I see you had a lot of fun with this one. Great work!

I call dibs on the New Coke!

That thing's probably 40 years old by the time this pic takes place.

Good eye! I specifically wanted to make sure it was the correct Coke that replaced the original. And Tab!

Heh...could have been really amazing. "Original" Coke. (Why the name Coke? It's original formula had Cocaine.)

Well to be technical, it contained an extract from the Coca plant (hence the name, Coca Cola), which wasn't technically Cocaine. But it was definitely close enough for the FDA to hand Coke a fine and threaten them with permanent closure of their business if they didn't get rid of it. So they replaced it with a fuck-ton of acid. Not the drug, actual acid. Shit literally has more acid in it than a bottle of concentrated lemon juice. It's so bad, that all Coke drivers are legally required to have HazMat endorsements on their licenses when they haul around the pure syrup. I'm not kidding. My old math teacher used it to clean the grime, dirt and grease of his engine, yet he still drank it.

That explains why the stuff can clean the contacts of a car battery...

Yeah, I literally can't stomach the stuff. Last time I tried, I only got one sip of it before my stomach started hurting. Hopefully you kept your hands away from it when you were cleaning your battery off. x3

What's scary is that TAB is still available.

Can of TAB...

So much caffeine even redbull would have a heart attack.

Huh, last I looked, while a can of TaB has more caffeine than a can of Coca-Cola, I'm pretty sure that it still has less than Mountain Dew...

(Just checked one of the cans in the case of TaB that I have sitting nearby, says it's 45mg per 12oz can. Looking it up online, Coca-Cola is 34mg/can, and Mountain Dew is 54mg/can)

I could've sworn you could still get tab. I swear I've seen it at a gas station the other day.

Wouldn't be surprised. Granted, I'm fairly sure that it's gone out of the general public's circulation, quite some time ago.

IT can still be found at certain supermarkets

I still have a flip phone.. kind of need to because of working construction. From what I've seen, big screens just asking to get broken in that business. Surprised didn't have a Merlin there. I'd have snapped it up right away :)

Flip phones are VERY popular for when a company needs it's employees to have a work phone, like construction, but doesn't need a smartphone. You can get some pretty cheap rates when all you need is 20 phones with voice and texting.

I'm wondering where's the original Motorola brick I literally have a clone of the brick that works on modern technology and looks like the 1980s brick phone. I have a couple of Motorola rugby flip phones that I used up until about a week ago presently using a five-year-old rugby smart phone and don't really have any choice. Those flip phones are way too hard to do texting on. I God damn hate texting!!unfortunately don't have a choice where I sell a lot of stuff and most people basically won't respond to phone calls. They want everything texting and it's a bloody nuisance. I've spent about three years trying to text with a flip phone, and constantly being told off. I'd be still using the original Motorola, which I literally have a box of around here somewheres. They were the very first lip balm that come out before the start tack and were basically The brick part two I used one of those for around 12 years, you could lose it a couple of times women mistook it for being my man parts, which was kind of funny. The little Startac were such a piece of crap. I had a couple at one point I think I sold them all on eBay a few years ago they were just so tiny and ready to break. That's why they didn't catch on in the 90s there were so many small cell phones in the early days that nobody wanted because they one of the big ones, which were much more difficult to lose. I had a chuckle over the big Apple that won't get in your pocket. It's literally a Apple tablet cell phone hybrid I think for a while you could make phone calls with the Apple tablet which in itself made me chuckle. I'm surprised you haven't got pong on their. For the record Simon says is actually still pretty popular and you can sell them on eBay working for a good price, which I'm kicking myself in the ass for I could've had several at secondhand stores a few years ago with the boxes never thought they'd make a comeback. Iacono also surprised there's no see and say on their. Does that little salesgirl count as one of the products I can purchase would definitely avoid everything else on that display and immediately purchase her if that's an option. That little dow is just adorable.I still think they are making new Coke and just calling it diet. Don't get me started with cherry Cove I remember it being good. However the stuff they tried to market a few years ago. Tasted like crap.I happen to have three of those net books that I ended up with reasonably haven't gotten around to doing something with them yet, no I don't mean what your thinking. I put Windows 7 reinstallation on them. Haven't found out if they'll accept updates or not. Three of them had Windows 7 on them. When I got them. Frankly, I'm tempted to put windows XP on the little buggers but everybody keeps telling me they won't run Windows XP something to do with they don't have driver support for Windows XP and yet ironically there are newer laptops from like 2009 that I've put windows XP on and you can get the drivers.

I'm also surprised somebody didn't slide a IBM 80 88 On that display somewheres,. I suppose a Walkman or a Discman should not be on that display however, when was the last time you tried to sell a Discman? I literally make money selling cassette players and portable radios from the 1970s and 80s. I've yet to meet somebody that would be willing to pay money. However, for the majority of Discman portable CD players other than a very few rare exceptions of the ruggedized versions made by Sony. Literally sold a Sony headset sports radio nearly a year ago that somebody could sell at a yard sale for a dollar. I got like $75 for it on eBay At the time.I still remember those Apple phones that you couldn't put in your pocket and to be brutally honest, I like the idea of the nice large screen. I just don't like Apple products in general and getting more and more reason to dislike anything Apple with everything that keeps going on. Let's see somebody buy and consume that 40 year old can of Coke. I definitely want to see that . I'm assuming this picture is supposed to be a few years down the road. Otherwise that can would actually be a little over 30 years old and not 40. I'm 40 years old and I am fully aware that particular product came out between 83 and 87 somewheres in that ballpark. I wonder how we could get Max Headroom onto that display may be a inflatable Max Headroom sex doll.

Oh, lord...trying to type on a 12 key pad to text {INCOMING MESSAGE} [IGNORE] is a torture and a half if you have got {INCOMING MESSAGE} [IGNORE] a lot of thing to {INCOMING MESSAGE} [IGNORE] say and one or more {INCOMING MESSAGE} [IGNORE] people on the other {INCOMING MESSAGE} [IGNORE] side are replying with modern {INCOMING MESSAGE} [IGNORE] *sigh*...devices.

I literally lost a lot of money because of not being able to properly communicate with people where the bloody asses wouldn't simply answer a phone call and wanted things done through texting. I can't stand using a modern, smart phone never liked him from the beginning. I always liked the idea of a phone is strictly a phone and not meant to be anything else any of that other stuff you should be using a laptop or a computer for. Cell phone that I've been using is a old military issue never was able to get a hold of a Motorola military flip phone seen a few construction workers with them. They retail for about 600 back when they were new so not a lot of people have the outside of the government. That flip phone that I was using ironically with a new battery shipping and everything you can get them really cheap on eBay. I ended up with a somewhat expensive ruggedized smart phone that is unlocked because somebody threw it out if that makes any sense. A lot of the crap to do with the smart phone capabilities doesn't work where the software is outdated and I can't get it to update and I can't figure out how to flush the phones memory system so that I Can get rid of all those apps on the phone that I don't use or need. Only a few of them. The phone would let me delete.

Ironically, I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible these days to use a smart phone to do voice texting. What I mean by that is that you speak into your Smart Phone. And some Google super AI translates the spoken words into text. Then the other party texts you back and a synthetic voice translates the text into spoken words.

