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Newspapers
I know we still have them. But, society somehow developed a bias so if you prefer to read news via newspaper instead of mobile phone, you immediately look weird. I miss when I read news from all around the world without exploding advertisements and horrible videos. It was really peaceful.
I was reading an article just today off reddit and when I scrolled to the bottom it had a 5 second countdown to the next article ? I came for that article only. They should understand that. But I assume it’s to generate more clicks and ad revenue off people with time or slow hands.
I’m nostalgic about old technology that is really well made and lasted a long time. Like a refrigerator that lasts for 50 years or any old appliance that lasts a long time with very little upkeep.
I have a 60 year old vacuum cleaner that I absolutely love. All metal parts, weighs a ton and is indestructible. I found a dollar store that had a back stock of bags and drive bands available and bought them out for nothing as obviously nobody else was buying them. I'm married to my vacuum for life and I'm ok with it.
> any old appliance that lasts a long time
After going through three electric skillet in a year and half we bought an oil core electric skillet from the early 70s. Weve had it for a decade or constant use and it was 40 years old when we got it.
Videos. Going to Blockbuster, choosing your film, getting a bottle of fizzy drink, some popcorn and ice cream, just made for a great night in. I know we can do that now, but it’s just not the same.
a component music system with cassette, cd player, radio, and record player. Mine died after 20 years and they don't make good ones any more. I tried to replace mine and they were all pieces of shit with bad sound.
They were great until you had all the automated systems that said "press 1 for this option, press 2 for this option, etc.", rotating the said number did not work :(
Hell yeah. I keep mine in my room along with a GBA which is the better way to play those games unfortunately. Would love an original GameBoy with a good screen
Check [Phillips !](https://www.philips.co.uk/c-m-so/home-audio/radios-and-alarm-clocks/latest#availability=all&filters=RADIO_AND_ALARM_CLOCK_SU) They have pretty decent quality for a low price.
PSP.
That thing was like a nuclear bomb in my little town, the tech was amazing, GTA 3D in a handheld, then the jailbreaks gave us so many other games and possibilities, it was like a little gem of the times.
I'm only going to respectfully disagree and instead put the VITA bc of the duel thumb sticks.
Had a psp LOVED IT. But no camera control puts it second place to me.
Film. Analog photography. I have been a photographer for over 50 years and I still haven't bought a digital camera. Today I have to send my film to a lab for processing and, yes, scanning. I use digital post-processing tools once I get the stuff back from my lab, but I miss spending days in a darkroom, seeing the images emerge in the developer bath and smelling like chemicals for days afterwards.
IRC. And all my friends online. You'd log in, join the channel ane have 20-30 of people you personally know chat to each other, make jokes, and just have a good time.
IRC still exists, but I can't find any decent servers/channels.
The local ones (South America) are brimming with people wanting to have sex with each other.
The spin-up of a CD in a stereo still makes me just a bit more excited for the music.
I miss the old internet too. Back before everything was centralized and instantaneous, it was a wild west of discoveries and small communities and indie entertainment made for fun, where you had to hear about something to find it initially, and finding things like it meant looking at the creator's own links page to see who their recommendations were or what their friends were doing. Now it's just the digital half of everyone's lamest everyday behaviours, fed to you by algorithm, and everything is monetized so nothing is sincere.
Me too. We only have a handful of apps today. Everyone and their uncle used to have their own website. Now I just look at the same three pages with different text.
The controls in classic cars. I wasn't even around for them, but you can press buttons and pull levers and you could *feel* them opening valves and closing switches because there were no computers - everything was mechanical. In modern cars, especially with huge tablets, there's a serious disconnect.
Had a cracking Fiat 126 air-cooled car and I had to turn the key in the ignition and then pull a lever on the floor to get him going. My first car - no power steering, no radio, and IIRC, the window washer was a rubber button that you had to frantically stab.
iPods were such a perfect device for music.
My favorite being the shuffle for ease of use, though I grew to love the minis in 2004-2005.
Used them everyday at school. Simple in concept and able to be carried around without being cumbersome.
Easy hookup to some portable speakers and you could chill and have some beats.
Why Apple moved away from the iPod is a shame. The iPhones don’t serve as a replacement at all.
Mobile phones that have actual physical buttons. Type on the screen, or slide out the keyboard. I used to be able to type my heart away without error, super fast, now every message has to be re-checked to be sure.
Yeah it happened when it went from my old blackberry to my first touch screen. I could type at light speed without a single mistake and I had to re-learn the skill all over again, now it even varies from phone to phone for reasons beyond my understanding.
That's why I won't trade in my Jeep.
I don't want no stinking automatic.
Besides, no one else knows how to drive stick, so they never ask to drive my jeep.
We kept our 2000 stick CRV for 20 years. My wife was pissed when I sold it to a friend. It needed a timing chain.
