Discussion on:

Tech gadgets we once loved but since abandoned (Photos)

Well, at least when I am on-call, the company I work for call's THEIR pager and NOT my cell phone. This company will not pay any amount on my cell phone therefore, they do not get my home phone and especially not my cell phone. Excuse me for looking like a dork!

It's funny because I've mentioned them a few times to my kids. Mostly because we now have Sony Walkman MP3 players (they bought me one for my b-day )

I also told them about the Sony Walkman TV. I loooved that! It was my brother's but I got a hold of it when he was away at college. I used to stay up late at night under my covers and watch TV. (oh yea - in black and white, lol) heh heh

I had one of those old age moments. I was watching Malcom in the Middle with my son and the boys had taped the news and put it on a loop so their parents wouldn't catch them on the real news. I laughed and explained that to my 7 year old. He also laughed and then had this perplexed look. "Wait, how do you 'tape' the news?"

Me and my wife just looked at each other and shook our heads.

I have a couple of hundred AOL CDs pinned to the computer room wall. One of my co-workers brought his 16-year-old son to work today. We had to explain what AOL was, along with dial-up and modems.

>>What with Kodak's inability to fend of stepped-up competition from rivals with better digital cameras

SHOULD BE:
What with Kodak's inability to fend OFF stepped-up competition from rivals with better digital cameras

Kodak might be crap compared to fleet-footed rivals like Fuji, but they did a lot better than the former Polaroid Corporation.

Cameras were just a small part of Kodak's business. Koday overall was killed because digital cameras don't need film.

Polaroid's big advantage was their film didn't need to be developed. Photos taken with digital cameras not only don't need to be developed, they don't even have to be printed to enjoy.

Either way, obsolescence is the cause of death.

This is why we don't need to give companies tax cuts for research: they do it if they wanna stay in business.
IBM could've kept making typewriters, and Nokia could've kept making wellingtons - but Nokian rubber boots are in fact still being made and sold, and I guess they're not going to be obsolete anytime soon, either.

Where are the typewriters on this list? (The Telex doesn't count!) I mean the old IBM Selectric I took typing on in high school, and then worked with in the Army!
My kids cannot imagine MECHANICAL word processing! HA!

i used to fill out with a typewriter i now have to fill out bu hand...and then even _I_ can't read it...

They were called castetina's or something like that. You'd slap an original in and hand crank the drum to make copies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestetner

I have one downstairs with enough supplies to keep a sensible person going for about a decade if you want one.

Col

Makes a fistfull and a half from their tires too.

Polaroid's claim was "instant." Fast as digitals are they still require an additional device to generate a print. And small as some printers get, it's still awkward to take them, say, out with a horse-drawn carriage to give passengers souvenir pictures.

Ah yes, that dial-up modem connection handshake sound. It was so irksome, yet I would imitate it every time I logged on.

"Once a must-have accessory of the early adopter - or anyone who was part of the cool set. Nowadays, if you see someone still wearing a pager on their hip, odds are high that he or she is a complete dork."

- or a doctor.

Spent many an hour programming at a computer terminal. Can't say I've seen one in decades...

I still use one every day as a Fan engineer. Nothing to beat it!!!

Hi folks ... I resonate with the comments above for various reasons ... I am a nobody, but I had the good fortune to know and 'take advantage' of several of the forgotten guys and gals who formed the foundation of this industry ... Ward Christensen (X-Modem fame and eventually one of my Itty bitty SEs) and my old friend Gene Plantz, and many the others I only know by BBS rep ... I am not at all trying to denigrate the contributions of folks like Bob Metcalf or Vint Cerf here ... I am not a telecomm or cable guy, but I know for sure that those industries were built on the backs of folks like them despite the 'copper wire' dominance of the comm industry leader

Please add to this list the HP Tape Cartridge Backup system. It was fine for 20MB HDDs but quickly became obsolete as hard disk capacity grew beyond its capabilities.

Talking about nostalgic noises, what about the dot matrix printer, and the daisy wheel printer, also unique sounds I will never forget.
Theres also the floppy disk drive in all its different sizes.
I'm sure there are many others that could go on the list.