Why, yes. You now CAN have your Pi and eat it, too!

had that on pc for 15 years!!!!!! its on my phone but onley works at home not wean i go out.voice too txt.most phones haveit

... *blush* I've actually only experienced that talk-to-text software via some $39 tablet. So, it is quite new to me. I mean...right out of Battlestar Galactica. (Would try to show a YT clip. But somehow, Adama making lectures into a mic and having his words appear on a screen a second later...isn't interesting enough for anyone to have stuck onto that service, so it seems.)

Maybe my tech knowledge is about as outdated as that which is being shown on those shelves from above, after all.

Since you are showing off portable games, you need a Merlin in your collection. Looks a bit like a telephone but with leds and touchpad to interact with. Oh don't diss the net books. Those things can run 3d games from the 90s like Quake at frame rates faster than expensive PC setups could back then.

I remember those Merlin things. It did...Tic-Tac-Toe and...emulated a push button phone with 'music tones'. Did it also do Black Jack? (Well some really poor emulation of, at least.)

At least mine was somewhat more 'furry' in theme. https://youtu.be/5C5sQb9dHrs

Ya, was Blackjack 13 instead... probably because of limitations of how high it could show on the button pad. It also had a couple of other games that they called Echo, Mindbender and Magic Square.

I bought one at the flea market. No manual. So it was kind of a guessing game as to what did what. I 'think' there was some minor sentence about each mode, embedded on the back of the thing. No idea what ever happened to it, either.

There is an android app that emulates the Merlin available for free. I personally liked the music function despite the low amount of memory it had. Still you could program a full verse or chorus of most songs.

Surprisingly, music requires very little RAM...in a synthesizer way. I used to own a Commodore 64. People were literally programming in songs that ran 15, 30 and 60 minute lengths.

Well the memory limited the Merlin to only 48 notes including rests. Remember this was 1978 when it came out. Memory was insanely expensive.

Yeah, I used to have a Merlin too, though I didn't know what it was called. I didn't have anything that went with it, though, just the unit itself.

Parker Bros missed an opportunity there. There was no way to add to the existing games. Cartridge tech was around when it came out and they could have sold add on packs.

True, but it was probably wasn't cost effective. If they wanted to give it Atari-like cartridges, they would've had to sell the unit at a much higher price in order to see a big enough return for it to be profitable. True, it was portable, which was a huge thing then (just look at all the fucking Tiger Electronics games), but they would've needed to make a big enough profit to be able to afford the cost of making the cartridges.

Microsoft Zune lmao...no one even has an iPod anymore, what with all your music being able to be accessed on your phone,

every so often I end up with a MP3 player. Been meaning to get them in one place so I can download MP3s and put them on them. I've got an Apple one somewheres. What I don't like is apparently the Apple ones you have to download the stuff from the MP3 Apple Store which I find redundant. All I wanted to do was plug a cable into it and connected to a computer and put what ever I downloaded from the computer into it don't want to go playing around with signing into Apple anything. I really don't like Apple. I remember the original Apple MP3 players, all you had to do was connect the cable to the unit and then to your computer and you could put your MP3s from your computer onto it.

I have a Microsoft Zune HD. It was a great mp3 player!

I had an RCA Lyra that I used until it quite literally fell apart.

Truly a big decision. I legit would want all of them.

I had a Zune. :D It got me through many late nights stocking shelves at my first job.

Ah, these digital music players are such a miracle of technology. I remember cassette players. A whole 60 minutes of music. (Required flipping the cassette, though.) Played through the same 20 (More or less) tunes...until the rubber wheel grew old and tried to massacre the magnetic tape. Now, I've got this little MP3 cube. Been playing it during work for over two years. And just when I think that I've heard everything on it at least twice, something else that I've never heard before will pop up. All jammed up into this flat card that can sit on my thumb nail. What will they think of, next? Perhaps a Superman Crystal that can store my whole movie collection?

only real problem I keep having is I want to find complete collections by certain artists and download everything at once from one place instead of this single song here and aircraft like at the Apple Store. What I want to be able to do is have the complete collection from different artists on those little memory cards. Such as the complete Michael Jackson catalog on one the Beatles on another weird Al Yankovic on another the Chipmunks on another and so forth. Haven't been able to find the complete collection for several. it's really difficult to basically find something where it's listed as that particular group or artist's entire collection in one download. There is about 20 or so artists where I'd like to be able to do that and have each on a little memory card. There was literally a joke about that in the first men in black movie people never thought it would actually be a real piece of technology agent K had the entire Elvis Presley collection on a microchip player.

Now, going after select works can be a real Easter Egg hunt, all right. I remember a time when that was pretty much limited to the local record store. The world has grown easier since then. But...just like with trying to find all your favorite classic TV shows, the hunt isn't as easy as it seems like it should be.

One service to host them all, dang nabbit.

not that long ago it was actually a lot easier to find what I'm looking for in the early days of the Internet, it wouldn't have been a problem. Would simply be a matter of using a search engine. But then things started getting into that whole copyright Crap storm and everything snowballed.

It is possible the golden days of the net are already gone. Now slipping into a world of control and copyright.