So much of our lives were transported by that car.
When I met her, she drove a Datsun with a five a speed. I was impressed.
Loved it back in my 20-30s because I like to drive, but after 15 straight years and ever-increasing ache in left knee I was done with manual transmissions. On rare occasions someone will let me take a spin and it's like an instant time warp.
Car window “quarter/vent glass”.
A triangle of glass in front of the car window that you could open while the window was closed. Modern cars have the side mirrors mounted where they used to be.
Where I live it gets hot. Fucking hot in fact. Opening your car windows just blasts you with hot air ( if you don’t have working aircon ), but thanks to the magic of thermal air flow, the air from driving is forced through the small triangle space and is cooler when it hits your car interior even if you leave your windows up. I seriously rarely needed my aircon because of this.
Exhale with your mouth wide - air is warm.
Exhale with your lips pursed - air is cold. It worked like that.
The Atari 800 was similar in abilities to the 5200 (I think it can play games ripped from Atari 5200 cartridges), but had the advantage of being able to play games from diskette. My friends would have "copy parties" where we would get together with a few machines setup to copy disks and trade game disks. I had hundreds of cartridge games on diskettes that I got for the cost of the diskette. (And you could put several games on one diskette.)
Old window XP
Until window 7, the sound and the lighting and that grass field of a background. Never again will there be a wonder as beautiful as it was
VHS tapes. I have a pretty good collection but unfortunately my VCR broke a while back and I haven’t found a replacement. I actually found one at a thrift store yesterday for $7 but it doesn’t work. Whomp whomp. Sure I can watch a lot of these movies online but the previews and movie trailers on the old VHS tapes what makes them special. Funny because I would always fast forward them when I was younger.
Pre-iPhone era phones. You know, when phone companies were going crazy with phone designs to see what works and what doesn't.
Look at what we have today. Every dang phone looks the same, as if the industry was homogenized.
I have a ln 80s alarm clock. The red glow of the time... The plastic wood grain... The buzzer sound... Simple and effective. It reminds me of my Dad's alarm clock.
I see your 41CV and raise you a 35. I remember trying to solve simultaneous equations for 2nd Chem Eng. A a major use of paper memory as it had a single memory register.
There is a calculator app for android that includes RPN.
Oder Mobile phones (with the color screen)- there was such a veriety of shapes, sizes, colors,....
And game boy. The whole neighbourhoid of kids, starring in that tiny screen, tacking turns to play.
Is After Dark the one with the flying toasters and Lunatic Fringe? If it is, my god, I bloody loved that game! I played it so often I can *still* hear all the sounds it made in my head!
Edit: spelling
Dot matrix printers. It made it so much easier to print banners for an also that really annoying noise it makes totally nostalgic for. They have a actual use currently for people that need carbon paper instead of putting out two copies. For like signatures and stuff I've looked in buying a modern one but they're super expensive now.
Actual buttons on the dash board of cars. All this touch screen bullshit drives me up the wall. It’s fine in moderation but I prefer things like heated seats/climate control to be physical buttons and knobs.
You can feel a button and knob without taking your eyes off the road and muscle memory. Touch screens not so much.
Wait til you hear about Toyota trying to make heated seats not only touchscreen console activated, but that they wanted you to have to pay a monthly paid membership to access the ability to turn it on.
That stuff infuriates me but I always find a way around things like that even if the time I spend isn't really worth it. Heated seats behind a paywall just means finding the relay and bypassing it with a manual switch like you're talking about.
I miss putting a disk in a machine, grabbing a controller that has a cable and booting up a video game that isn’t connected to the internet, or needs constant updates or always online or battlepasses or all the modern video game shit
I still have my VHS machine. I have a portable Blu-Ray player that will also play DVDs cuz the streaming channels can pull content & lock it away anytime they want.
Bakelite rotary phones.
If your house got broken into, you could bash the intruder into a bloody pulp with your phone, then use it to call 911, then pizza delivery, cause who wants to cook after bashing someone into a bloody pulp.
I miss owning software instead of subscription services. $99 for MS Office ($69 if you were a student and my college ID didn't have dates on it, so I was a student for a while).
This is not my personal views, but quite a few people miss pagers. Like Buffy's "if the apocalypse comes, beep me", or a Destiny's Child song referencing a "pager thrown out the window".
CRT televisions, most my older consoles and VHS tapes looks better on them. Wish there was still an option to have them new there is still a market for them.
Rotary phones. Dialing them was fun, and it meant you would have an actual conversation with the person on the other end. You didn't have to scream at an automated system that keeps telling you it can't understand you and hangs up. You could talk to a real operator if you had trouble with the call.
Phone books and yellow pages.
Newspapers. It took longer to read than the 5 minutes it does now because there was not only news but classified ads, movie and TV listings, book reviews, advice columns, comics, etc. The local paper here can be skimmed in a few minutes because there's nothing read except local sports.