...what's the resolution of your Laser Printer?? 300...600DPI? Sounds like a "matrix of dots" to me!! I know what you mean though, my mom was a payroll book keeper and I used to dread that day that she had to print pay checks...on 3 copy NCR paper...3 impact printers in a closet they built in her office, tractor feed jumping a line at a time, and even the double glazed sliding patio door couldn't keep the grinding whine of the 24 pin print heads from filling that end of the building. So let's take inventory here...how many technologies did I mention which have gone the way of the buggy whip? Hehehehe

spray little dots of ink on the page, so are also "dot-matrix" printers.

can be much, much faster and cheaper to operate than inkjet or laser printers, 30 inch-wide triple copy spreadsheets flying out of the machines so fast it required a worker to unload printed burst and lad a new one and he would stay busy

Impact printers are still used in most banks as they can imprint the back of a cheque (banks). Fast food restaurants use them as the paper doesn't go black from heat of the food.

Because they can print out several copies and the Original at the same time. Very important for those Medical Legal Documents.

Col

I'll give you the daisy wheel, but, FYI: dot-matrix are alive and kicking. TigerDirect, foe example, has 43 models, including both 9 and 24-pin heads.

But dot matrix printers are still printing receipts and endorsing checks in the retail environment, and are alive and kicking wherever multi-part printing is required or impact printing is more economical.

And I still have a stock of floppy disks and copies of the images required for my retail customers.

I bought a Smith-Corona 'word processor' typewriter in 1980 for $500. I needed to submit typed papers for college but couldn't afford a 286/386 computer plus a printer (~$1,000). I'd also include dot matrix printers as well: almost all businesses decide to print multiple pages using laser rather than impacting on multi-part forms. And ditto on the calculator replacing the slide rule, not the PC.

A pocket calculator with an ATT wireless network connection? Um, mine was not that advanced.

I hate to say it but calculators still litter the desks of many of my colleagues and are in use regularly by them on a daily basis. As for the death of vinyl and turntables, they are doing very nicely through the musical puritans who reject digital recording, those with big vinyl collections and the DJ crowd. I notice that while the slide rule was on the list, the typewriter was not and the increasingly pressurised floppy disk didn't make the list. I still like floppies but they have a niche role in my life. As for the slide rule, I still have my flight 'computer', which is in all essence a rotary slide rule and still very fast and accurate, without any battery problems.

As to pagers, there are those still using them in environmentally sensitive (hospitals, oil & gas, hotels) areas.

Modems, don't write them off either. I live in a developing country and not only are they useful for internet connections they are also a great way to send faxes without needing a fax machine. They might be old but they still have a role.

I was cleaning out the warehouse and came across a case of form feed computer paper. One of the younger guys asked what the holes were for! I told them it was a bad batch of paper because all of the pages were connected.

If you are a machinist you still use this. (At least I know quite a few who do.)

you show the tape express from Ion. this one should not be on the list, it's being used to digitize cassette tapes. in fact i recently bought one to do just this.

I am thinking of getting rid of my internet because if I can have it on my phone for 50 bucks less(my internet bill) then I don't mind. I'll get back my internet when my contract expires, though, becuase I don't really care about carrying the internet in my pocket, might as well get my neck embedded with a dog chip so they can tell where I'm at ALL times if they can't already.

> odds are high that he or she is a complete dork.

Wouldn't tell them that though.

Good chance they work for a three letter agency that either needs to notify a lot of people simultaneously and without delay...and/or they work in secured information facilities that cellphones are not physically allowed in and wouldn't work if you risked espionage charges by sneaking one in.

Or they work for a hospital in a position that allows them to stick needles into you.

I'm compelled to clarify pagers work in SCIFs when cellphones don't because they specifically setup one-way radio relays to repeat pager frequencies inside the SCIF. The SCIF itself is built incorporating a Farraday cage into the structure around it to prevent spurious radio signals from computers, or deliberate ones from Blackberries, from leaving.

My instructors and professors would never forgive me if I didn't.

There is only one 'r' in Faraday.

...are still worn by doctors for some odd reason, but then again, they are always on call...

That is not an obsolete device. That is a cell phone showing the calculator app. Very much used.

Having spent the first seven or eight years of my life in the computing industry with a light pen practically welded to my hand, I can vouch for its utility, and I mourn its decline in use. A tablet is just not the same ..