Reason I ask this folks, is because with moving into a new place, I had no TV and no computer they were both packed away, what I did have though was my little CD player and a recently purchased copy of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds and a pair of headphones.
Well, anyone that has ever heard this composition would think that Orson Wells would be proud.
But I pose the question, with all this Audio and Video and new formats and the like.
A lot of people that I've installed Home theater systems for tend to turn the volume up far too loud (at least for my liking anyway).
A guy that I know well wanted something better than a plasma TV, I suggested that he look at getting a projector and shine it on to a wall in his lounge.
His wife didn't like it and at the same time didn't want the wall colour changed to make the picture better.
But, I ask the question, are we getting out of control as far as technology goes?.
I have an old valve radio in my new garage, why must we have the latest and greatest NOW?.
The valve radio gives me the news every hour as it is supposed to do, so why change?.

Mt luddite tendencies come out when it comes to phones. I still have 3 with rotary dial, the rest are still Western Electrics and all of them are corded, even my "car" phone (a moto "bag" hard wired into the car). I don't have a digital flip phone.
I also stopped upgrading operating systems at W98 SE but I still have 4 DOS 6.3 systems running.

I remember my folks making my kid brother go outside in the dark to adjust the satellite dish.
...by hand........in the snow.........barefoot

Yep, technology has made people "hide" from reality with all the home theatre equipment. For years, a second televison set was a luxury item (thought by some as over-indulgance)
Even in this day & age, some places less than 25-30km from here only run their generators 8 hours a day. (0600-0900 & 1600-2100)

Mike you sound like a grumpy old man.

I bet there were people in the past that had the same feeling about those new fancy valve radios, high voltage power lines and those fancy flying machines.

I still like to play accoustic.

Out of control? You should spend a few weeks in Japan, it puts that question into perspective.

Let's see, I'm typing this on my 98SE puter while watching a special on my '78 Super Bowl Steelers on my early 80s Commodore monitor. I still have all my LPs in the other room below the Denon receiver and between the Infinity speakers I bought in '85. I don't use the W95 laptop much these days or the 386 desktop with DOS 4.01 but I know that they shall rise again. Finally, I'm hoping to fix my old C-64 in time for my Sweetie Pie's 5th birthday.
Joe

Greg and Joe, I am with you. My wife and son shamed me into upgrading my cell phone in January. The Motorola Startac that I had prior worked just fine, but it wasn't "cool" enough. I still use it as my backup phone by paying for an extra account. That way, when my new "cool" phone breaks monthly, I can forward my calls to it. I only upgraded to the Startac in 1996 because my prior Motorola analog phone was no longer supported by Verizon. It was the size of a shoe, but it never let me down. I still have that bad-boy, but I can't use it. Perhaps someday, I will sell that thing to a collector on e-bay and retire.

My computer at home runs on Win98SE and will continue to do so until it dies. I will then transfer the programs and data to another machine running Win98. At work, we use NT and I am OK with it because I have to, but I prefer to go with what I know works. My wife and son's computers are constantly plagued with problems using the other Windows versions at home. I can't tell you how many times they ask me if they can use mine because theirs has "problems".

By the way, I have about 300 LP's left from my collection, but nothing to play them on. My kids broke the tone arm on my Marantz turntable years ago. I made the mistake of going to Radio Shack looking for a replacement and the kid behind the counter said.............Well, you know what he said.

EV607797: do you find that you have to charge the StarTac frequently? I had one of these and gave it up because it discharged so quickly. I know several other folks who found the same problem. Did you change to a different battery type?

Ed, I had luck buying a real nice turntable on Ebay for about $30. I am ripping the LPs to MP3 tho. I have given up on little bits of plastic to store my music on. I am going with silicon and oxide.

I still like my DOS based players. If somebody would make a player with a "bell phone" sized key pad I would buy it in the morning. Sometimes smaller is not better

http://www.mcminone.com/search.asp?...t.x=4&btnSubmit.y=8&btnSubmit=GO

Well guys, I'm glad to see that the place where I buy alot of VCR and TV repair parts, still sells turntables. They listed 5 replacement tone arms but none were for Marantz. My turntable is an old Technics SL-Q300. I'm thinking that I need to get a replacement P-mount cartridge for it while I still can.
Joe

I don't think it's a secret around here that I like old equipment, so sign me up for the Luddite Club as well!

There have been wonderful advances in technology. I've just been sorting out some old computer parts, and I have in front of me a 10MB full-height hard disk and a 128KB full-length expansion board from an old AT. It's almost incredible to think that a little more than 20 years later we can cram 200GB+ onto a disk a fraction of the size and at least a thousand times as much RAM onto a tiny strip about 4 inches long, not to mention that 128MB of RAM today costs a fraction of what 128KB cost 20+ years ago.

Yet I can't help feeling that so much of these advances are either being abused, or at best not being made the possible use of. Computers are certainly a prime example.