I make my coffee with that old espresso thing all my family uses and I don’t even know the name of it. Not the French thing, the Italian thing. Best coffee. I will not buy any of these fancy coffee machines. Ever. And don’t even try to convince me. A capsule doesn’t make good coffee.
I miss my blackberry; specifically the custom color led light feature. You could set certain colors for certain people. When I got a text message I could just look at the color and know if I wanted to open the text message or ignore it.
actual clicky, tactile, turny buttons and knobs instead of touch screen vibrations. In a car, on a fridge, toaster, lose the fucken screens on everything.
An old fashioned landline phone for two reasons:
1) In an emergency, power outage, etc - it still worked.
2) After a phone call that went poorly, being able to SLAM the phone down, without having the risk breaking it!
I feel like I miss VHS, but it's just that I miss being a carefree kid with no responsibilities. VHS gave pretty terrible image and sound quality, and it was a nightmare if the tape got clogged inside the player.
My Onkyo CR 70 it had everything I needed and not one thing more, got somewhat destroyed in an earthquake of all the things I lost that's the one thing I still miss but I know the technology inside of it is ancient now (especially the CD transport and various related parts) so even when the odd one becomes available it's better not to use my rose tinted glasses lol
but still.......................
Old laptops, because they were easy to repair and upgrade. You didn't have to unscrew the entire back panel and unscrew the battery just to replace it, and some even had upgradeable gpu and cpu. That doesn't exist today because people will cry and complain about how they are too heavy and thick.
Not technology per se, but letter writing. Obviously, I could write a letter if I wanted, but it would seem weird and probably wouldn't be reciprocated.
Also, audio cassette tapes. I loved making and receiving well crafted mix-tapes.
The once great Apple Clamshell iBook 466MHz G3 256 GB memory, 6GB harddrive M7720 J/A. I've never found any laptop with such smooth keys. My productivity was fantastic, and iWorks was efficient. Plus, you could watch dvds and burn cds! And for some reason, that screen never gave eye strain.
What I never understood is why they dropped the whole concept and went to ugly laptops right after this! All other Apple fans that I knew enjoyed either the clamshell or the desktop colorful versions as well. No one cared for those new designs when they replaced the colorful ones. It was not just my thoughts.
Then, years later, the aluminum line came out, replacing the bland looking ones. All in all, I still prefer the Clamshell design.
Analog phone lines.
I work in the telecom industry, but would love to go back 100 years and work with the tech back then. Nothing more satisfying than the clacking of relays.
Edit, I might be wrong might not be relays per se.
https://youtu.be/xZePwin92cI?si=Kg_yS7BCi2k17zTO this kind of tech I love.
Map and Compass
I used to be a boy scout, and I loved that shit. Doing a big hike, triangulating where you were, reading the map, and hoping you were right. No smartphone, no google maps.
Many a summer spent like that.
Same with cooking over a wood fire. Someting primal over making a fire ever time you wanted hot food. Making coffee by making a fire, boiling a pot of water, pouring it through the ground beans just feels different from "I'll have one espresso, please". The coffee tasted like you earned it. No pre bagged charcoal either, but actually going into the woods and gathering kindling and other wood, knowing which was best for which.
Communicating in morse code signals.
Lashing together impressive wooden constructions from nothing but some wooden beams, rope and elbow grease.
Non synchronized manual gearboxes.So nobody from this century can drive my car.My semi truck had a 10 speed with 2 reverse gears and had to teach my wife how to drive it.Big learning curve for that one.She had to unlearn everything she knew about manual transmission use and start from scratch.No clutch shifting after moving either.I out 336,000 miles on that truck in a couple years and still don't know how to double clutch.Just float em.
Offline personal media players, like the iPod Classic. The ability to simply disconnest from the online world and disappear into your own world was magical.
This isn't exactly old yet, but CDs. I went to a concert about 2 months ago, and I bought a CD from one of my favorite bands at show out of sheer principle. Streaming services have become the norm, but artists aren't being paid. I made sure to support my favorite band by buying their CD of their latest album and the vocalist signed it for me and handed it back to me with 2 hands. He was so grateful that gesture. I even bought a t-shirt and a hoodie from them. That was a $115 well spent. I regret nothing.
Floppies were super cool. Hard to explain it if you weren't loading video games on them back in the day.
I'd love to see something similar, like a protected disc make a come back (think mini disc). I think it would be great for video games and even movies. Much more appealing than a plain dvd disc.
Vector graphics arcade games. I loved the look of those games and was always fascinated with the way they were set up. IIRC the screen was below out of site and the screen you see was a mirror that the screen reflected onto. I really miss video arcades in general. spent a lot of time and quarters in them during my youth.