there were no golden days of the Internet control and copyright go back to the 1990s. I'm sure there are people here that remember sopy, which wasn't that long ago.that particular piece of legislation changed names several times and they even tried to tack it in with the patriot act. At one point it started out as a bill for copyright protection of material on the Internet and eventually mutated into including Internet terrorism and all sorts of craziness. Basically, it turned into this giant bill of censorship where they were trying to get control of what can and can't be on the Internet and have access to it in the US, claiming if the bill didn't get past the Internet would continue to aid terrorists and other wackos. I'm just not as familiar with how the Internet works these days in order to get around all that copyright nonsense. If you heard some of the regulations. The present copyright holder of Star Trek is trying to put forward you would roll around laughing the present regulation that they are trying to enforce in court that was written down a few years ago Star Trek fan fiction films can't be longer than 15 min. cannot be over eight budget of 100,000 and are not allowed to have any known famous actors involved. I kid you not, that whole storm got started by a group of individuals who raised over $1 million to develop a Star Trek fan film that were building huge replica sets of the deck of the enterprise from the 1960s and they had several actors on board that had contacted them about having roles in the film the guy from Battle Star Galactica as an example, who laid Starbuck was set up to play a Klingon. It's getting to the point where they can't sort out copyright and freedom of creation, the original creator of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry, quite literally wanted the fan community to develop their own material in hopes to it. Further generating the mainstream. Star Trek was white literally the birth of fan fiction and what we know today as quite a few tropes in the science fiction community. Star Trek was a big part of what developed into the sci-fi convention as an example. Back when the Batman movie was made in 89. One of the most famous comic cons at the time in the US was being attended by about 50 individuals same convention today is attended by thousands LOL. The Internet wouldn't be what it is today if it wasn't for those of us old guard, giving the middle finger to the big studios back in the day. I don't know how many of you were around back when Warner Bros., Disney MGM Studios and a few other big boys nearly made the Internet a very different place than it is today. How many people here remember the days when you couldn't have a furry website on the Internet because it would be shut down by Disney or Warner Bros. under copyright infringement. Basically, anything cartoony in nature, especially anything pornographic. They were fighting to keep off of the Internet and have it be deemed illegal. They were literally acting like anything cartoon related was somehow tramping on their copyright. I remember the time when websites like this were well hidden, had no advertising and only people that knew about them were hand-to-hand exchange of information like this little covert government spy operation . I'm betting nobody reading this ever heard of Binary newsgroups. That's how the furry community got started and where it was stock for a long time. Websites like this got shut down white a bit and the ones that started managing to get a foothold and stay in existence had all these rules above. You couldn't post this could talk about that and blob Loblaw. You could even dare mention the words Disney or Warner Bros. on some furry websites LOL. Everybody was so scared of those big corporations. Disney and Warner Bros. at one point were pretty adamant about getting my head on a platter along with a few other people back in the mid-90s and early 2000's. Ironically, the reason they didn't nail handful of us was simply a matter of a few very simple easy things. Basically, they had a hard job getting their hands on somebody who was three or four layers down the chain. The guys like me were the ones supplying the front line and they were only able to get access to people at the very front of the chain. Unfortunately, this also meant a lot of artists gave up doing artwork and disappeared. I suspect that censorship and copyright is only going to get so for on the Internet. I don't think it's going to get nearly as bad as people expect it to get for the simple and plain reason. There's still a lot of young people around that have the same kind of attitude us old guys had back in the day. I am a relevant nowadays. I used to literally be a physical material source where I would supply people with CDs of material where it Being erased from the Internet and there were only a few of us keeping physical data. Can you imagine mailing stuff around today through physical mail in order to work around the kind of stuff that was going on on the Internet back in the 90s there was a couple of websites that literally lost all their material and I was one of only one or two people that had a physical CD-based hard copy of what they had up and made it that much easier for them to simply put another website up elsewhere, there wasn't those dropbox and cloud things back then when we were using 33 .6 and 50 6K modems.
frankly, I didn't think back then I live long enough to see guys like me being obsolete and redundant. Doctors told me I wouldn't live to be 20 so it wasn't like I had much to worry about One way or the other.pretty sure this website. In particular, is the oldest remaining furry site that I know of. She's been around damn near 20 years. If I'm right, and was managing to stay afloat during the whole crap storm that I'm talking about. Still surprises me that most people I meet under the age of 30 have no idea what I'm talking about. And yet everything I'm talking about is all media record. It's as if the 1990s and early 2000's was 100 years ago. Some of that stuff was going on up into 2008, which was only 10 years ago, not 100+ years ago.

Indeed. Anyone remember the Iomega HipZip Digital Audio Player? It used 40 MB mini zip disks. I owned one for a while, but found 40 mb a bit too limiting. I later picked up a Creative Zen Jukebox. Great little player with excellent audio quality aside from how poor a job they did designing the audio jack. It tended to not stay on the motherboard.

I got a relic from that era in storage, too. Some company decided to make a portable CD player that read MP3's off of a burned CD. I've no idea how many months this device was made prior to the popular release of a mainstream, all digital player.

That came out a little bit before the zip disk player. A friend of mine bought one of those first mp3 CD players and I bought another one that came out a little after that. I loved the concept and it was much cheaper than the new HD based portable players.

As a matter of fact, I think that is why I liked the idea, as well. The price gap was amazingly large for it's time.

Simple problem was...at the time...I had next to no idea what an MP3 was all about. I 'think' all the family had was a 286. Certainly no CD ROM drive. Just a 3.5" disk drive. No internet. Well, my aging Commodore had a plug in modem. But, I never understood a thing about dialing into BBS's. And it was hardly like there were a lot of sources about learning this stuff at that time.

To think, the computer I've got now can do all that stuff with relatively little knowledge needed. And it's already moderately outdated. the march of technology is incredible.

Don't forget the Toshiba Libretto that tiny laptop from the late 1990s

I actually wanted one, but wasn't willing to spend the money for one.

Oh geese. I think I have a couple of them. We used to need something at work that was portable and ran Windows 95. We had two such laptops. one had a color screen and one was monochrome. One had a trackball mouse built into the screen bezel, a feature I actually really liked.

Once we no longer needed them I was told I could have them or toss them. I think they are out in the shed.

every so often I find stuff like that makes me a couple dollars here and there on eBay. People looking for that old tech you'd be surprised. Mostly they're looking for Windows 98 and older generations stuff. I've literally got a Windows 95 Dell laptop recently with all the manuals. The original bag floppy disk drive cables and all that stuff and I've got a ruggedized laptop from 96 out of a police car. Presently it's missing the RAM or it would be fully functional.

I still have my 166 MMX laptop from high school. Probably still works. Havn't started it in years.

first computer that I ever bought suddenly was a IBM Aptiva, Patty M 75 back in 95 running Windows 95 if I remember correctly. Last I am aware of the machine still functions and runs has the original monitor and mouse. Been through several keyboards, though. When you pay about 3000 for something you usually hang onto it one way or the other. Third or fourth computer that I've built desktop machine. I still have as well for the simple and plain reason. It still works coupledom that I've built after the Aptiva burned-out after a few years. The 133 I never used much and I sold for about $100 a couple years ago to a guy looking for vintage machines. The two machines after that one. The motherboards went and the next one. Like I said, I put the motherboard. At the time in this really fancy gaming tower and it still works old single core anti-M2 .5 gaming computer and turn the thing on in probably 10 years but it was working when I turned it off so would merely be a matter of blowing the dust out and powering it up. It was the machine I was using before I got into Multicore machines Windows update did something to my multicore desktop a few years ago and I haven't found a shop that understands what I want done in order to fix it. So I've mostly been using laptops since then I've gotten several very high and desktop computers and haven't gotten around to doing something with them. They all function just fine. It's a matter of people having this fascination with getting rid of a computer every two years. What makes it funny is I have four or five gaming computers. When I got them. They were about four years old or less and their dual and quad core in a couple of cases they took out the power supply and left everything else in the machine. In other cases they never took anything out. Those towers along ran you over $100 to$300 graphics cards and between four and eight gave of RAM or more, as a few examples just makes me laugh where we live in a disposable society and the people like me that look crazy have a room full of hardware that would have hackers doing a Jackson Pollock in their pants.

Kinda surprised a digital diary isn't on the list

Trapper Keepter?

I think those were made in the year 1901. And never changed once, regardless of the year. (Half joking. I don't know when those started to be made. (Site says 1978.) But...that design. It remained fairly faithful throughout the years. (Site says some changes have occurred over time.)) (Found some better facts on the subject: http://mentalfloss.com/article/5272.....trapper-keeper )

I LIKE flip phones.

"Scotty Beam Me Up!"

