For us over 50 - Favourite Technology
Discussion
I like buying discarded gadgets from charity shops. You just know they won't work properly because they're still in the boxes they arrived in and there's hardly a mark on them. I bought an RC helicopter a week or so ago for a fiver. It's not an expensive one but could be £40 when they first came along, so £5 is a good way of learning about things. I got it home and sure enough it lit up alright, but no rotor movement except sporadically as I moved the throttle stick to the limit. Opened up the controller and found that the joystick pots were perfect - smooth and even resistance changes. Then I looked under a lupe at the PCB and saw that the main IC - surface mount - was a bit out of place on its pads and the solder was perilously thin on the legs on one side. After I applied a soldering iron to each leg and flowed the residual solder more fully on to the pads and legs, it worked perfectly! Very satisfying.
When they say kids are tech-savvy it doesn't mean they understand what happens when they press buttons, but that they press so many buttons that they are not intimidated by the devices.
When they say kids are tech-savvy it doesn't mean they understand what happens when they press buttons, but that they press so many buttons that they are not intimidated by the devices.
Riley Blue said:
It's invisible, you can't smell it, hear it or taste it but you can feel it and it enables the most amazing things to happen.
What is it?
It's electricity.
Put a 9 volt battery on your tongue and you most certainly can taste it. Sort of metallic with a hint of roast pork.What is it?
It's electricity.
Smartphones and the internet. My teenage self could not have imagined such things would exist in my lifetime.
I can listen to anything, speak to anyone (anywhere), watch anything, find the answer to anything, buy anything, navigate to anywhere with a device that will easily fit in my jeans pocket.
The list of things it can do is staggering, and is basically science fiction.
I can listen to anything, speak to anyone (anywhere), watch anything, find the answer to anything, buy anything, navigate to anywhere with a device that will easily fit in my jeans pocket.
The list of things it can do is staggering, and is basically science fiction.
PBDirector said:
The other key moment for me was around 2000 when I walked home whilst having a phone conversation with someone on a beach in Europe.
Midnight December 31st 1999 I was celebrating in the street when I got a call from a girl on a beach in Australia, calling to wish me happy new year. That still felt like Star Trek technology to me. The modern smart phone is still top of my list. I’m typing on it now. It’s where I do most of my banking. It wakes me up by playing the Today program. It’s my SatNav, helpfully guiding me around traffic jams. It’s a light and portable camera and camcorder. It’s my portal to all the worlds knowledge. It even makes phone calls.
All this for less than a quality camera lens, and a few quid a month SIM contract.
deckster said:
Riley Blue said:
It's invisible, you can't smell it, hear it or taste it but you can feel it and it enables the most amazing things to happen.
What is it?
It's electricity.
Put a 9 volt battery on your tongue and you most certainly can taste it. Sort of metallic with a hint of roast pork.What is it?
It's electricity.
Tellys.
I'm 51 and have always worked in and around the 'media' industries and since the mid 90s, typically in the main with people at least 10 -15 years younger than me. As a consequence, a lot of the 'modern' stuff to me isn't really modern....it just 'is'.
But TVs.... the practicality of the fat-back variety rendered them useless in any rooms other than the lounge. Growing up, it was a colour telly in the lounge (ITT with push button channel changing) and a Black and White portable with a round wire arial. That never worked.
Today, we have a smart TV in the lounge, kitchen, our bedroom and one in each of the kid's rooms. And the spare room. And two (non-smart) in the garage. It's like we live in a Dixon's warehouse!! (Do they still exist?)
I spent years and a fair bit of money honing our 7:1 home cinema surround system just so to give the best sound and vision, immersive experience yet our £180 Panasonic sound bar does an (almost) equally good job.
And to bring it back to a PH type thing....