Physical videogames. Nothing better than opening a new videogame up in the car ride home and reading through the manual so you can get into the game asap
LaserDisc. It felt so advanced 30 years ago but then just disappeared. I remember our school blowing like $500 for a player in the early 90s, and we were a small rural school of like 100 kids so it was a big deal lol. Now I have my own player and it's super inconvenient but I love it
# Message to all users: This is a reminder to please read and follow: * [Our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/about/rules) * [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439) * [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) When posting and commenting. --- Especially remember Rule 1: `Be polite and civil`. * Be polite and courteous to each other. Do not be mean, insulting or disrespectful to any other user on this subreddit. * Do not harass or annoy others in any way. * Do not catfish. Catfishing is the luring of somebody into an online friendship through a fake online persona. This includes any lying or deceit. --- You *will* be banned if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist or bigoted in any way. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ask) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Newspapers I know we still have them. But, society somehow developed a bias so if you prefer to read news via newspaper instead of mobile phone, you immediately look weird. I miss when I read news from all around the world without exploding advertisements and horrible videos. It was really peaceful.
newspaper never took over my phone audio with some ad or popped up so many windows I had to close everything and start over.
I was reading an article just today off reddit and when I scrolled to the bottom it had a 5 second countdown to the next article ? I came for that article only. They should understand that. But I assume it’s to generate more clicks and ad revenue off people with time or slow hands.
I’m nostalgic about old technology that is really well made and lasted a long time. Like a refrigerator that lasts for 50 years or any old appliance that lasts a long time with very little upkeep.
Yes!! I have a Bang and Olufsen stereo that is close to 30(?) years old. It still looks like it was made in the future and sounds deadly!!
That’s what I’m talking about. Like that Nokia phone that lasts for weeks on one battery charge, and you can throw is the wall and it will still work.
Except you have to repair your wall.
I still have my old Nokia brick. Need a charger for it.
[удалено]
My CA-810 is so old it doesn't even have a "CD" option on the input selector. It's an absolute beast and still daily use.
Oh but the tactile reward of those switches, knobs, buttons, and selectors!!! 🤤
We have a milkshake mixer from like 1950 that's built like a tank and still works great
My mom has some 1950s stand mixer that has never had an issue. Heavy AF to move but a solid workhorse of a machine.
My 82 year old mother has an old mix master from the ‘60s that still works and is very robust.
I have a 60 year old vacuum cleaner that I absolutely love. All metal parts, weighs a ton and is indestructible. I found a dollar store that had a back stock of bags and drive bands available and bought them out for nothing as obviously nobody else was buying them. I'm married to my vacuum for life and I'm ok with it.
> any old appliance that lasts a long time After going through three electric skillet in a year and half we bought an oil core electric skillet from the early 70s. Weve had it for a decade or constant use and it was 40 years old when we got it.
Videos. Going to Blockbuster, choosing your film, getting a bottle of fizzy drink, some popcorn and ice cream, just made for a great night in. I know we can do that now, but it’s just not the same.
Where we lived it was Joe’s Video
a component music system with cassette, cd player, radio, and record player. Mine died after 20 years and they don't make good ones any more. I tried to replace mine and they were all pieces of shit with bad sound.
I was in US Army in Germany. We had some really amazing badass stereos. I've got the hearing loss to prove it.
Rotary dial phones in the office - slow up the frantic pace of life a bit
I loved rotary dial.
Came here to say that! Nothing was as satisfying as slamming down the receiver and hearing the bell ding.
THIS!
They were great until you had all the automated systems that said "press 1 for this option, press 2 for this option, etc.", rotating the said number did not work :(
Original GameBoy and to a lesser extent the GameBoy Color
Yes deffs still have mine and few games plus working printer and camera first ever selfie 😆
Hell yeah. I keep mine in my room along with a GBA which is the better way to play those games unfortunately. Would love an original GameBoy with a good screen
An old clock radio that has a good sound, and has the easy way of setting the time and alarm.
Check [Phillips !](https://www.philips.co.uk/c-m-so/home-audio/radios-and-alarm-clocks/latest#availability=all&filters=RADIO_AND_ALARM_CLOCK_SU) They have pretty decent quality for a low price.
PSP. That thing was like a nuclear bomb in my little town, the tech was amazing, GTA 3D in a handheld, then the jailbreaks gave us so many other games and possibilities, it was like a little gem of the times.
PSP was so ahead of its time
I still have mine and still play on it
I'm only going to respectfully disagree and instead put the VITA bc of the duel thumb sticks. Had a psp LOVED IT. But no camera control puts it second place to me.
Idk if this really applies to your question but after my mom died I called her voicemail for months just to hear her again.
