The Legacy Years

[raymac46]

Maybe I am just getting old but when it comes to tech hardware I am so far behind the curve that I'll never be current again. That said, most of my stuff seems to be good enough. Some examples:

TV and Cable: I have a dumb as a rock Samsung 37 inch 1080p TV from 2009. It has legacy coax TV and analog audio outputs to a soundbar. My other TV is a standard def that belonged to my son in law back in the 1990s. I stream with an older Roku box that supports 1080p but no better.

Computer: My newest one is a couple of gen GPUs and a single gen CPU behind. I also have a second gen Ryzen laptop. The rest are junkers. But they all do the job at 1080p or less.

Smartphone: Mine is a Samsung about 3 years old-  supports LTE and 4G. Its camera sucks but I can make the odd phone call.

Cameras: Got a 7 year old DSLR and a travel camera from 2016. Both take OK photos and I cannot see how my photography would get better if I upgraded. If I wanted to shoot film I have a 20 year old Nikon SLR system.

Internet: Copper coax and I get about 500 down/16 up. I'd like a bit faster upload but I can live with it. My wifi network is Generation 5 (AC) but a lot of stuff I have has older N adapters. I get a decent signal anywhere in the house. I just checked speeds on my old Thinkpad and I am getting over 215 down.

The major problem with upgrades is that it's more than the cost of just say a TV. I would need to replace all the peripherals at the same time as the new TVs don't have analog connections. Welcome to the Legacy years..

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

10 minutes ago, raymac46 said:

I am so far behind the curve that I'll never be current again.

 

HAHAHA! Same here, but that's fine. I was never a bleeding edge tech person. What I have works fine for me. I don't intend to catch up. Actually, I'm retarding my progress. I'm trying to go back in time to simpler things. Yes, I'm a Luddite.

 

[zlim]

You are still way ahead of me!

 

Three of our four tvs are analog and date from the 1990s. I don't have anything like a Roku box! I have a version 1 chromecast that I rarely use on the one flat screen dumb tv. I'll replace tvs as they do. I use something until it stops working - that is my PA Dutch background showing. 

 

Most of the computers are older than 2013. I'm currently on my newest, a chromebook. I'll use this and my android tablet to surf.

 

We just got new cell phones. My husband's is a mostly dumb flip phone. I turned off wifi because all he wants to do is make calls. He now uses my old Samsung  with no cell service as a camera because it takes great pictures. The phone was $80 five years ago and I really hated having to replace it.  I opted for another Samsung 4G and LTE because I don't want to spend a fortune on a new phone. I use it mainly for a few calls. I do use WAZE when we aren't sure where we are going or there is gridlock and I drive an alternate route. When I need to replace the phone in 5 years, then I'll go to 5G.

[raymac46]

Although I have 50 plus years of experience as a photographer I simply cannot use a smartphone for photos. It is too skinny and shaky for me and I mostly end up with photos of my shoetops - assuming I can figure out whether the front or back lens is taking the photo. It's worth the hassle of packing a camera on any trips I want to take.

[securitybreach]

1 hour ago, raymac46 said:

assuming I can figure out whether the front or back lens is taking the photo. It's worth the hassle of packing a camera on any trips I want to take.

 

Well that part is easy, do you see yourself or what you are pointing at?

[raymac46]

Even if you know which lens is in use, you have to figure out how to switch to the other one. Then I end up starting a video of my shoes instead of taking a still photo.

[securitybreach]

Just now, raymac46 said:

Even if you know which lens is in use, you have to figure out how to switch to the other one. Then I end up starting a video of my shoes instead of taking a still photo.

 

On android, you just click the button highlighted to flip between front and back

 

[raymac46]

Thanks I could probably become proficient with the smartphone camera but unless you have a really good smartphone (I don't) then a dedicated camera runs rings around it. My travel camera has a 30X zoom, optical stabilization, a viewfinder for bright light photography, interchangeable batteries, and I can store 1000s of photos. My DSLR blows everything away but I find it too heavy and bulky to tote around on long trips. Also my DSLR kit looks expensive so it is a security risk. The travel camera looks like a cheap point and shoot although it really isn't.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

If you see yourself on the display while using the camera app, you're not using the proper lens.

[raymac46]

There are times when you just have to use the smartphone camera - to deposit a check using a smartphone app, or to record a copy of Ontario's vaccination certificate which has a QR code on it. I get that.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Hmm... I just recently (within the last two years) got my BIG cathode ray tube televisions in this room and the one in my bedroom replaced with newer flat screen types. They were hand-me-downs from my g-friend and brother. They're OK... took a little getting used to, though.

 

My Samsung smarty-pants phone is a relative new thing to me, also. I had to upgrade from my cool little Motorola flat phone to this Samsung because the provider wasn't allowing backwards compatibility on their new system. Of course, not. They WANT you to have to buy a new phone. It's all a racket, folks.

 

I probably haven't taken more than three pics with that new phone. When I want to take a pic of my kitty or something, I use my Sony digital camera.

 

I've never scanned a QR code. Wouldn't know what to do with it, anyway.

 

Technology... BAH! Send me back to 1965 and I'll be a happy clam! Phone calls that never dropped in mid-word. Good ol' typewriters that didn't have some weird entity living in them called "auto-corrupt". Televisions that went "clunk-clunk-clunk" when you changed channels. And so on...

 

I'm easy to please. My favorite technological feat from the last century is still my all-time favorite: indoor plumbing and flush toilets. Oh, and I really like that new-fangled toilet paper, beats the heck out of those rough ol' Sears catalog pages any day!

[raymac46]

I started my career in food science 53 years ago this Thursday and I would not want to go back to that era - no way, nohow. No calculators or spreadsheets, writing formulas by hand in a notebook, no ability to sort or cost ingredients. Multiply with a slide rule.

If you had to send a memo write it by hand, get the secretary to type it when she had time, correct and retype. Send company mail in a brown envelope. Everything took longer and had more people involved.

I probably could do without social media but I would not want to go back before the PC - at least for my job.

[zlim]

Yes, I took college math courses and taught before calculators! A grad statistics course was a nightmare. Teaching how to interpolate in trig is now a waste of time because of calculators. I spent $100 for my first calculator. A Texas Instrument that had to be plugged in and showed red numbers on the screen.  All it could do was add, subtract, multiply and divide but it sure made figuring out grades a breeze. I too would not want to go back to those days.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I made my way through elementary and high school without the use of an electronic calculator. I still remember trying to figure out molecular formulae in Biology class with a slide rule. The first time I was actually allowed to use an electronic calculator in school was in tech college while I was studying to get my degree in Electronics Engineering.

 

Ah... fun daze!

 

Oh, and the first electronic calculator I ever owned was a square, bulky Unisonic that my mother bought at Kmart for me. It did + - x and /, also %. It cost my mother $60. Amazing!

 

[raymac46]

My stats course had a mainframe computer programming element so that we could at least use FORTRAN to help out with calculations. Later on I programmed in BASIC on Apple and Commodore machines to do some Yates analysis and factorial experiment modelling. Probably we'd use a spreadsheet to do that stuff now.

I remember using 7 place log tables to calculate Fraunhofer lines in 3rd year spectroscopy. Slide rule accuracy wouldn't cut it.