I was at the WEC at Silverstone this year and found myself above the Toyota pit. That hybrid tech.....my word! Difficult to articulate the dynamics of the speed which the car simply....well....'f
ks' off
I'm 51 and have always worked in and around the 'media' industries and since the mid 90s, typically in the main with people at least 10 -15 years younger than me. As a consequence, a lot of the 'modern' stuff to me isn't really modern....it just 'is'.
But TVs.... the practicality of the fat-back variety rendered them useless in any rooms other than the lounge. Growing up, it was a colour telly in the lounge (ITT with push button channel changing) and a Black and White portable with a round wire arial. That never worked.
Today, we have a smart TV in the lounge, kitchen, our bedroom and one in each of the kid's rooms. And the spare room. And two (non-smart) in the garage. It's like we live in a Dixon's warehouse!! (Do they still exist?)
I spent years and a fair bit of money honing our 7:1 home cinema surround system just so to give the best sound and vision, immersive experience yet our £180 Panasonic sound bar does an (almost) equally good job.
And to bring it back to a PH type thing....
I was at the WEC at Silverstone this year and found myself above the Toyota pit. That hybrid tech.....my word! Difficult to articulate the dynamics of the speed which the car simply....well....'f
ks' offRiley Blue said:
It's invisible, you can't smell it, hear it or taste it but you can feel it and it enables the most amazing things to happen.
What is it?
It's electricity.
See it, hear it.What is it?
It's electricity.
And my car wiring skills inform me it smells remarkably like burnt rubber/plastic
I'm struggling to think of any new technology I have today that wasn't around in some form 20 years ago, albeit clunkier.
Sure a smartphone combines lots of functions, but GPS's, digital cameras, mobile phones etc have been available for quite some time.
If I had to pick, my choice would be the OLED screen but that's hardly lifechanging.
Sure a smartphone combines lots of functions, but GPS's, digital cameras, mobile phones etc have been available for quite some time.
If I had to pick, my choice would be the OLED screen but that's hardly lifechanging.
Dog Star said:
But in general what's made the difference is information - hugely rapid access to humungous amounts of data. No science fiction writer from my youth saw this coming at all ; Arthur C Clarke got a vague idea of a PDA with the "minisec" but that was totally lame compared with what actually happened.
Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was pretty close. 50 here. I work in IT and have lots of modern technology around me most of the time. I love:
GPS. I can read maps and whilst orienteering used to be fun when I was younger, not having to is way better.
4WD. I'll never have a 2WD car again.
Automatic gearboxes... Or more accurately, the torque converter. I've had Caterhams (plural) and a Cerbera but I'd never go back to a car with a clutch pedal again.
Sonos. Finally I let go of my hifi, stopped listening to the equipment, and started listening to the music. Lots and lots of music. Stick Deezer, Amazon and Spotify in this one too.
Smart phones.
The internet. In fact, this should be top of the list. This x1000000
Voice control - Alexa is embedded into our lives already. Fabulous.
But despite all this, time away in a caravan where there's no mobile signal, cooking my catch outside on an open fire/BBQ with wood I chopped myself. That's time I never want the tech to encroach into (although I got there in my 265bhp 4WD truck, navigating with satnav, listening to music from one of the playlists etc...).
GPS. I can read maps and whilst orienteering used to be fun when I was younger, not having to is way better.
4WD. I'll never have a 2WD car again.
Automatic gearboxes... Or more accurately, the torque converter. I've had Caterhams (plural) and a Cerbera but I'd never go back to a car with a clutch pedal again.
Sonos. Finally I let go of my hifi, stopped listening to the equipment, and started listening to the music. Lots and lots of music. Stick Deezer, Amazon and Spotify in this one too.
Smart phones.
The internet. In fact, this should be top of the list. This x1000000
Voice control - Alexa is embedded into our lives already. Fabulous.
But despite all this, time away in a caravan where there's no mobile signal, cooking my catch outside on an open fire/BBQ with wood I chopped myself. That's time I never want the tech to encroach into (although I got there in my 265bhp 4WD truck, navigating with satnav, listening to music from one of the playlists etc...).