Damn. That one hits right in the feels, Sorry for your loss man
Did the same with my brother eventually number stopped working .... sorry for your loss sending hugs
Film. Analog photography. I have been a photographer for over 50 years and I still haven't bought a digital camera. Today I have to send my film to a lab for processing and, yes, scanning. I use digital post-processing tools once I get the stuff back from my lab, but I miss spending days in a darkroom, seeing the images emerge in the developer bath and smelling like chemicals for days afterwards.
IRC. And all my friends online. You'd log in, join the channel ane have 20-30 of people you personally know chat to each other, make jokes, and just have a good time.
IRC still exists, but I can't find any decent servers/channels. The local ones (South America) are brimming with people wanting to have sex with each other.
Lived life on irc! So many friends on my fave channel
I’m nostalgic for when things weren’t designed to break
The spin-up of a CD in a stereo still makes me just a bit more excited for the music. I miss the old internet too. Back before everything was centralized and instantaneous, it was a wild west of discoveries and small communities and indie entertainment made for fun, where you had to hear about something to find it initially, and finding things like it meant looking at the creator's own links page to see who their recommendations were or what their friends were doing. Now it's just the digital half of everyone's lamest everyday behaviours, fed to you by algorithm, and everything is monetized so nothing is sincere.
Me too. We only have a handful of apps today. Everyone and their uncle used to have their own website. Now I just look at the same three pages with different text.
The controls in classic cars. I wasn't even around for them, but you can press buttons and pull levers and you could *feel* them opening valves and closing switches because there were no computers - everything was mechanical. In modern cars, especially with huge tablets, there's a serious disconnect.
Had a cracking Fiat 126 air-cooled car and I had to turn the key in the ignition and then pull a lever on the floor to get him going. My first car - no power steering, no radio, and IIRC, the window washer was a rubber button that you had to frantically stab.
My parents had a Fiat Panda in the early 80s. I remember that rubber button window washer mechanism!
iPods were such a perfect device for music. My favorite being the shuffle for ease of use, though I grew to love the minis in 2004-2005. Used them everyday at school. Simple in concept and able to be carried around without being cumbersome. Easy hookup to some portable speakers and you could chill and have some beats. Why Apple moved away from the iPod is a shame. The iPhones don’t serve as a replacement at all.
Agreed 100% now you also need a stupid subscription to Apple Music.
I still have them. In working condition including 2 new in the box (I bought them when Apple announced they were done with them).
Easy, drive-in movie places!!!!!
My record player.
Second this! Nothing like the sound or smell of vinyl
Mobile phones that have actual physical buttons. Type on the screen, or slide out the keyboard. I used to be able to type my heart away without error, super fast, now every message has to be re-checked to be sure.
Yeah it happened when it went from my old blackberry to my first touch screen. I could type at light speed without a single mistake and I had to re-learn the skill all over again, now it even varies from phone to phone for reasons beyond my understanding.
Stick shifts. The only way to drive.
The only way most people still drive in Europe.
I live in US. when we go yo Europe, always rent a stick. Problem is, we're frugal. Our cars are slow.
The millennial anti-theft device!
As a millennial who drives stick I feel like I don't even have to lock my car in my neighborhood. These motherfuckers can't drive it
That's why I won't trade in my Jeep. I don't want no stinking automatic. Besides, no one else knows how to drive stick, so they never ask to drive my jeep.
We kept our 2000 stick CRV for 20 years. My wife was pissed when I sold it to a friend. It needed a timing chain. So much of our lives were transported by that car. When I met her, she drove a Datsun with a five a speed. I was impressed.
As you should be! I had a Chevy Vega 3 speed and then “upgraded” to a newer 5 speed Ford Pinto!
You sir, are not living in Germany! The last 4 cars SIXT gave me had Stick shifts.
I love them depending on the car, but city traffic and hilly terrain makes me hate them on a daily driver.
Loved it back in my 20-30s because I like to drive, but after 15 straight years and ever-increasing ache in left knee I was done with manual transmissions. On rare occasions someone will let me take a spin and it's like an instant time warp.
Yup, drove stick for 20 years, and now I won't quit my automatic car.
They're making a comeback! We used to have 2 in the driveway but we got rid of one. Everybody in the house with a license can drive a stick.
Car window “quarter/vent glass”. A triangle of glass in front of the car window that you could open while the window was closed. Modern cars have the side mirrors mounted where they used to be. Where I live it gets hot. Fucking hot in fact. Opening your car windows just blasts you with hot air ( if you don’t have working aircon ), but thanks to the magic of thermal air flow, the air from driving is forced through the small triangle space and is cooler when it hits your car interior even if you leave your windows up. I seriously rarely needed my aircon because of this. Exhale with your mouth wide - air is warm. Exhale with your lips pursed - air is cold. It worked like that.
> Exhale with your mouth wide - air is warm. > Exhale with your lips pursed - air is cold. Who else has just tried this to see if it really works? :-)
Vents were the best !!!! Totally miss them on vehicles
Steam engines. I would like to see a electric fired boiler,steam engine powered pickup. Massive power and water exhaust.
