Old tech you just DO NOT miss.
- Thread starter Parasondox
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Hey now, I still use those projectors! Anytime I have to convert a 8.5"x11" image to a wall mural, it's my first tool at bat.Major_Tom said:I don't miss incandescent flashlights, SCART cables, satellite TV, floppy disks, fax machines and those fucking projector things.
Been using the same ivory handle straight edge for years, and god knows how long it's been around before me... Custard might have been still doing his thing. Thing is, if you take care of your stuff, you never have to buy another blade again. A bit of practice though. Honestly, shaving isn't meant to be a hassle, it's meditative. The soft tap against the basin as you clean the edge, the way your wrist flicks to get the neck. I recommend it as a skill to pick up, if only in case you have to shave without power. It beats a bootknife.lacktheknack said:
On topic though, manual use coffee makers. I'd just retired my French press a while ago (putting it away to do salad dressing and stuff instead), and picked up a new model coffee maker. I ignored them for a while, because if I was going to have to get up anyways to push a button to start it, it wasn't any easier then setting my press on the stove while I cooked other stuff. But this, this thing has a clock, and with it I can set it to brew before I get up, set the strength of the brew, even a delay so I can have a cup right off before it handles the rest of the pot. This, this is the future...
(No, K-cups are terrible, and not the future. A cup when ever you want at the cost of being able to grind your flavor how you want it? Bah! My wash clean coffee filter is by far the better technology.)
I really really really HATED ball mouses. Coming from the cheap family that I did, I had to use one until around 2008! Those things would always get jammed up with lint and dust and you'd have to open them up, clean off the wheels, give the ball a good scrub and pop the ball back in. This would ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS happen in the middle of being hit by a Zerg rush, during a critical moment in a raid boss fight where you had to avoid acid erupting from the ground, while you had your sights on an enemy sniper and were just about to pan over their head and pull the trigger, while you were in the wilderness with a skull mark above your head and you're being jumped by a group of PKers with poisoned dragon daggers and you need to quickly hit your teleport to Varock spell. It was always pretty sudden to! you would be scrolling around just fine and suddenly your cursor slows to a crawl while you frantically slide it across your mouse pad repeatedly in an attempt to reach the other side of the screen. You'd have to choose, "Do I power through it, or can I quickly disassemble, clean and reassemble my mouse in time?" I'd imagine myself as some sort of extremely unprepared secret agent or assassin who suddenly needs to pop open his brief case and assemble a rifle before his target leaves his line of sight.
FUCK BALL MOUSES!!!!!!
(maybe keeping a cleaner desk would have helped)
FUCK BALL MOUSES!!!!!!
(maybe keeping a cleaner desk would have helped)
Non-digital cameras.
I do NOT miss the days of having all cameras use films. I remember going on vacations years ago with disposable cameras that only had 24 shots, so you had to REALLY make sure your pictures counted. Nowadays, you push a button and your smart phone can take 50 high quality photos in about 2 seconds, and if you don't like them you just erase them instantly and start over.
Then, of course, you had to take all your disposable cameras and get the photos developed, and you had to make sure you didn't lose them or you'd have to do it all over again. God bless digital cameras.
I do NOT miss the days of having all cameras use films. I remember going on vacations years ago with disposable cameras that only had 24 shots, so you had to REALLY make sure your pictures counted. Nowadays, you push a button and your smart phone can take 50 high quality photos in about 2 seconds, and if you don't like them you just erase them instantly and start over.
Then, of course, you had to take all your disposable cameras and get the photos developed, and you had to make sure you didn't lose them or you'd have to do it all over again. God bless digital cameras.
I don't miss CRT TVs because as the one person in my circle of friends who exercises regularly I've been tapped too often as the primary "help people move" guy and objects as large and cumbersome as say a 27" Sony Wega can fuck right off.Hoplon said:
-Any Windows OS before XP (especially 3.1 and ME)
-Those printers that had to have the special paper with holes on the sides.
Rotary phone. I think I'd make the loudest "ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH" if the number I want to dial is either 999-999-9999 or 000-000-0000, depending on how it is designed.
I know tearing the sides off those papers was a royal pain in the ass, but I still think those dot matrix noisy printers were a hell lot more reliable than the shitty inkjet all-in-ones of today. Nothing but continued grief from them.ThingWhatSqueaks said:
For me, it's probably just cell phones in general. Since all phones did was just call or text. The amount of information and functions they can do today is just life-changing. Of course there's the "basic" things like email, but you don't even need street directories anymore. Or notepads, or cameras, or voice recorders. Hell, even apps like auto-levelers, guitar tuners, gym interval/cooking timers, translators, are all just a quick search away.
The company I work for still uses those printers, and they are not reliable at all let me tell you. The damn things require stripping down and cleaning on at least a weekly basis and even then they still struggle to print off more than 4-5 pages at a time without either overheating or losing the paper alignmentJohnnyDelRay said:
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I guess it doesn't help as they are older than I am and you can't get parts for them any more, the company has to salvage parts from various broken printers so you end up with a frankenprinter in most cases. Thankfully though they are getting replaced with laser printers in the next 18 months or so.
These are the offending printers. [http://www.oki.co.uk/printers/dot-matrix-printers/9-pin-sidm/detail.aspx?prodid=tcm:122-4157-16]
I'm gonna parrot the people who are glad VHS is obsolete. As a movie buff I acknowledge that it's still the only way to see a lot of movies - and that bites - but for the most part I've abandoned it with no regrets. The video quality is awful and degrades rapidly (especially if you don't regularly watch the movies), and seriously - fuck rewinding.
The ONLY thing I miss about VHS is the ability to fast-forward through trailers and commercials. I remember it being a big deal when DVD started out that DVDs wouldn't have trailers. Then after a while they did. Then those trailers started to restrict use of the fast-forward/skip scene/menu buttons. Then those unskippable trailers started to account for sometimes upwards of 20 fuckin' minutes. Blu-Ray is often just as bad. I can't stand that shit.
The ONLY thing I miss about VHS is the ability to fast-forward through trailers and commercials. I remember it being a big deal when DVD started out that DVDs wouldn't have trailers. Then after a while they did. Then those trailers started to restrict use of the fast-forward/skip scene/menu buttons. Then those unskippable trailers started to account for sometimes upwards of 20 fuckin' minutes. Blu-Ray is often just as bad. I can't stand that shit.
I had Dial up that had a flat monthly fee, so the cost wasn't so bad, but the connection was reset after an hour meaning I had to log back on, and if I was in IRC at the time, my name would still be logged in so I'd end up in my alt-name.Johnny Novgorod said:
Also, doing a mission in freespace 2 for a medal, only at least one person per run would do something stupid to screw it up... and on the perfect run I hit the hour limit just before warp out, so everyone else got the medal and didn't want to do the mission again.
Or spending a long time and fiddling to download the doom 3 demo... only to find it didn't support my OS.
The funny thing is I remember as an anime fan, looking forward to going through the trailers on dvd's as they were treated as an 'extra' in the special feature menus rather than stuck on the front to make you watch them.Tuesday Night Fever said:
The current bane of my existence is a series of A1 plotters our engineering team uses. I ahve no idea why but they are just the most finicky machines I've ever worked with.Zipa said:
For some inexplicable reason my school had three BBC computers in the science department when I started primary school.
British public education at its finest.
God knows why no one threw these sad grey fuckers (that predated Chernobyl) into a skip years before they were inflicted upon me. All I'm left with are vague, flickering, green & black memories of waiting for these bastards to do something. Maybe it was some novel way for them to teach us patience? Anyway, they finally got around to building a proper IT room with proper computers a year or so after I started (my standards for what constitutes a 'proper' computer are 'can play a load of crappy flash games'), the BBC computers were consigned to the landfill and my school leapt forwards two decades, where it's stayed ever since.
British public education at its finest.
I actually like it quite a bit when DVDs and Blu-Rays do that. When it's a bonus feature on the disc I can watch them at my leisure, and I can completely skip watching them if they're something I've already seen or something I'm not interested in.Windknight said:
No idea if anyone else has noticed this or not, but a while back I started using my PS3 as my full-time Blu-Ray/DVD player because for some reason it can skip trailers/commercials that are unskippable with other devices.
Oh yeah... I've so noticed that to the point that whenever I'm watching a DVD or Blu-Ray something off someone else's PS3, I'm the one with the remote most of the time... For some reason, everyone thinks only I can pull it off flawlessly or something...Tuesday Night Fever said:
Old keyboards that were so noisy someone can hear you type in the name of a porn site, and they'd know precisely which one you're in.
Me - *typing*
Sister - Why are you going into [insert porn site]?
Me - Damnit! Stop listening to my keystrokes!
Or those bulky CD players with the supposed "anti-skip" technology inside, but in reality did nothing when I took a step with it in my pocket.
Windows XP. Scarily enough, but about four years ago, before I permanently switched to PC gaming, I used to use that OS with a severely aged computer. Sure, it did its job well enough for its time before Windows 7, but I'm glad I never have to touch that OS ever again.
CRT TV's. Bulky, heavy, blurry... great for target practice.
Me - *typing*
Sister - Why are you going into [insert porn site]?
Me - Damnit! Stop listening to my keystrokes!
Or those bulky CD players with the supposed "anti-skip" technology inside, but in reality did nothing when I took a step with it in my pocket.
Windows XP. Scarily enough, but about four years ago, before I permanently switched to PC gaming, I used to use that OS with a severely aged computer. Sure, it did its job well enough for its time before Windows 7, but I'm glad I never have to touch that OS ever again.
CRT TV's. Bulky, heavy, blurry... great for target practice.
Oh yeah, that one is a good call. Don't miss mechanical mice at all.geK0 said:
To a lesser extent I don't miss the LED based optical ones either. I've not used an LED-based one at home in at least five years; had laser ever since. LED based ones were always finicky with glossy surfaces, something which laser ones are much better at.