Abandoned technology.
on 12/09/2011 at 08:49 AM
O_o Okay, that is a bit creepy, but it resonates. I’m having a bit of a reverse reaction to the new stuff: It breaks or becomes incompatible so fast that I’m rejecting it in favour of the older stuff that I can count on.
Tiger, someone wrote a letter to the editor on that very subject recently. So you’re not alone. I think many ppl are finding some of the older stuff is still better.
As long as the new stuff does not trade durability for all the new features, the new stuff is far superior.
That said, I’ve resisted the trend to a great extent, hardly buying a single new gizmo in the past decade. I’ve got a $30 cell phone from Net10 that costs me $10 per month. We didn’t buy a flat screen TV until the prices dropped by a third on the latest generation LED LCD 3D models. I am not so spoiled that I must have “my” music with me on demand wherever I go; what comes in on the radio is good enough, and I’ll listen to the other tracks on the CDs along with the 1 or 2 songs on them that I wanted to hear. We got more than a decade out of the DVD player, and this old PC from 1999 is still chugging away. In the long run I’ve saved thousands.
We saw the latest generation iPad thingy in the stores. $900+. Get real. I’ll pass, until the price gets down to $249 where it ought to be.
Not that I haven’t been bitten by the technology curve. I’ve had a couple of digital cameras bite the dust after only a few years use, and I’ve got a wonderful SVHS machine gathering dust under the stereo. SVHS was what video always should have been; it records at DVD resolution. They came out just in time to be slaughtered by the DVD burners when their price dropped to $99. In the same rack is a neat Sony DVR. Awesome little machine, it could read the TV programming channel that the cable company no longer uses, and record 100 hours worth of shows at a quality level better than what they broadcast. It was better than TiVo and had no subscription. Alas it doesn’t do HDTV, so now it’s another orphan. Heck, with this On Demand stuff, the cable company does what it did for us mostly.
Drew, one huge advantage you have over us civilians, is a very well grounded knowledge of things tech and even better, you know how to fix those things when they go wrong.
The rest of us sit and look at the corpse wondering if there’s really a life after their death. Then call tech support.Drew you think SVHS is bad I had a Laserdisc player and a big pile of Laserdiscs, then along came DVD
mind you, my mobile phone is a veritable antique at four years of age. Still works ok though and does what its designed to do so why change? The way things are happening in the world at the moment I think the days of changing technology nearly as often you change your underwear are over.
And when the TV folks finally get around to building sets with the proper resolution (4 times the 1080i standard) and the cable folks figure out how to build data pipes fat enough to handle it, we’ll all have to start over again. But such a resolution will finally allow everyone to sit close to the 65” TV set and get that old time PanaVision theatrical immersion experience we got back in the 60s by going to movies, when a ticket cost $1.
And I want my iPad to be an iRist or an iBrooch: build me a wristwatch size device with an interactive holographic projected screen that works as a full powered computer with WiFi, an international cell phone with all the goodies, an e-reader, a GPS with route mapping, a wireless bone induction sound system, a full featured PDA, tons of chip based storage room, high resolution digital movie camera, keyless entry transponder, built-in LED flashlight, and a personal shopping device that automatically snags me coupons for just the stuff I buy whenever I walk into a store, and allows me to pay for everything via digital plastic with just the wave of my arm.
Guess I’ll be waiting a couple of years before making my next hi-tech purchase.
12/09/2011 at 09:36 AM
12/09/2011 at 10:54 AM
