10 Outdated Gadgets You Can Still Buy Today
Apr 19, 2012 06:39 PM EDT by Davey Alba, LAPTOP Contributor Obsolescence is a measure of tech progress. That’s why the gadgets we couldn’t imagine living without ten years ago – that old Walkman, your black brick of a beeper, and camera with multiple rolls of film – are laughably out-of-date today. Yet oddly, some products which ought to be dead and buried are still being actively manufactured and sold as new. Believe it or not, you can still walk or log into a store and buy a new cassette boom box to use for your breakdancing routine.
Sprint’s Lenovo IdeaPad S205s WiMAX Mini Notebook
Sprint recently revealed it would be offering the Lenovo IdeaPad S205s WiMAX mini notebook for $199.99 on a two-year contract, the bizarre announcement that spurred this list. The company just affirmed weeks ago that it was done with WiMAX phones, but evidently it thinks WiMAX notebooks stand a whole class apart.
In case you’ve always wanted a subsidized notebook that uses an archaic wireless standard, or you fancy the idea of being stuck with the device for two years, here’s your chance. Hiding beneath the no-frills 11.6-inch (1366x768) display, a 1.33 GHz dual-core Intel U5600 processor runs the show, and the machine comes with 2GB of RAM and 250GB of storage onboard. You can grab the IdeaPad S205s right now, either in-store or at Sprint’s website.
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April 20th, 2012 at 12:18 pm
The 56K modem’s reason for continued existence is revealed by the choice of clipart. Most home users do not have a cash drawer attached to the bottom of their workstation–this modem is meant for POS systems, in stores that do not have broadband. In fact, if you want to relive the days of AOL discs in an auditory sense, you often can catch a snatch of a carrier tone after swiping your credit card at a small retailer, if they have the modem volume turned up.
April 21st, 2012 at 12:23 pm
The ISP that I work for still has quite a few people on dial up accounts. They still use the old dial up modems. I guess they just don’t offer broadband everywhere.
April 24th, 2012 at 9:46 am
You are beeing unfair. More than half of the object are not just useful, but almost vital for some legacy systems. What if I have all my childhood VHS? What if I have some old data on a floppy disk? And so on. The same is true for companies. Well, some other stuff is really fun
April 24th, 2012 at 11:51 am
WiMax isn’t archaic.
June 6th, 2012 at 11:29 pm
I am a career computer technician and constantly learning about or buying the latest and greatest technology. I have too many negative things to say about this article to list. the only object that possibly belongs on this list is perhaps the serial modem not because of what it is but the COST 89 dollars WTF. P.S. After reading this poor excuse for an article I demand to be paid for my wasted time………just kidding……………But seriously you don’t know what you are talking about. I will not be revisiting this website again this article was so bad. Hope your boss doesn’t read this because you’ve lost a first time visitor. Fire this Hack.
June 11th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
USR Modems are used for what is called “Out Of Band” connections for darn near every access level router deployed. I’m not going to explain more since an ostensibly “tech” blog should shoudn’t have needed more than “OOB” to know what I was referring to in the first place.
June 19th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
two years ago i searched the internet for a plain VCR to replace one that kicked the bucket. Luckily I found a website hat still had them available and I bought two (one is still in the box in case something happens to the other two I am using). i love being able to tape TV shows and play them back on different VCRs. Yes- i have a Blu-ray player that streams, but i still like watching TV shows since the networks often have good shows running at the same time.
July 31st, 2012 at 2:09 am
Typewriters, such as the Brother shown, are still used where carbon copies or NCR paper copies are needed.