power and the desired software runs. No complicated OS gets in the way. Gobs of quality edutainment software available.

I've got a stack of Apple //e's ready for my kids when they're older.