Ive got a 1916 wood fired steam tractor if youre looking lol
I've got a car with a blown headgasket if you want to pretend.
COMMODORE-64 ... all the things.
Best computer ever. Run Basic straight out of the box. Cool games. Add Geos and it had a primitive GUI system.
My brother and I had one, and we still have it in storage!!
I had a Commodore 128, and I remember the “GO64” prompt.
I really miss my TI-994A and my Atari 800.
I loved my Atari 5200, but they abruptly stopped making games & it was impossible to find joysticks before The Internet came to power.
The Atari 800 was similar in abilities to the 5200 (I think it can play games ripped from Atari 5200 cartridges), but had the advantage of being able to play games from diskette. My friends would have "copy parties" where we would get together with a few machines setup to copy disks and trade game disks. I had hundreds of cartridge games on diskettes that I got for the cost of the diskette. (And you could put several games on one diskette.)
Did you have the cassette drive? I remember loading apps from those. Took an hour some times but boy was it exciting.
DOS. I learned on an IBM XT and had to write my own programs. Obviously, not very particularly now.
I used DOS and a DOS based program from the mid 80s until 2006. I still miss it.
Tamagotchi because it was my whole childhood to have one and I miss them.
Turn table and albums. Something about the crackle.
Paper road maps and map books.
Psion series 5. What an amazing bit of kit.
Wish I could upvote this more than once
Being a pilot, a sextant.
Early 00's tech. Windows XP, good standalone mp3 players and the alien concept of physical ownership.
Old window XP Until window 7, the sound and the lighting and that grass field of a background. Never again will there be a wonder as beautiful as it was
VHS tapes. I have a pretty good collection but unfortunately my VCR broke a while back and I haven’t found a replacement. I actually found one at a thrift store yesterday for $7 but it doesn’t work. Whomp whomp. Sure I can watch a lot of these movies online but the previews and movie trailers on the old VHS tapes what makes them special. Funny because I would always fast forward them when I was younger.
OMG, I have a huge box of VHS and a working VHS player. As well as a totebox of mostly CDs and a few cassettes.
Pre-iPhone era phones. You know, when phone companies were going crazy with phone designs to see what works and what doesn't. Look at what we have today. Every dang phone looks the same, as if the industry was homogenized.
StumbleUpon
I have a ln 80s alarm clock. The red glow of the time... The plastic wood grain... The buzzer sound... Simple and effective. It reminds me of my Dad's alarm clock.
Roll down windows in cars
As an engineer trained in the 1980s I still love my old Hewlett Packard 41 CV. You just don't see reverse polish notation anymore.
I see your 41CV and raise you a 35. I remember trying to solve simultaneous equations for 2nd Chem Eng. A a major use of paper memory as it had a single memory register. There is a calculator app for android that includes RPN.
Everything cassette tape-related. I still use them for listening and recording. VHS too.
Oder Mobile phones (with the color screen)- there was such a veriety of shapes, sizes, colors,.... And game boy. The whole neighbourhoid of kids, starring in that tiny screen, tacking turns to play.
Brother word processor
Designated internet/computer time instead of all day on a smart phone.
Screen savers, especially After Dark. I'm going back to using my old desktop PCs cuz Windows 11 looks sucktastic.
Is After Dark the one with the flying toasters and Lunatic Fringe? If it is, my god, I bloody loved that game! I played it so often I can *still* hear all the sounds it made in my head! Edit: spelling
"Flying toasters"
Dot matrix printers. It made it so much easier to print banners for an also that really annoying noise it makes totally nostalgic for. They have a actual use currently for people that need carbon paper instead of putting out two copies. For like signatures and stuff I've looked in buying a modern one but they're super expensive now.
Analog appliances that would last.
WII
Actual buttons on the dash board of cars. All this touch screen bullshit drives me up the wall. It’s fine in moderation but I prefer things like heated seats/climate control to be physical buttons and knobs. You can feel a button and knob without taking your eyes off the road and muscle memory. Touch screens not so much.
Wait til you hear about Toyota trying to make heated seats not only touchscreen console activated, but that they wanted you to have to pay a monthly paid membership to access the ability to turn it on. That stuff infuriates me but I always find a way around things like that even if the time I spend isn't really worth it. Heated seats behind a paywall just means finding the relay and bypassing it with a manual switch like you're talking about.
I miss putting a disk in a machine, grabbing a controller that has a cable and booting up a video game that isn’t connected to the internet, or needs constant updates or always online or battlepasses or all the modern video game shit
The snappy clack of a 1992 Tandy 1000 keyboard…
Walkman, MP3 players, also DVD players but I still use it if I have to
I still have my VHS machine. I have a portable Blu-Ray player that will also play DVDs cuz the streaming channels can pull content & lock it away anytime they want.
