13 Tech Sounds You Just Don’t Hear Anymore
Dot Matrix Printout
Long before the days of color laser printers that churn out 30 pages a minute, we had dot matrix printing. There was something hypnotically relaxing about the sound of the chirpy print head moving from left to right as reams of paper slowly pulled past it. We could meditate to that sound.
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June 4th, 2012 at 7:07 pm
You’ve got mail from AOL still exists.
June 5th, 2012 at 10:07 am
clicky keyboards are all around our office.
June 5th, 2012 at 11:33 pm
One of the ads on the screen had malware on it. Good thing avast caught it… it said “play now” and I thought it was the actual clip of the sounds.
June 6th, 2012 at 2:22 am
Where I live, land-line phones and CRT-televisions still co-exist with flat screens and cell phones… and my GF has her mail account with AOL. Nearly half these sounds I still hear on a regular basis.
June 6th, 2012 at 10:05 am
Great list…except for the fact it makes me feel old. :S
June 6th, 2012 at 11:44 am
I remember them all. Some because I still have them (VHS, keyboards, Aol, CRT, industrial pin printers). Technologies don’t change like clothes in the garment district, but rather like evolution. Case in point you can still find old black sewing machines in the garment district.
June 6th, 2012 at 11:49 am
The “Uh-oh” sound was actually part of ICQ, not the Mac.
June 6th, 2012 at 8:40 pm
I’m typing this post on my 20 year old clicky keyed IBM Model M keyboard.
June 6th, 2012 at 9:20 pm
The Mac did have its share of alert sounds, but the “uh-oh” wasn’t one of them. Some of the more memorable Mac sounds include the quack, the monkey, the wild eep, and sosumi (which is still in OS X).
June 7th, 2012 at 9:58 am
The rush of the speeding-up VCR rewind was even more exiting by the raw mechanical noises that preceded it and the surety that this time the tape really would break.
June 7th, 2012 at 10:13 am
I’m typing this on a Filco keyboard with Cherry MX Blues. The click-clack of yesteryear is still very much alive.
June 7th, 2012 at 10:34 pm
You know, if you’re going to talk about 2400bps modems, you might want to actually link to a 2400bps modem handshake. That recording is from a 56K modem.
June 9th, 2012 at 7:33 pm
I hear at least half of those sounds on a daily basis…
June 10th, 2012 at 8:49 am
Fake! Boot-up Beeps still exist . my asus motherboard still do it (and yes it’s one of the high end ROG models, you need to plug the pcb speaker on the motherboard. now most of the models have now boot-up led diagnostic, so it make the speaker useless.
June 15th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
I’m 15 and I remember all of ‘em!
June 15th, 2012 at 2:24 pm
Needs more Atari Cassette loading a game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhOBSgiFna4
June 16th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Clicky keyboard? um most of us still use those you know? not old tech just yet!
June 16th, 2012 at 10:43 pm
mechanical keyboards are big sellers now lots of people want them, modems still used for support in tech departments. Post beeps are still on every pc. Lame need to do more research before saying things that are very common today and will be for a long time are on there way out.
June 17th, 2012 at 11:24 am
A bit hasty to push some of the nostalgia, aren’t we Laptopmag?
June 21st, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Half of these “Tech Sounds You Just Don’t Hear Anymore” are still being used. Dot matrix printers are used everywhere, dial tones, busy tones, post beeps, mechanical keyboards, CRT televisions. Perhaps you should rename your article. Or at least do some serious research before publishing
June 24th, 2012 at 12:08 am
i have all the older windows sounds on my laptop and i have that windows 95 sound as my “open new window” sound, i never knew it was the 95 shut down sound!
June 27th, 2012 at 11:52 am
Yup, like the KA-CHING sounds of the cash registers of my childhood, many of these sounds will soon be extinct. Too bad.
July 6th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Replace the keyboard with an IBM Selectric Typewriter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Selectric.ogv
July 28th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
I still have an old IBM clickey keyboard on my brand new computer. I like the way that it sounds.
Don’t miss the sound of Win95 coming up one bit.
I still have an old 486 which gets used with older Motorola radio programming software for some of the two-way FM radios that I service in the shop.
October 1st, 2012 at 4:58 pm
One of the noises I recall from ‘back in the day’, along with the modem handshake squeal and the rotary dial, was the daisy-wheel and printband printers.
Basically typewriters on steroids, these things were able to crank out documents at, well, faster than most people’s typing speed… but they sounded like a war. There was also the satisfying grumble of the printer advancing the pages via the tractor feed cogs.
At one time, someone actually figured out how to turn a computer, mouse and printer into a rudimentary alarm system. You would set the mouse on a cabinet or some other object that needed to be protected from burglary – if the mouse was wiggled, the computer would start issuing squeals at full volume and the printer would print out a “document” that was designed to be the noisiest to produce – hopefully sending the thief into a panic and waking up the occupant.
October 7th, 2012 at 12:03 am
We keep a 1970′s rotary phone in the closet for electrical outages. Just plug it into the jack and make the phone call to report the outage. But then have to listen to compu-lady say “you can also report an outage by visiting us at http://www.blah.blah. Now does it make much sense to report an outage utilizing a dead device?
As for the other sounds, dial-up is the only way we can connect to the internet out here in the pucker-brush of N ID. And given the speed at which Frontier will upgrade the phone lines that were laid in 1978, it will remain this way for some time. Satellite internet would be wonderful if there weren’t a mountain in the way.
We still have a bunch of Commodores with there floppy disc storage, daisy-wheel,dot matrix printer etc. And I will not give up my old non-electric typewriter. We have power outages with some regularity. So our heat has battery backup, cooking is gas (propane) and we have a multitude of oil lamps. When the power goes out, if I can heat water for tea, stay warm and have light to read a book, I’m good. Oh can’t forget battery powered phonograph for music. But I’ll probably listen to mp3 player. lol
October 7th, 2012 at 12:05 am
oh final Comment. They didn’t mention the sound of eavesdroppers on party-line phones. And listening to the ring “code” that identified which house the call was for.