Still use one of those. The clam shell is such a sturdy and protective design. I can't believe that all these 'Smart Phones' are dumb enough to always leave their touch screens exposed. (Just like how 3.5 inch disks were inside very protective shells. So, CD's & DVD's ignored that and allowed their delicate surfaces to remain exposed to any old finger prints and abrasive surfaces.)

actually, there was a version of CDs that were inside of a protective casing that you would put into a drive on your computer that looked like a floppy disk drive. Unfortunately, it was something that didn't catch on. There was also a similar device for car stereos likewise didn't catch on. I've got a couple around here somewheres that were these plastic cases that look like a big floppy disk and your CDs went inside of them they were some of the first CD drives for computers that Utilized themsurprisingly, it was something people were not interested in you think it would've caught on like hot cakes that your CD with the label on one side never had to come out of its plastic case just merely put case in all in whatever you're using it on trust me, I haven't gotten rid of my flip phone I'm only using the smart phone because I don't have any choice. I don't expect it to survive. Ironically, it's about five or six years old and looks like brand-new. But I think the previous person had it in one of those auger box things and I can't get one to match it..

Are you thinking of DVD-RAM disks? I used those a bunch years ago. Wore out several drives. Still have some disks in the basement. I know that it is still used by some 911 equipment to record calls.

the way they work is the CD drive locked like a large floppy disk drive. The CDs are inside of a plastic case similar to a music CD case, but case in all goes right into the drive and a panel opens up once it's in the drive, allowing the drive access to the disk were talking about something that was the very earliest of technology for CD and computer. They tried to do it as a music format and it didn't catch on, it was used in Alpine and a few other car stereos where you would take your CDs and put them inside these plastic cases and then put the cases inside the cars CD unit in the trunk. For whatever reason, the concept never caught on the CD drive on a computer had no drawer that came out instead. The CDs were in this plastic case that went in the drawer. This was years before DVD anything. It made the discs look like a really big floppy.

That sounds kind of like the idea I had a great number of years ago. The trick was selling the unique CD loader side that worked with the case. As you could encase any CD or DVD inside this hard case and bypass the industry's need to standardize.

Hardly matters, now. The world is on the brink of going all digital and physical discs are about to be pushed into the history books like an old VHS cassette. Why, I envision a world of tomorrow that embraces some version of Augmented Reality. If it happens, it can out date many things. Like televisions. Computer monitors. Keyboards. Mouse interface. Smart Phones/flip phones. Stereo systems. CD's/Blu-Rays/DVD's. Home furnishings. (Maybe) clothes. Computers. (As we know them. They'll become tiny net portal machines that hide away.) Movie theaters. Many more things. And China can pump them out at insanely low prices. Of course, their hidden away CPU's won't have physical drives or much of anything. It will all access remote servers that host all entertainment and computing functions.

say what you like but it's getting to the point. I don't think things are going to change much more. I've seen a lack of any real change in the last few years and a lot of technological fields. Everything becoming digital instead of physical is one thing that bothers me. I never did like the concept of nothing being physical. When it came to media. You take physical media out of the equation and you run into a whole new problem. Think about it for a minute. If there's nothing physical. It makes it easier for loss of history or alteration of written history. You don't have to go around burning books. If you want to change history If there's no books and you just go on the Internet and change what you don't like, and there's nothing physical to prove it was ever any different. Ironically, what I'm talking about was a sub plot of a small little Canadian science fiction series. Group of people travel back in time from this really messed up future where physical media was illegal to possess. You couldn't have things like books, DVDs or anything of the sort everything was all available online and anything physical was illegal contraband. It was how the controlling bodies of the world decided what people need to know didn't need to know and what parts of history should be done away with, because they were important to the global message. None of this is really my problem in the grand scheme of things it's highly unlikely I'll be a live another 10 years. Frankly, I Artie lived 20 years past my expiry date.

That's another very good point about a society that goes all digital. It does become way too easy to alter information. (Well, if this new crystal drive tech works the way I think that I'm reading it, what gets written into it...might not unwrite.) Though, my points were that if this technology that reads it were to suddenly stop functioning, we'd suddenly lose access to all Human sums of information, should books wind up being hard to come by. After all, I had visited a library on a college, many years ago. Only the top floor had any dedication to books. Inside a fire proof vault. Rather small room. So, I know not what got chosen for storage in there. Every other floor was re-purposed towards something else. Not to mention that in an all digital world, the governing of what information is available becomes fully controllable by those with authority to restrict or meter. Having everything within reach of a menu is convenient. But, the background cons are far too many.

personally, I have a couple of I suppose the word is, disorders, one of which makes books almost useless to me.
At the same time. I've literally seen the death of libraries. Most libraries are closing down, and a lot of printed media is slowly disappearing. You'd be surprised how hard it is to get a physical manual for newer vehicles As an example. In places like the US most libraries have closed and a lot of books have been gotten rid of. Most of what's disappearing admittedly is 1950s and forwards when it comes to printed media. I just keep thinking of things like Fahrenheit 451 , 1984 the novels. Yes, I am familiar with those two works. I can read to some extent. Most of what I'm familiar with is stuff that was done for the blind. At some point somebody's going to figure out how to make a machine where you basically open up a drawer sticker book in the drawer and now the machine has a copy of all the information and can read it to you or you can tell it what page to go to and so forth. I know they presently have technology where it can scan and read page by page. But I figure at some point they're going to work it out so it can do the whole book at one shot without having to do each page individually. Frankly, I'm more interested in getting my hands on one of those Star Trek like translators. The technology is getting there. It's just in its infancy right now. It works through apps on cell phones and isn't very reliable where somebody can speak into your phone and it can be then translated into your respective language. I know they were literally advertising something about a year ago that looked like a Walkman where you plug the headphone into your year and a person speaks Inuit and it translates what they are saying into your language and it had the option of a speaker on it where you could speak into it and it would translate to their language can't member the name of the damn thing or I would've tried to get one just are member hearing about it on YouTube. That's one of the big reasons that I don't travel to someplace like Japan or the Philippines. There's a couple countries where I could probably spend a few months and live quite well, even with crappy income that I have but unfortunately I can't speak the local language China and areas in the Philippines as an example are literally where poor British and Canadian people go to retire because our respective current see is worth a small fortune. You'd be surprised. As an example, what would be considered a very nice hotel and were talking about something that would cost you 100 or more per day will run you between 15 and up. There were places I seen on YouTube that would run you about 200 today. Here and they were less than $30 a day. Don't get me started with the kind of places you could rent and the rent per month was disturbingly cheap only real problem is there's not a lot of local food that I can physically eat which would probably be a problem.
It makes me chuckle to think about what will be considered retro technology that are things that I grew up around. I was a little surprised your picture didn't include a VCR or a slide projector or a videogame watch as a few examples or one of the more obscure or forgotten videogame consoles such as the PC engine, TurboGrafx 16, Sega Saturn as a few examples. I'm also surprised there wasn't a item on the shelf white literally labeled a book. Or possibly something like physical printed copy of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. There are literally people who consider physical models to be a retro novelty. I started finding out about that year or so back and I wasn't sure whether to be concerned or surprised. I'm sure some people here remember that scene in one of the Star Trek movies where somebody pass the captain what looked like a encyclopedia and it was the new digital captains log recorder where you open the front of the book up and inside was a electronic computer recording unit. It's kind of funny to think about that kind of thing is literally already obsolete and it would be something much smaller. Remember, inspector gadget, the little girl Penny had a textbook with a computer inside. There's literally been several science fiction properties such as films where a character would carry around what looked like a notepad or book and when you opened it up. It was a computerized device of some sort. And that kind of thing is already obsolete and never even got to be created LOL. I suppose I really shouldn't say that I've seen Apple iPad's with a enclosure designed to look like a old hardcover book.

Sometimes, science fiction can see things far into the future. Like one little science fiction nugget I ran across. The scene was old world Washington, D.C. The character was a detective, investigating a crime scene. The story was very clear with certain details. He was riding in the back of a carriage, traveling down a main street. The story made sure that the carriage was 'horseless'. Also, it made very sure to state he was in the back seat. But, there was no driver. The detective had a few questions that needed facts to be checked. The story was once again very clear about how he went about asking his questions. He typed it onto his mobile typewriter. The story was especially clear about how his typed words were wirelessly transmitted to a remote college. And how the replies to his inquiries were automatically being typed back onto his typewriter in a matter of seconds. Far too few seconds for a physical person to receive the message, do a physical search and start typing them back. I forget what era the story quoted it's author from. Believe it was from the eighteen hundreds. So...someone from 18xx envisioned a kind of device that could send and receive data, and it interacted with a remote server machine that held all this information. Basically, the internet...well over a hundred years beforehand. Of course, I'm also impressed with H.G. Wells for having predicted the coming of the flat screen TV. ( https://youtu.be/atwfWEKz00U?t=4336 )

On a subsequent note about libraries, my local one hasn't seen any issues with staying open. Though, when I did need to check out several books for a college course from it, I got to see that they were also running with the classic 'check out index card' system. Basically a card with a set of printed dates on a grid design. These books had been checked out so few times, it was possible to see when the books arrived. In fact, the most happening section of the library was the rag tag collection of computers that gave free internet.

Ah, yes. I'm aware of Babblefish. (Forenamed for the translator fish from HItchhikers.) It's a decent beginning towards the dreamed translator from Star Trek. However, the memes about it are all so true. Run a translation from language x to language y and back again. After a few tries, the output can become frightening. Or hilarious. Or frighteningly hilarious. It's still best to have a knowledgeable Human that learned both languages do the task. But, in a pinch, this AI can do the job. (Just don't sue if it translates wrong and starts a war.) And having a portable version is indeed possible. Just don't be shocked when it tells your non-English speaking friend that your hovercraft is full of eels.

I generally try not to be surprised anymore with how many little Oddities from science fiction turn up at some point. It's at the same time, the funny ones that don't. How much science fiction bot we have human robots By the 1980s and colonies on other Planets. I still love that flying cars bit and in that particular case it's not a matter of technology but actually government interference. Admittedly, we technically have flying cops in a couple of Third World countries but that's a pretty sketchy technical. Ironically, the matter of conveyance. They're using. When it comes to those airborne police vehicles is laughable given what they could actually be using versus what they're using. It's still surprising hovercraft technology never has been really used more, but I'm guessing it's to do with not being able to reliably stop in a short distance, which is the same reason for there not being flying cars, so to speak, technologies been around for nearly 30 years to make vehicles with of wheels that don't travel more than a few feet off the ground. But I suspect the reason the technologies never been put into practice is the ability to stop short.

Still wish they were better along with translation technology. I'm actually surprised audio books are only now starting to really become a thing given how long the technology has been around. Been hearing about libraries disappearing in places like the US for over 10 years. At one point I forget how many American libraries closed down and there was a big thing about it.

The thing about the world is that there are a select few people throughout time that have made major things happen. Most of us are merely along for the ride. A few names whom can see great things happening. A few others that have the genius to make great strides in useful technology. And who knows how many more that have had the gift for either, but never quite got the right events going in their favor to ever do anything with it. If the right people met under the right conditions, we might have actually had those Human robots by 1980 and alien planet communities. Right now, this Elon Musk fellow is really proving to have had the right cards dealt to start pulling off some serious world propelling notions. If he gets that Mars colony that he's pushing for to work, you'd better believe that others will follow suit and try pushing further out. Once someone has the gull to make a dream come true, the world has a trend of advancing forward.

A few months back, I saw some YouTube video that was proposing a new flying car. Used that quad-drone flight technique. Computer controlled. Looked like it was auto pilot and GPS interface controlled. Not sure I'd want to ride in one, should the winds be strong or an engine had any kind of failures happen. And yet...the world already has flying cars. A real one was seen in a Bond film. Only the idea never really 'took off' with the public. So it became another minor mark in technological history. Like the self parallel parking cars from the 1940's that could also auto dim the headlights when an approaching car was detected. (No computers needed.)

Now that I think about it, it was around ten years ago when the local library (of that time. I've since moved.) began offering books on audio. But not on cassettes or CD's. But dedicated MP3 player units. I thought that was absolutely amazing that such advanced tech could be borrowed for a short while, for free. it made for some great listening material while taking the long drive to a convention. A couple years ago, I tried that with an automated voice that was reading my novel. Even before the first hour was up, I had to switch to the music mix. Just something about the computer voice that droned on and on got tiresome to listen to. It will do for 1 minute automation conversations over the phone and such. But the mind soon wants to stop listening to it, altogether.

I'm going to tell you something and you'll probably laugh flying cars are not allowed several world governments, and this is white documented have crushed manufacturers who attempted to provide flying automobiles to the public. It's not the stuff of science fiction. First official attempt at a public access flying car was a inventor in the US in the 1980s who built and piloted to prototype vehicles. One looked like the Batmobile the other one looked like a UFO and consisted of almost no computer technology. He was basically squeezed out by the government through various safety concerns and I have Ira, member correctly was banned from further flight of either prototype. Presently he is one of the leading manufacturers of drones, he was one of the pioneers of drones technology that UFO style car. He developed as a drone in the very early days and now that drone is used for all sorts of things such as bridge maintenance. One of the uses for the drone is inspection of bridges and other structures. The guys got a big company and was in a documentary discussing why there are no flying cars. If you poke around YouTube. There's several documentaries talking about various governments stopping people from creating flying vehicles for the public. There was literally a prototype about two years ago that looked like a ATV combined with a drone. They had a bunch of bungee cords attached to the four rotor areas with a guy trying to figure out how to control the thing similar to the way you would a motorbike. They had built several functioning full-size units operated by drivers and once again that particular economy just vanished. At some point and was never mentioned again furthest they got. I do believe was a drone Toy that you could get on eBay which had a 12 inch action figure riding on it. Mumbai is working on a pilot program where police officers are using flying scooters similar to a segue. I kid you not, there's videos on YouTube. The damn things look about as safe as you can imagine large open decapitating helicopter blades with a tripod in the middle for the pilot to stand on. Basically for large helicopter like blades with no guards around them only country they'd probably get away with it is Mumbai. In a nutshell. You better hope you can run faster than the damn thing. The cop is riding. Or else you've got a nice 4 foot Off the ground lender chasing you down the street. Apparently there are police are liable for civilian injuries due to their law enforcement equipment. Just one more reason not to go vacationing in Mumbai
for the record that Elon musk guy is a little behind. Have you ever heard of Richard Branson, creator of virgin industries? He spent years working on prototype spacecraft and was planning to put passenger flights in space. He literally had a crap load of celebrities who plopped down large amounts of money to be the first people with their butts in the seat of the first flight. last I recallTom Hanks and Justin Bieber were two of the celebrities on board. As I understand it, a test flight. However, completely screwed the entire project. I could be mistaken but last I remember one of the test flight vehicles blew up on the launchpad or crashed after takeoff and basically he got shut down by the American government. After that, as I understand it, it was the last test before loading one of the ships up with celebrities and going into orbit. Forget if it was a full-size version of the ship or a prototype smaller version that malfunction on the launchpad. This was I think about two years back. It's one of those things that barely seem to make a blip in the news media you could probably find something about it on YouTube. People were running their yaps about you they were got up with Justin Bieber in space and he's not coming back. Little jokes like that. Branson had been about 20 years invested in the project. Like I said last I heard Americans shot him down from any further testing, claiming it was unsafe. If I were a member correctly, he wasn't even doing anything with NASA. Everything he was doing was with his own locations, and so forth completely outside of American government. I think the only reason mosque hasn't been stomped out yet is because he's technically working with NASA and the American government Or he would've been probably shut down long ago. Most countries of the world have been very vehement about trying to control manned space flight to keep it away from the public and keep it government regulated. I don't know why but it seems to be a reoccurring thing.

