What’s the oldest piece of tech you still use regularly?

[Dani]

I've been spring cleaning lately and recently came across my Psion Series 7 and all its accessories, so it got me thinking about old hardware that people still use. OMG did I love my Psion Series 3a, 3c, and 5 throughout middle and high school. I was super nerdy and they went with me absolutely everywhere long before palm pilots or WindowsCE or mobile phones with apps were a thing. Sadly, my Psion has been in storage the past few decades, and I'm not one to hold onto older hardware.

I did have my Dell Workstation from about 2014 for a good decade until about a year ago when I shipped it off to James, DaniWeb's sysadmin. But, yeah, I can't think of anything really old that I still actively use. /shrug?

[Dani]

Okay, so I've officially decided I'm a tech snob. My husband is a coffee snob. I'm a tech snob. I refuse to use outdated technology.

[pritaeas]

The only "old" thing is my Cowon D2 (2006?) audioplayer.

[trcooke]

I'm a bit of a technology hoarder. In my home study I have Technics HiFi separates and B&W speakers that I bought in the early/mid 90s, and they're every bit as top notch quality now as they were then. I also have a Sony MiniDisc walkman, but it has recently decided to stop working. And a Sony CD Walkman.

My roof space is a treasure trove of old stuff. IDE disks, maybe even a SCSI disk or two, a Zip100 drive and disks, some SIM memory I think, a Pentium II CPU, spare parts for a HP1100 laser printer. All sorts.

My wife has a white MacBook from 2006 that has absolutely nothing wrong with it physically but Apple have obsoleted it through software. That annoys me deeply, to make perfectly good hardware unusable for no good reason.

I should probably eBay it all since I'm unlikely to ever use it again.

[trcooke]

Just to clarify on Dani's "still use regularly" criteria, I am right now at this very moment listening to an album on MiniDisc, on my 90s HiFi kit.

[Pak_052]

What a wonderful trip through nostalgia It's incredible how Psion devices were forerunners—small, dependable, and innovative. Even now, many people still harbor affection for them.

[Reverend Jim]

An old piece of tech that I no longer use but miss terribly is accordion-fold printouts. As a comp sci student back in the 70s all code was run at the student terminal. You stood in line and gave the operator your card deck, then proceeded to the huge printer to get your output. Debugging code is so much easier when you can look at several pages of your code at a time and mark it up with red pen. In VSCode I am limited to 25-30 lines depending on the font size. And of course I can't make notes on the screen.

[SCBWV]

Amen to that! Something nostalgic about the sounds of old printers too.

[Salem]

Physically old objects, or just really old designs?

• qwerty keyboard
• internal combustion engine (in my car)
• the wheel
• fire

[Dani]

Physically old objects, or just really old designs?

• qwerty keyboard
• internal combustion engine (in my car)
• the wheel
• fire

Physically old objects, silly.

[trcooke]

Another one. This is my calculator from 1992 that I still use.

[Dani]

I remember my TI-92 when everyone else in class had a TI-89. (For those not in the know, the TI-89 looked like a normal graphing calculator, while the TI-92 had a full-on QUERTY keyboard). I have not used it since college.

[Yrth]

I have a WWII vintage bayonet for a Lee-Enfield .303. Does that count? :) Beyond that, I've got a ancient Radio Shack EC-4017 scientific/programmer's calculator that has somehow managed to survive a bunch of purges of old junk because, well, it still does what it was built for, and that's still handy.

[Salem]

At the moment, I'd say my car, which is fast approaching 20 years old.

On the plus side, at least it isn't some privacy invading, subscription varying, ID theft waiting to be hacked so-called "smart" car.

[Dani]

I’ll go with that answer as well then. My 2013 car whose GPS is affectionately called Navaputie. Note the other post I’ve made recently where I mentioned all my computers always had -putie names when I was younger and lived in the Windows workgroup called Putieville. (Does the fact that I don’t really drive anymore count though?)

[Carl_22]

It’s funny how some older tech ends up outlasting the “latest and greatest.” I still use a ThinkPad from 2008 for basic writing and web browsing, built like a tank, runs Linux smoothly, and the keyboard is still better than most modern laptops. Sometimes, reliability beats new features every time.

[Reverend Jim]

Did that one still have the little mouse nub in the middle of the keyboard?

[trcooke]

Regarding the "accordian-foldout printers" I can only assume you're referring to the classic dot-matrix printer? I had an Oki one of those. The long forgotten 80 character code line length constraint was because those printers would print 80 characters per line.

[Reverend Jim]

I'm talking about the massive high-speed printers that stood about five feet high, four feet wide, and more than two feet deep, as opposexd to the Decwriter dot-matrix printers that came much later.

[Dani]

I had an Apple ImageWriter. Does that count? LOL :)

[Adin_1]

compact disc on old porsche from 2002 lol...visual studio 2017 too, postgresql 13.

[SCBWV]

My office started out with an IBM ProPrinter 24 pin dot matrix. Then we went to an IBM QuietWriter that used a thermal head and a special ribbon. It had two font cartridges and sounded like a quaking duck when printing, but the quality was spectacular for the time. Then we went to an IBM laser printer with 47 PostScript fonts! Felt special with Aldus PageMaker. Finally, we went to large printer/copier machines. I do miss the old printers. They were built like tanks.

[Dani]

I honestly don't see why anyone wants to go back to an inkjet now that color laser printers are affordable. If you want to print photos or things with a lot of color gradients (which laser is not very good at), then there are photo printers specifically for that purpose. I used to have a Kodak photo printer (that read from memory cards and printed directly onto photo paper) back in the day.

[rproffitt]

For Dani,
Due to the massive upsizing of the campaigns we added a 24 inch wide Canon TC-21 to office. The ink is in big bottles and cheap. So is the paper.

Because of this I went back to see if there's something new going on in the standard inkjet printers and installed the Canon G6020 with again, cheap bottles of ink.

Ink is quite cheap now comparatively and paper supplies have been ordered in bulk as needed.

Again because of the campaigns I'm back into graphic production, printing and now wheatpasting.
Someone just told me how to reduce mailing costs by forming a non-profit organization.

[SCBWV]

My HO has an HP InkJet all in one. Since I retired, the print heads expired and the ink dried up due to lack of use. If I ever need to print again, I'd go color laser. I like HP printers but really dislike being captive to their brand of supplies.

[Reverend Jim]

I have a Brother B&W laserjet and there is a generic option for cartridges at half the price.