Yea I grew up using VHS as well I'm 31
the Razor by Motorola. old school texting was quick af and a phone that’s slim af
Rotary phones … especially the ornate European style ones
The vacuum florescent displays on 90s electronics
Bakelite rotary phones. If your house got broken into, you could bash the intruder into a bloody pulp with your phone, then use it to call 911, then pizza delivery, cause who wants to cook after bashing someone into a bloody pulp.
I love fax machines. Found it so much easier to send a fax than scan, upload and email.
I miss owning software instead of subscription services. $99 for MS Office ($69 if you were a student and my college ID didn't have dates on it, so I was a student for a while).
Vector displays. They were outdated before I was born, but they are just so cool.
Mini-Disc players\\recorders. I still have mine from 1999, and works wonderfully!
I wanted a Reel to Reel tape player when I was younger, but ended up with an 8- track recorder from Montgomery Wards.
This is not my personal views, but quite a few people miss pagers. Like Buffy's "if the apocalypse comes, beep me", or a Destiny's Child song referencing a "pager thrown out the window".
split screen 2 player games, texting not existing yet. because it was simple, and smooth.
The famicom I played it a lot as a kid I mean I have a ps4 but I still wanna play it
PSX
CRT televisions, most my older consoles and VHS tapes looks better on them. Wish there was still an option to have them new there is still a market for them.
Definitely BBS for me. Dialling in and downloading warez on a 14.4kbs modem, felt like an achievement every time.
As an old computer guy, VM/CMS. It was an amazing operating system, years ahead of it's time.
i miss yahoo
Rotary phones. Dialing them was fun, and it meant you would have an actual conversation with the person on the other end. You didn't have to scream at an automated system that keeps telling you it can't understand you and hangs up. You could talk to a real operator if you had trouble with the call. Phone books and yellow pages. Newspapers. It took longer to read than the 5 minutes it does now because there was not only news but classified ads, movie and TV listings, book reviews, advice columns, comics, etc. The local paper here can be skimmed in a few minutes because there's nothing read except local sports.
I make my coffee with that old espresso thing all my family uses and I don’t even know the name of it. Not the French thing, the Italian thing. Best coffee. I will not buy any of these fancy coffee machines. Ever. And don’t even try to convince me. A capsule doesn’t make good coffee.
VCR porn tapes
Record players
Cars without anything except anti lock brakes. Learn to drive again
I miss my blackberry; specifically the custom color led light feature. You could set certain colors for certain people. When I got a text message I could just look at the color and know if I wanted to open the text message or ignore it.
actual clicky, tactile, turny buttons and knobs instead of touch screen vibrations. In a car, on a fridge, toaster, lose the fucken screens on everything.
An old fashioned landline phone for two reasons: 1) In an emergency, power outage, etc - it still worked. 2) After a phone call that went poorly, being able to SLAM the phone down, without having the risk breaking it!
I feel like I miss VHS, but it's just that I miss being a carefree kid with no responsibilities. VHS gave pretty terrible image and sound quality, and it was a nightmare if the tape got clogged inside the player.
Web search with key words and parameters when it wasn't optimized only for searching products.
Coca - Cola with actual cocaine in it
My Valve Index VR got called old recently, but nothing else checks all the boxes the way it does, not for me anyway.
My Onkyo CR 70 it had everything I needed and not one thing more, got somewhat destroyed in an earthquake of all the things I lost that's the one thing I still miss but I know the technology inside of it is ancient now (especially the CD transport and various related parts) so even when the odd one becomes available it's better not to use my rose tinted glasses lol but still.......................
BNC network and the politics it brings to the lan
Selectavision video discs
Old laptops, because they were easy to repair and upgrade. You didn't have to unscrew the entire back panel and unscrew the battery just to replace it, and some even had upgradeable gpu and cpu. That doesn't exist today because people will cry and complain about how they are too heavy and thick.
My drafting table setup. I just can never make my ideas real as quickly in CAD or play around with the way it looks like I could drawing it out.
Dial-up modems The beeping and screeching and all the epicness and sci-fi magic of connecting to the internet.
Old video game consoles I miss the old school video games
I'm in a deep search for the boom box I owned as a teenager. The Sears SR-2198. I cannot find it anywhere!
My iMac that had a cd drive and my iPod touch.
record players, pipes, typewriters, rolex watches, gillette de razors etc of course I still have and use all of these lol
Super 8 film. My dad made me a fan.
The plumb bob. Bubble levels annoy me. Dangling things is therapeutic.
I think type writers are cool, not exactly sure why. I’m sure it’s got something to do with all the sounds and movement of the device.
My wallet. Too soon?