Something I'm going to mention will have people saying my tinfoil hat is getting loose! Back when I was in high school there was a government program. This is not science fiction. It was on the Canadian media several times! A prototype bus was billed and being operated on the island of Newfoundland. The government spent several million dollars building the bus, which produced no carbon emissions and ran on seawater. I'm not making this up, the bus had some sort of a turbine engine system that ran on seawater. I forget what kind of reactor. It had that was powered by ocean water. They built a second larger prototype bus.they built and had to and use and were planning to build a third one. Sometime after 98 the entire program just never got mentioned again, and people forgot about it. It was on the local news several times back when I was in high school. Everybody was talking about. If they could do it with bosses. Why couldn't they do it with cars. I frankly don't know how the hell the buses ran on seawater. It's not like it was some crackpot out of his red. This was literally a government experiment and they had built to fully functional prototypes that carry passengers around the island. Were not talking about some funky experimental engine that never got out of the laboratory or some urban myth From 1960s.
it just surprises me. It's one of those sayings that took place and nobody remembers it other than a few of us. It was widely talked about enough in the media, and just as quickly vanished from anybody's attention. During the Reagan Administration. They designed several gas substitutes, any of which would run a standard gasoline engine. The same way fossil fuel, gasoline does. They had like I said several working formulas and the entire project was suddenly abandoned and shut down. They claimed the end result was each chemical formulae was not cost effective. I think the stuff cost about five or six dollars a gallon at the time and they were interested in continuing to try and further experiment with the process. How much are we paying now a gallon for gas. This was back in 1988 and they said nobody would ever pay that much for a gallon of gas, so the entire project was scrapped. One of the formulas last I were member was diesel that was made from plants that grow in the swamp. Other couple of gas substitutes were artificial chemicals that made a substance close enough to gasoline that regular gas engines would run on it. This was back in the 1980s. Think what they could have done if the project had continued? Everybody seems to be focused on damn electric pieces of junk you don't hear anybody trying to create a artificial gasoline anymore.
I know a lot of this is probably off topic just whenever people talk about forgotten technology. It reminds me of this kind of stuff. There's been so many advances that were just immediately forgotten about like they never happened.

Actually, it is quite understandable about governments being quite wary about the public having flying vehicles. After all, people have enough issues just controlling vehicles using the two dimensions. Imagine the potential disasters that could happen when everyone is dealing with that third dimension? We weren't really meant to fly, after all. Not only that. But imagine the issues of people on a terrorist kind of mission being able to freely fly into anything they wanted to. It's probably a good thing that one has to have a license to fly a November class airplane. One that has to file flight plans and is expected to have a wide bubble within which to fly. If any civilian could just take off from work, those skies would become insanely crowded and air traffic control would probably become nearly insane. After all, Humans weren't given the gift of birds whom can fly an inch from each other and make insane turns on a dime in the seemingly impossible numbers that could reach a population of thousands. If anything seems likely to ever occur majorly on a flying car for the masses, it would probably require complex computers to be in control of it all and for all vehicles to fly in virtual air roads. (Think how Back to the Future Part II dreamed it might work. With the air buoys and freeway like traffic flow.)

Granted, I kind of see a potential future where the job market is radically changed. One that will make the classic rush hour and all the commute time to traditional jobs a thing of the past. Which will greatly lighten up the demands of modern roadways. And will also reduce the need for multiple cars per family. A potential future where wage earning might become more virtual. Or potentially be restructured, entirely. One where shopping becomes more virtual and goods get delivered to your front door over actually going to a brick and mortal building for most anything. One where kids get schooled on home networks instead of physical schools. One where alternatives to congested freeways and major streets is far less likely to happen, once fewer people have need for traveling great distances for the day-to-day things. It's not certain to happen. Nobody can truly predict how the future will play out. But, this vision could be one of many things that might happen.

As for the suspicious halting of engines that run on sea water and all that...kind of reminds me about the dark, dirty politics that revolve around the oil industry. They've had such a powerful hold on our modern world for all so many years. And they will do darn near anything to insure that some newer technology that can bypass their global empire doesn't come along into the limelight of the general public's perspective. At least, until they know that their oil supply is practically exhausted. After all, I have heard a thing or two about some supposed top secret vaults. Suppose to contain things like a formula that predicts down to the day when Earth runs dry of it's oil supply. And a carburetor that mixes oil and water. Not to mention a super economy engine that can convert one gallon of gas into a hundred-plus miles of travel distance. Yea...look for that one to just emerge, shortly before the world either gets fearful about low oil supplies or a number of nations start to outright ban fuel usage. (I recently heard that Europe is planning a ban in a few years.)

In front of me, there is this clock. Runs on pure tap water. Bought it and filled it up, several years ago. Darn thing has never needed a refill and just keeps on running. And, when I was a kid, I had this toy car. Ran on pure air. Imagine a full sized version of that, holding compressed air and running on city streets. If the compression to weight ratio could be balanced, it could probably run quite a few miles per tank and practically every gas station (in America...not sure about the world.) is already equipped to refill such a car. (Air pumps for tires. Things usually range from free to one dollar per use. I guess in an emergency, one could refill such a car with a manual tire pump. Or...electric pump on a roof mounted solar cell.)

toy car you're talking about were called air hogs. They only lasted a short time on the toy market. I think the problem is to do with a combination of lack of torque and how big a unit would be required to operate a full-sized automobile. Today's electric cars. Believe it or not are based on a prototype that a guy built during the 1970s oil crisis. His Injun is the plat form. They used for today's electric cars guy got screwed over in the 1970s I forget which automotive manufacture eve built the engine for and got shot down. He used this massive land yacht of a carI forget how long he had it running on a charge on the test track. Ironically, it's what took so long to get electric cars out to the public. People didn't become aware of his research and is prototype till a few years back it was studying his designs that is what led to today's public electric cars. Kind of funny when you think about that. I think the guy still had the original car with the engine in it in his Possession when one of the manufacturers came to see him. Ira member there being a program about it. Henry Ford. As I understand it also built a electric car during the days of the model T and model a and it was considered a inefficient engine idea.
I don't know if we'll ever see air compression powered cars because of all the technical problems that come with that type of system to do with wear and tear maintenance and so on. Artificial created loyal is nothing new. They just deliberately charge so much for it that it's considered not economical to use it to make gasoline. They had artificial oil on the market over 10 years now. You can buy synthetic oil at pretty much any automotive plays around the time normal oil supplies run out is when the price will suddenly go down for synthetic oil and it'll most likely be what's been used to run conventional gas engines synthetic oil can be used to make gasoline but they claim the process is too expensive. As for flying cars. Here's a little something on that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTfqk6sFXU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dk-fiyJdvE
funny when it's a government project, it doesn't get shot down. There's been several flying car prototypes that only flew a few feet off of the ground and didn't require a pilot's license or flightplan or anything like that. They worked on the same infrastructure as a regular automobile was the whole idea. I think the problem that they keep running into oh is stopping distance. The one thing I don't think they've figured out is how to get one of those Flying cars to stop the same way a regular car stops.

what made me laugh is how unsafe. These police operated ones are especially compared to that off-road flying multi-terrain vehicle that could fly about 9 feet in the air that was being built a few years ago and due for public release. When it got shut down. They literally had several working prototypes operated by human beings. When the project closedown and they were much more suitable than the ones in those two YouTube videos. They operated similar to a motorcycle or ATV and you could ride them over water or pretty much anything from that matter. They were based on the drone concept of a rider being in the middle of the drone. They had guards over the blades and so forth. These police vehicles are open blade design and fly up to 50 feet in the air which is where you're getting into problems.
Hate to be the one to tell you but a drone can be modified and used to take out an aircraft for whatever reason you don't see one of these terrorist organizations rigging up drones with plastic explosives and launching them at aircraft. In fact, a modified drone can be used to assassinate a human being with about five times more accuracy than a sniper's bullet. I literally have a toy drone here that somebody bought somewheres. It was in a box of toys somebody threw out the drone is about the size of a Canadian one dollar coin. A drone about twice that size with a small charge of plastic explosives is completely capable of removing a pretty decent chunk of human head at about one what a way or closer to the target were not talking about something that would take 10 years to develop were talking about something some guy goes into Toys "R" Us and buys and then modifies. Technology is right there and even the military doesn't want to put their foot in that beartrap just yet.

Kind of future you're describing where everything is done from home is actually something I've kind of been concerned about taking place within the next hundred years technology, changing to the point where people almost never actually bother leaving their homes because they don't need to get something that's bothered me for a long time and is quite likely a possibility.

I have a zune XD Still use it!

You and Star Lord.

It's all about the Simon. And it probably still works!

but is it tab clear?

what bout the Timex Sinclear http://www.vicgeorge419.net/timex1.gif

I once had one of those. Very interesting computer. That 'keyboard' was uber cheap. But, I did love the unique Basic programming approach they used. Giving each key a whole command word. Really eased off the potential for coding errors and sped up the programming process. The former owner of mine had invested in a housing upgrade and RAM expansion, vastly improving the machine.

Believe it or not, Simon is SO RETRO, it can literally be bought brand new in stores, RIGHT NOW! (Whoa!)

A wind up laptop? Is that one of those computers for Africa? (Or any other rural location before solar cells were common enough?)

I STILL use a 2007 netbook. Truly portable and has a built in clam shell that protects everything. Plus a decent sized 'real' keyboard. I've retired it from net use. But, it still works great for my word processing needs. (I'd still use a 286 suitcase. But, the technology gap has grown too big. Win 10 won't read those 3.5 inch disks. And my net provider has long lost the manual on working with 300 BAUD modems. Found a video on the thing, just in case anyone is curious. https://youtu.be/DJWyaJ086Ho )

And...to pull a Homer...did you order that Tab via that Netbook's Tab key? (Runs before a crowd of boo'erns erupts.)

I liked netbooks, since I do a lot of writing and they were cheap and easy to carry, yet had decent power. Everybody else decided they wanted either a true laptop or a tablet, though, so the form factor died out. Netbooks seem to have come about because of the XOPC (originally "$100 Laptop") project.

If you're using an AR headset to look at this old tech, you might well be able to emulate it too, especially the older stuff! Just, uh, if you're buying the tech from one of those transformation-themed shops, make sure you know which kind of AR it is.

If the progress of AR is handled correctly, it could replace so many electronic devices at a fraction of the cost that stores like Best Buy could go the way of Circuit City with relatively little warning. After all, if one can e-bay a $19.99 head set that is like a pair of reading glasses, but get a 200" inch TV virtually in their own living room, who is going to want those $599 super sized flat screens, anymore? You know...one that only does 70".

Years ago a buddy of mine commented he had lost the user manual on his old scientific calculator. I told him to look on "Old tech we used to think was cool dot com". His daughter asked if that was real. I started to say no, but then said maybe. She looked and while not under that actual domain, she did find that kind of site.

I still have my StarTec. And it works, though one of the LCD display segments has failed and I'm not sure how great the battery would be after this long. But it shows it has a signal, so it's still usable!

And I have a Dell Mini 9 netbook. I tricked it out with extra RAM and a 64 GB SSD, and it's got Lubuntu so the OS is actually up to date! And I use it for work fairly often, too.

here in Canada. They completely blocked all analog signals when it comes to cell phones. Anything that doesn't take a Sim card will not work in Canada when it comes to cell phones. You can't get any signal at all on older cell phones which is why people like me are not still using them. Was quite a fuss a few years ago government lost millions area. They had to upgrade all their equipment and weren't planning to you'd be surprised how many emergency service departments were still using those old Motorola phones and had no choice but to switch to new equipment Canada wide when they not only stopped here your service, but completely dismantle the entire network, which they actually weren't supposed to do, but the government couldn't do anything about it. It was supposed to merely be you could connect on lash your phone had digital access, but they completely shut down the analog network altogether. A few years after that they screwed everybody over who didn't have a digital cell phone that takes a little Sim card. There's been rumblings that they're going to shut down the entire network for cell phones that don't take a microbe card for phone service started hearing about that a few weeks ago from Alliant employees. That were warning customers using older phones that take the full-size memory cards that Alliant may be discontinuing service and they have to buy a new phone. If that happens. I literally am using a smart phone that uses that size Sim card and the phone is only about five years old so I don't see what they're trying to pull even a lot of new cell phones that I'm aware of still don't use the smaller size cards. I'm not talking about a memory card I'm talking about the little plastic card that goes in your phone to identify what Keary or you're using. If anybody's wondering the laptop. I'm literally using should be in that display in your picture. It's one those bizarre pieces of technology. That's not supposed to exist and I have one. It's a ruggedized Panasonic laptop when you actually work out the age of it is when things start to get weird. See it's a touchscreen laptop and tablet combination unit that came out several years before tablets and touchscreens were actually Public access and it's a two core unit. The two cores combined are actually not as big as a single core computer from the time LOL. Next weird thing is, it had four gig of RAM at a time that most machines had about 500 mag. I just don't know what they were trying to prove making it a two for computer back when most computers only had one core and yet the two cores are so tiny. Each processor is a 1.5 back when most single core computers were around 2.5 and three point something. For the record yes it's Wi-Fi compatible. Fairly certain it won't run anything higher than windows XP

