47 
Technology is always marching on, and for the most part, that’s a good thing. Gadgets get more efficient, more powerful, cheaper, smaller, all around nicer. But for every innovation that you don’t know how you ever lived without, there’s something—usually something little—that you miss. What old, antiquated gadget makes your heart swell with nostalgia, even if it’s demonstrably inferior to what followed it in just about every single way?
Image by Oleg Golovnev/Shutterstock
My Commodore Amiga, loved that thing!
iPhone 3G.
Amiga 1200
Walkman
Dreamcast
Mixtapes…
VHS – though i still have a few (being able to just fast forward the ads was great, and I know you can skip them on some dvds, but not all of them) also i love the mechanical noise all the servos make when you load a tape.
My Palm smartphone.
My absolutely bullet – proof Siemens C35i phone. (dropped it down stairs, threw it, got it covered in seawater, and it still worked!)
Oooh my Amiga 400, and my Master System
I cannot think of anything, tech has only gotten better. The only thing I can think of is CRT monitors because they had better colours, better response time and those 120hrz ones towards the end of their life were immense.
I also miss when phones couldn’t do anything more than Text and phone people. It was great when people weren’t on their phones all the time and when you didn’t go to a concert and see 90% of people recording on their phone.
Maybe 56K as well cause that noise was great, it was fun being disconnected every 2 hours, no one else being able to use the phone and having to wait a week for a movie to download.
Iphone 5
Ipad Mini/Maxi
Oh hohoho!
snigger
I miss Major Morgan.
Cassette Tapes and Floppy Disks. xD Granted, we have CDs, MP3 players, and USB drives nowadays, but you can only burn once to a CD (CD-RW doesn’t always play either). Plus, that slightly scratchy sound quality on a cassette tape, and they worked in most stereo units.
Floppy disks were also handy, and even now, there are still times I wish I could just put stuff on a floppy for going to another computer if I need to print! xD But from a young age, waiting for stuff to load off a floppy was part of my life — the “grink-grink-grooooonk-gatchagatchagatcha-grink-grink… grink-grink-GROOOONK!” as it did so.
(I also miss the old 56kbps modem connection sounds. xD)
Oh, also, as I think of it — installation media! Like the floppies and CDs company always supplied with your newest gadget or computer! I miss having that — that was always so much easier than having to find drivers, or indeed software, online in the event of a catastrophic crash that meant a full reinstall. I have grown to loathe the backup partition most OEMs put on laptops/computers nowadays, which rely on the user making a backup CD/DVD. Just give me the installation media and I can do things myself, thank you. <3
What is a CD?
i am with you there, having drivers on a physical CD was a great thing
So agree with that, can’t be doing with recovery partitions. When I was building PCs in the late 90s we used to put all the cds in the motherboard box with a big label on saying DO NOT LOSE THESE!
Inevitably, whenever we had to go through the rigmarole of reinstalls, there would always be at least ONE disc we couldn’t find anywhere. xD We keep them in a CD wallet nowadays, but back in the 90s/early 00s, we just starting keeping things in with the modem box so we could find any discs we needed, particularly as we went through the wipe-and-reinstall process at least once a year back then (oh the days of Windows 98 and 1-4GB harddrives =P).
Ah, happy days
We kept a few spare discs from faulty boards, still got one or two somewhere. Really must have a clearout, not likely to see a txpro or voodoo 1 card these days.
Minidisc. Holding one feels feels so right, much more tactile than an anonymous USB flash drive.
I really loved the minidisc, but it was brought in just before mp3 players and cheap flash storage, so never had legs. But minidisc is what CD tech should have always been.
Its downfall was that Sony wanted extortionate license fee’s from other labels to use minidisc’s and they wouldn’t pay – that’s why all minidisc titles were from Sony music.
But I agree- it was a great format.
Aww I miss MD too, such a great format at the time and loads better than CD in terms of size. Don’t miss entering track names with a jog wheel though!
So true. I’ve still got my blue Net-MD player and two boxes of unused blank discs, it’s still mainly useful to me as a recording device. May have to dig it out later, listen to some tunes, for old times sake.
The keyboard to my first PC, big buttons that clunked when you hit them, made each word feel like an achievement.
Sounds like you should look into mechanical keyboards. They’ve made a comeback.
Phone batteries that lasted a week.
Granted, that is outdated tech.
I mostly miss portable stereos that used 8 D batteries that you could carry round on your shoulder whilst playing the early ‘Electro’ albums
)
(all of which i have upload to my google music
My old die-line printer for copying A1 Engineers drawings. The ammonia used to keep me healthy!
Now its all gone digital and printed from a computer, most are done in A3 and are just not big enough to read some of the more important architectural connections. I know you can get A1 printer / copiers, but they are so damn expensive still that not that many people really have them.
My orinal Game Boy. I had 3 of the things!!! Used to play and collect pokemon on it all the time at school and swap them or battle them with my friends. Loved Zelda: Links Awakening on that thing too.
My old computer keyboard. soooooo much better for gaming than any other one I have had since. a nice chuncky and sturdy feel
My remote control. Where did I put that thing?
My Cassette Walkman, with built in analogue Radio!
Winamp
Roland TB303
Sega Megadrive
my 1968 mini
Nostalgia is for fools.
Except for cars, everything got better.
Yeah, cos we all enjoyed servicing them every 3 months and them breaking down every week or rusting to nothing.
Nothing better than freezing your nuts off, pushing your shitbox down the street cos even with a new battery it wouldn’t hold a charge. O.o
Well if you bought a shitty car, it was shitty
But okay, technologically they have advanced greatly. Design-wise – not so much.
Quicktime in games. I’ve yet to get as attached to any characters as much as the ones in the Myst games. Nearly two decades later and 3D character models are still no match for real people.
Dot Matrix printers.
Dat noise.
I miss the Stille-Blattnerphone. A simply stunning audio recorder that had the potential to behead the recordist/operator and required a welding kit to edit the 6mm steel tape used as the recording medium.
3d glasses with no drm at a fair price (ELSA Revelator)
Amstrad emailer. Yes, it was a P.O.S. but the design was ahead of its time even if the technology and business model sucked.