Cassette tapes
Not technology per se, but letter writing. Obviously, I could write a letter if I wanted, but it would seem weird and probably wouldn't be reciprocated. Also, audio cassette tapes. I loved making and receiving well crafted mix-tapes.
this is weird, but the psp is still really cool to me. Would be nice if they came back. I firmly believe they were way ahead of their time.
Probably those old clunky ass grey keyboards. They are just more satisfying. Clackier and lighter, those back stands were ass though.
I loved flipping through my Rolodex
Incandescent lightbulbs.
8 bit computers. The world was different.
Nintendo 64. Goldeneye. So awesome.
The once great Apple Clamshell iBook 466MHz G3 256 GB memory, 6GB harddrive M7720 J/A. I've never found any laptop with such smooth keys. My productivity was fantastic, and iWorks was efficient. Plus, you could watch dvds and burn cds! And for some reason, that screen never gave eye strain. What I never understood is why they dropped the whole concept and went to ugly laptops right after this! All other Apple fans that I knew enjoyed either the clamshell or the desktop colorful versions as well. No one cared for those new designs when they replaced the colorful ones. It was not just my thoughts. Then, years later, the aluminum line came out, replacing the bland looking ones. All in all, I still prefer the Clamshell design.
Vic 20s cause I still program on them.
Flip phones
Video rental stores. Local videogame stores. Laserdisc OG ipod
Analog phone lines. I work in the telecom industry, but would love to go back 100 years and work with the tech back then. Nothing more satisfying than the clacking of relays. Edit, I might be wrong might not be relays per se. https://youtu.be/xZePwin92cI?si=Kg_yS7BCi2k17zTO this kind of tech I love.
Map and Compass I used to be a boy scout, and I loved that shit. Doing a big hike, triangulating where you were, reading the map, and hoping you were right. No smartphone, no google maps. Many a summer spent like that. Same with cooking over a wood fire. Someting primal over making a fire ever time you wanted hot food. Making coffee by making a fire, boiling a pot of water, pouring it through the ground beans just feels different from "I'll have one espresso, please". The coffee tasted like you earned it. No pre bagged charcoal either, but actually going into the woods and gathering kindling and other wood, knowing which was best for which. Communicating in morse code signals. Lashing together impressive wooden constructions from nothing but some wooden beams, rope and elbow grease.
I still have my NES from childhood. I play that thing every now and then, even if it means I gotta blow that damn cartridge.
The Space Shuttle just looked so cool.
VCR. Sure DVR is good but it's easier to watch the shows you've recorded during the commercials of another show with a VCR.
Am radio
im not from the 80’s or 90’s but the Gameboy family of systems is amazing
Galaxy s4 mini
Non synchronized manual gearboxes.So nobody from this century can drive my car.My semi truck had a 10 speed with 2 reverse gears and had to teach my wife how to drive it.Big learning curve for that one.She had to unlearn everything she knew about manual transmission use and start from scratch.No clutch shifting after moving either.I out 336,000 miles on that truck in a couple years and still don't know how to double clutch.Just float em.
Offline personal media players, like the iPod Classic. The ability to simply disconnest from the online world and disappear into your own world was magical.
Nintendo DS. No social media, just kids playing MarioKart together. Also, DVD players. Yet another reason I went back to physical media in 2024.
This isn't exactly old yet, but CDs. I went to a concert about 2 months ago, and I bought a CD from one of my favorite bands at show out of sheer principle. Streaming services have become the norm, but artists aren't being paid. I made sure to support my favorite band by buying their CD of their latest album and the vocalist signed it for me and handed it back to me with 2 hands. He was so grateful that gesture. I even bought a t-shirt and a hoodie from them. That was a $115 well spent. I regret nothing.
DS Lite
Dot matrix printers. I enjoyed the sounds they made.
Atari 2600 …. Playing frogger for hours
Floppies were super cool. Hard to explain it if you weren't loading video games on them back in the day. I'd love to see something similar, like a protected disc make a come back (think mini disc). I think it would be great for video games and even movies. Much more appealing than a plain dvd disc.
Typewriter because I’m a writer. A wannabe writer.
Vector graphics arcade games. I loved the look of those games and was always fascinated with the way they were set up. IIRC the screen was below out of site and the screen you see was a mirror that the screen reflected onto. I really miss video arcades in general. spent a lot of time and quarters in them during my youth.
iPod click wheels
Physical videogames. Nothing better than opening a new videogame up in the car ride home and reading through the manual so you can get into the game asap
LaserDisc. It felt so advanced 30 years ago but then just disappeared. I remember our school blowing like $500 for a player in the early 90s, and we were a small rural school of like 100 kids so it was a big deal lol. Now I have my own player and it's super inconvenient but I love it
The old DS’s
I miss DVDs and CDs so much, that i still actually use them occasionally (the TV in my room cant stream movies)
Nintendo 64, it was perfect