I'll see somebody using a fancy Windows word processor to write a simple letter. It won't run with anything less than 50MB of disk space and 2MB of RAM. Does it reformat a paragraph any faster than you could do with a 30-year-old version of Wordstar on a CP/M system? Quite often the answer is no. And Wordstar could be run from a single floppy with a mere 64KB of RAM. What's more, it was a darn sight easier to use too.

I don't have objections to making something as complex as it needs to be to do the job, but I don't see the point in introducing unnecessary complexities just for the sake of it.



The system that I maintain for the local taxi company is running DOS 4.01. It was a deliberate decision on my part when I set them up about 6 years ago, along with the custom software that I wrote under Borland's Turbo Pascal 5.



Same here. I have a few Western Electric 500 sets, and GPO 700-series which were the nearest British equivalent of the same era. The newest (POTS) phone I have is a 1980s ITT 2500 TouchTone set.

Some (most) of the modern phones are junk. It's all about supposed style -- Weird shaped buttons arranged in odd ways, horrible handsets that are uncomfortable to use, etc., not to mention the overall poor construction quality.



I'm an avid record collector: LPs, 45s, and 78s. I probably have more turntables around than would be considered normal, including a number of Garrard and Goldring-Lenco units from the 1960s (Garrard is a favorite -- See my post in the nostalgia area). In fact the newest deck I have is a Pioneer unit from the mid-1970s.

As most of my records are 1950s/1960s though, it somehow wouldn't be appropriate to use anything newer.

Tell you what: I'd just about gotten use to younger people having never seen a 78rpm record before. But it still came as something of a shock the other day when I was chatting with a kid about 45s and the response was "What's that?"

Retired_Helper:

No, my Startac will easily last two days on a single charge. I have a stockpile of extra batteries and replacement antennas that I got on e-bay for next to nothing. I sat in line for 45 minutes at Verizon Wireless yesterday waiting to get my 5-month old LG VX9900 replaced. In the meantime, I had my calls forwarded to my Startac and I talked on it the whole time. The VZW rep offered to buy mine from me but I refuse to part with it!

Joe:

My broken tone arm on my turntable is definitely not an MCM replacement part. It's a linear tone arm and will probably never be found. I've just learned to cope.

AllTel still supports my analog phone but I got the impression when I was there setting up a flip phone account for my wife, that they hope I will die.
He pulled up my account and gave me the "Oh you are the one" kinda look.
$15 a month and 20 cents a minute. My bill is always about $23 with all the taxes.

Your analog account will probably go away in Feb 2008, when the carriers have permission to pull the plug on analog cellular service.

The sunset date is Feb 18, 2008, unless it get extended.

The cellular companies want to kill it ASAP, as it takes up channel capacity that can be used more efficiently with digital technologies.

The alarm industry wants to keep it alive for another couple years, citing a shortage of available equipment to replace existing analog components, and a lack of equipment supporting non-GSM systems.

We have the push for all-digital TV over here at the moment. All existing analog broadcasts are to be closed down between 2008 and 2012.

http://www.dtg.org.uk/consumer/switchover_map.html

The quality on some multiplexes is already suffering as the broadcasters are cramming more and more channels on.

"Never mind the quality, just look at the quantity."

This whole boondoggle of digital TV has to to with advertising space, not an increased amount of content. I have cable with about 90 channels. 15 of them are nothing but ads, 15 are news or government a half dozen actually have new content and the rest are a mix of old movies and reruns of old TV shows. All still have 10-20 minutes of ads in every hour. If they put 100 more channels up they will still have about the same amount of new content but they can sell a couple thousand extra minutes of ads each hour.

Personally I hope internet 'content on demand' puts the whole bunch if trouser snakes out of business.

ROFL!

Just been acting my age & viewing some Flatt & Scruggs numbers on YouTube. Linked to some Beverley Hillbillies early episodes, Series #1. All free, no ads and the quality was so awful, it was just like sitting in the 'one 'n sixes' in 'ol flea-pit back home in the 'fifties!
Wonderful: Roll it out!

Alan

I have the perfect hardware for content on demand but the production people sued it and the company that made it out of existance. (Sonic Blue ReplayTV 4000/5000 series)
This is an internet connected DVR that works with your regular TV ... and automatically skips commercials. I can still program it from anywhere over the internet but the content still comes from the cable company or over the air. The software is already there to handle content via the ethernet port tho. I can send it to and from my PCs or another net connected 4000/5000 RTV, anywhere in the world. I just can't get the content providers to send it to me over the net ... on demand.

Oh how my wife and I both miss the Startac... It had reception most everywhere, and held a charge - great phone...

On the OP - I am glad I kept my old tube monitor, as it took weeks of calling around to see if I could get my LCD monitor repaired, and go the same responce from all - "Buy a NEW ONE" Finally, found a replacement screen backlight invertor on the internet, and fixed it myself for $80. But who knows how long that will last.