"I call Dibs on the Wind-up Laptop!!" LOL!!

all this talk about the Microsoft Zune so I got curious and went on eBay. I would like to inform everyone*Lord is not the only person using one of these. In fact they are God damn insane expensive! I can literally buy a equivalent Apple device for about half the price people are getting for one of these Microsoft Zuneunits there's bloody broken ones on eBay and they're charging $50 American the way everybody was talking I figured you could get a brand-new one for about $20. There's used ones as expensive as $100. Are they made out of gold or something?I was a little curious where people were saying there are 30 and 40 gigabyte. The units that I keep getting that people throw of largest one. I got I think is 3 GB, which is a little knockoff of a Apple shuffle . I know I've got a 10 or 20 GB Apple around here somewheres with the cracks green thing works just fine, but you can't load anything onto it from your computer. You've got a get everything from the Apple Store, which I don't like. I'm assuming these little Microsoft units are like a hard drive on your computer where you can put whatever MP3 you want directly from your computer onto it without having to go to some download store.

Ha ha ha, that pic is awesome
The Simon is just the cherry on top...................................

my laptop is from 2007...

=^.,.^=

one of the machines I use is an Acer laptop. Battery was no more good hard drive was shot keyboard was broken. They took a hammer to part of the bottom of it and left it out in somebody's yard. It's about a 2007 or 2008 was a home theater laptop. I took a handful of the plastic pieces off of another one and replace the broken pieces of the bottom and put a hard drive in it out of a wrecked laptop put Windows XP in it, and use a USB keyboard when I need one. I haven't connected to the television and use it for mostly playing downloadable files off the Internet. Few times I've used the DVD player on it. Bear in mind the thing should not even work. I recently got one roughly the same age that is really strange possibly from England or something and that machine looks like it just came out of the box was a more expensive model again with a larger screen and so forth. Haven't had the money to have somebody to program it properly might have to do it myself. Like I did the other one. I can't really figure out Windows 7 couple machines I've had Windows 7 put in. Nobody seems to be able to get the updates to work. So I still use windows XP. I've got a series of late 90s to early 2000 Dell laptops single core all the work just fine running windows XP for doing things like running Wi-Fi at a McDonald's and checking your e-mail, that kind of thing generally I use them for doing stuff you wouldn't use a better computer for, such as running torrents. At some point, I've got a get around to dealing with a bunch of desktop computers. I have some extremely expensive desktop computers. I think the newest one is 2009 despite their age, they are all really large as in two and four core machines. Several him are gaming machines with large graphics card 3.5 and higher processor for an eight gig of RAM that kind of thing. All of them have to be reprogrammed . Just been in the habit that I use laptops. Alas couple years and haven't gotten around to doing the desktops. There's nothing wrong with one from 2007 as long as the machine has Wi-Fi and runs windows XP or higher it'll do most anything on the Internet. Mostly, it just depends on what size processor that limits some things like YouTube.

I *so* wanted one of those wind-up laptops when they were new. What stopped me was the "Buy two, get one" deal that they were offering.

And I knew a guy who had a Zune. We made fun of him.

It's an antique shop!

all that's missing is somebody who looks like Marty McFly walking in the front door.I'm afraid I might live long enough to walk into an antique store and see 1980s and 90s computer equipment. And things like CDs Sega Genesis video games care Bears, your typical 1980s tropes Rubiks cube as another example. Rubiks cube would probably be in a special glass protective case. I wonder what people would think if they seen a Rubiks spear and yes, there was such a thing. Besides the Rubiks cube. There was a spear and a peer amid. Trying to not think about a world where you walk into an antique store and there's a couple of rare thomes called VHS tapes and a special display set aside for a functioning Walkman and cassette. Another display for a pair of Nike Air Jordan sneakers.

We have such stores here in the US. They're called Thrift Stores. So, I guess that stuff isn't quite antique enough, just yet. Which also means the prices aren't insanely inflated. In fact, they can hardly give away VHS cassettes from Disney and most any other company. Even at $1, the things don't really move. And the last time I went into an arcade, I walked out with a Rubik's imitation Cube as a prize. In fact, work is currently selling a recreation of those classic handheld sports games. It's a bit too retro for me, though. I mean...a dozen LED's beneath a plastic screen representation of a football or a basketball environment is just too much '70s.

I know some things like the original Rubik's cube people on eBay get good money for them and they're making reproductions. VHS is another funny little nugget. There are some VHS tapes that are sought after and very expensive due to they are movies that are very difficult to find a physical copy of. You remember Disney's song of the South?
Only way to get an original Undistorted physical copy is on laser disk, Disney has never released a original release of it on VHS or DVD complete. There are a whole host of what are considered lost movies that have never been released on VHS or in some cases were never released on public VHS release and were only available for rent VHS release videos.
Steel and lace is one of the examples of this that movie is extremely difficult to find a digital copy of on the Internet and finding a copy on physical VHS media from the 1980s is almost impossible. I have a small collection of VHS tapes that are stuff which was never made available on DVD or public release VHS. They were rental back in the day when they were released were over $150 apiece and only available to rental outlets. There's quite a few movies you just can't find on the Internet where nobody's uploaded them from VHS to digital format. About half of the 1970s and 80s Apocalypse films fall into this category. And there's a whole culture of people out there trying to find obscure or horror movies that were only released on VHS in limited quantities.
I'm going to mention something here. People will say no no no it doesn't exist. I've seen portions of it to know it exists.
There was a live action G.I. Joe film done sometime in the 1980s that wasn't licensed officially and basically never got released to the public only reason I know of its existence in the early days of eBay somebody was selling bootleg copies of the movie. And there were samples on the persons eBay page. A guy over in Germany did a Knight Rider movie. At one point in the 90s. I kid you not somewheres between 99 and 2003 movie was briefly available. Not many copies got out into the wild. And I don't know if it's ever been put on the Internet. . The G.I. Joe movie I'm referencing basically looked like a cross play convention where everything tried to be very accurate to its appearance in the cartoon. There is a Batman movie floating around out there that was filmed and never released by the studio a few times. It's turned up on the Internet and been removed where it's technically not supposed to be seen by the public for several legal reasons. Likewise, there was a fantastic four movie all. So that was never to be released to the public. It was strictly a copyright s pilot kind of thing. Fox television did a handful of Marvel property pilots in the 90s that you can't get on DVD and there's only a few thousand physical copies on VHS. If the numbers are even that high. Those movies were Dr. who, Nick fury, agent of Shield, the X-Men, Silver surfer, and also was a fantastic four movie. Each of these was done as a pilot for Fox and did manage to air on the network but none of them ever took off Nick fury was played by David Hasselhoff.

I collect retro technology.
Had a StarTac, traded it for a "windowbreaker" brick phone.
Still have a couple netbooks that work.
My daily driver laptop for years, still works but is damaged, is from 2007.
Had a Zune, but it broke down. (Might have been assisted by a screwdriver.)
Finally, as I type this, I debate whether I want to buy a classic Windows Mobile smartphone.