StevieBee said:
Tellys.
I'm 51 and have always worked in and around the 'media' industries and since the mid 90s, typically in the main with people at least 10 -15 years younger than me. As a consequence, a lot of the 'modern' stuff to me isn't really modern....it just 'is'.
But TVs.... the practicality of the fat-back variety rendered them useless in any rooms other than the lounge. Growing up, it was a colour telly in the lounge (ITT with push button channel changing) and a Black and White portable with a round wire arial. That never worked.
Today, we have a smart TV in the lounge, kitchen, our bedroom and one in each of the kid's rooms. And the spare room. And two (non-smart) in the garage. It's like we live in a Dixon's warehouse!! (Do they still exist?)
That isn't really progress to me. Just because you can have a TV in every room, should you actually want to?I'm 51 and have always worked in and around the 'media' industries and since the mid 90s, typically in the main with people at least 10 -15 years younger than me. As a consequence, a lot of the 'modern' stuff to me isn't really modern....it just 'is'.
But TVs.... the practicality of the fat-back variety rendered them useless in any rooms other than the lounge. Growing up, it was a colour telly in the lounge (ITT with push button channel changing) and a Black and White portable with a round wire arial. That never worked.
Today, we have a smart TV in the lounge, kitchen, our bedroom and one in each of the kid's rooms. And the spare room. And two (non-smart) in the garage. It's like we live in a Dixon's warehouse!! (Do they still exist?)
Granted, we can all watch separate stuff on tablets and phones anyway, but to me there's something thoroughly depressing about the thought of everyone in the family disappearing off to watch TV in their own antisocial little bubble.
The Virgin engineer who fitted our box last year was absolutely gobsmacked when I told him we didn't have a second TV for the second TiVo box, so I guess we're in the minority now.
kowalski655 said:
deckster said:
Riley Blue said:
It's invisible, you can't smell it, hear it or taste it but you can feel it and it enables the most amazing things to happen.
What is it?
It's electricity.
Put a 9 volt battery on your tongue and you most certainly can taste it. Sort of metallic with a hint of roast pork.What is it?
It's electricity.
ApOrbital said:
No printers have ever worked they are from a different planet.
Yep, its like having an incompetent crack addict on your desk, you give it one job and it screws the paper up, prints faintly, prints with lines or has a random approach to what eventually comes out.I say crack addict as after 40 or so pages (3 of which are usable) you get the low ink message "Ink Level low, please replace with genuine Epson cartridges, I am hurting bad, hit me with the good s
t daddio", you put some non genuine stuff in and it moans at you, like one of those spoilt, really furry white cats owned by slightly mad single women that demand £3 a time pouches of gourmet cat food.I don't know why I am considered to be the Printer Whisperer in our house, people email me stuff to print like I want to coerce the f
king thing into putting ink to paper.J4CKO said:
ApOrbital said:
No printers have ever worked they are from a different planet.
Yep, its like having an incompetent crack addict on your desk, you give it one job and it screws the paper up, prints faintly, prints with lines or has a random approach to what eventually comes out.deckster said:
Ha. You literally have no idea how much easier it is these days. Until you've spent three days trying to get WordPerfect to print to your Epson dot matrix printer, which is oh-so-nearly the same model as in the built-in driver list but actually not quite, then you just don't know. Printers in the 1980s man, you don't understand, you weren't there....
Exactly! Then try to do a mail merge...TameRacingDriver said:
A modern MFD (printer) is a st load more complex than a dot matrix printer and many more things to go wrong. I should know I have to support the wretched things.
It's not that the dot matrix machines went wrong - although they did. It's the pain of trying to get any printer to work properly under DoS and printing from a DoS version of Word Perfect or any other program. t load more complex than a dot matrix printer and many more things to go wrong. I should know I have to support the wretched things.Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff