Remember getting photos developed? How about waiting at your computer for the modem to connect to dial-up internet access? That noise it made? What about watching videos on your VHS recorder? Buying SINGLES? Since the year 2000 new and developing technology has changed the way we live, our methods of communicating and many things we previously used on a daily basis have now become obsolete.
Check out our gallery below for a quick blast from the past……
What became obsolete in YOUR life in the last decade? Midriff tops? Your virginity? Your marriage? Nappies?
Encyclopedias
[Idea via the Huffington Post]
Comments
248 Comments so far
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Redundant? I am! I hate all these new electronic thingummys that have a manual thicker than a bible. I USED to be able to hook up all these damn things myself, with my eyes shut. Right now, I’m thanking God all my desk-top connections are colour coded, and that I’m not colour blind!………..Yet……
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Things I’d like to see become redundant:
Laptops – they’re the new desktop and are such a pain to lug about. I’d love to have an image of my work laptop on a portable hard-drive or USB or similar and just take that with me on flights or to work from home.
Landlines – sheesh they’re expensive for what they are!
Commercial TV and ads – I want watch what I want to watch and where/when without trying to chase my favrouite programs all over the schedule and out of order with random repeats in the middle..
The delay of releasing products/movies to Australia. This does seem to be waning thank goodness.
Cash – sick of carting it about. Easier when it’s on the card.
And controversial but Newspapers – I can’t stand the reporting of scientific advances/discoveries and the Sunday supplement and it’s useless ‘lifestyle’ information on nutrition or any topic that is meant to ‘improve our health’ when it is mostly based on rubbish evidence, poor science and opinion dressed up as fact. Science blogs written by actual doctors and scientists are so much more informative and how interesting/scary is a news story when people are posting their personal stories online. Magazines I feel differently about, mainly because I like to flick through them at the doctor’s office
Cars and bad traffic – I know it won’t happen soon. How cool would society be if we could collectively come up with a better transport option then cramming in on the roads/public transport all at the same time and heading all to the same locations. It’s such a drain on time and resources.
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Kiss laptops goodbye (mostly) in the next five years. Have you seen the Motorola Atrix? A mobile phone – plug it into a dock connected to a mouse, keyboard and screen and it becomes a desktop computer with desktop apps (except you can make calls and send SMS from it as well!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4gpOQDcn7c
ZOMNG! Expect Apple and everyone else to follow this one quickly.
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Mmmm – love your knowledge …so, have iphone (Y)2009 updated to IOs4 ipad(Y)bought June 2010 and macbook pro(Y)bought mid 2009.
Loving the macs to date
Did have a desktop PC – motherboard is motherf…. but have useful wireless keyboard, monitor… like having something NOT apple (not vindictive, just like another choice) what do you reckon, replace $700 or WAIT.
Thanks!
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The phone was announced at CES last week. It probably isn’t even available yet.
Wait!
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Thank you…I will do what I am not good at then, W A I T ..
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Oh, I didn’t mean ‘wait until it’s available’ I meant get something else to gap the two years before this concept works properly!
(Unless it really IS as amazing as the promo video makes out)
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But what else can you do with it? With such a small screen?
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Did you watch the video? It operates like any touch screen smart phone out of the dock (with all the benefits and all the limitations as normal), but like a normal computer when you plug it into a dock connected to a display, keyboard and mouse (i.e. operates like a desktop computer or laptop computer).
It’s a first gen device, just demoed for the first time last week. Will this one work? You’ve got to buy a lot of accessories to begin with, so maybe not. Could someone like Apple or Google take the concept and run with it – absolutely.
Google like everything to be on the net anyway, and Apple is bringing it’s mobile and desktop OS closer and closer every release.
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“it’s useless ‘lifestyle’ information on nutrition or any topic that is meant to ‘improve our health’ when it is mostly based on rubbish evidence, poor science and opinion dressed up as fact.”
Sorry, but as a naturopath/nutritionist i take offence to this statement. Particularly as i am someone who writes about evidence based medicine. There is plenty of positive scientific evidence available, written by ‘actual doctors and scientists’, published in medical journals that supports nutritional medicine, herbal medicine and many natural supplements that will ‘improve our health.’
Sorry, rant over, but it was a very strange comment you wrote…
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Not really. For starters, you’re a Naturopath which shows you either ignore or cherry pick evidence anyway.
And scientists and journalists like Michael Pollan (to name one) has pretty much demonstrated they complete failure of the focus on nutrients as a way to provide healthy eating advice to people.
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This is not the post for a debate, nor do i wish to get involved. Im very comfortable in what i know and do. It is my job to write about Evidence based medicine as i said, so i know my stuff – i have to. All i want to say to you An Idle Dad is you dont know me. You have never met me. How do you know that i ignore and cherry pick evidence? There is both positive and negative studies available for many natural products and same goes for pharmaceutical products. I dont deny this. By saying ‘as a Naturopath,you cherry pick and ignore evidence’, you are being extremely judgemental. I actually support all kinds of medicine. I see natural medicine as complementary not necessarily alternative. But hey, you knew that already didnt you?!
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I knew all that. But when evidence comes back negative, real medicine tends to say “OK, we’ll try something else”.
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Fax machines are still used by quite a lot of businesses. I have one at home too.
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Yes, and most hospitals would ask me to fax my referral in to them when booking into specialists as an outpatient.
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And Centrelink use faxes all the time. Any kind of bureaucracy, really.
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Really? I thought faxes were like cheques – gone! I once had an 18yo colleague ask me how to use a fax, so cute.
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Surely there’s a cool iPhone app, where you can take a photo of your script/ document and then it can be sent from your phone out as a fax. Or if not, there’s a cool idea in there for someone…!
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fax machines are the only secure way to send information now. As long as the people at either end are trustworthy LOL.
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3 station TV (5 if you count the ABC & SBS) is pretty much obsolete.
I remember sitting in a Uni lecture in 2001 learning about the “concept” of digital TV. It was mind boggling to imagine switching off the analogue signal back then. But now here we are!
And remember those huge Encylopedia sets that would take up about 3 shelves? Redundant.
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I remember when I went to Uni the first time in 2000 and having to take actual notes. Now the second time, PP slides are provided and lectures are recorded, so you don’t need to take notes or even attend.
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this totally depends on your degree – the more academic degrees with larger class sizes are like that but creative degrees arent. none of our lectures were recorded or published online and we had to sign a roll because lectures counted as classes so we had to attend 80% to pass. (I just finished last year)
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Oh, that’s certainly true. I’m doing nursing at a small uni (Class size of about 30 something) so the lecturers actually know all of our names. I’ve seen some of the creative industry lectures, they’re a little different to nursing lectures, that’s for sure.
I guess my point was the idea of a university lecture being someone standing up the front, constantly talking, while students voraciously scribble down every word is becoming obsolete.
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Watching scheduled TV at all. I download everything or use iview and YouTube and the like.
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We have set up a Myth TV server.
It’s great, watching ads are a thing of the past
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Can only get ABC digital channels here… so want to keep the analogue signal until we actually get more digital channels.
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My parent use those encyclopedias to weight down the bottom shelf of rocky bookshelves!
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I used to buy at least one CD a week. But I don’t think I’ve bought one for at least two years. I think iTunes has made my musical life so much better. It’s cheaper, you can buy only the songs that you actually like, there’s more choice, and you can always burn it onto a CD if you want to.
But when it comes to e-books, I doubt I’ll ever be a convert. I’m too in love with books, the feel of them, the smell of them, just the whole experience of holding an actual book and turning the pages.
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I am 25, work in the media and I’m going the opposite way- have given up my smart phone, have no ipod and never have, still buy CDs, magazines and newspapers, get my photos printed and use a melways. I also have no internet or TV at home, I have no mortgage, no phone contract, no credit card and no debt. I hate the idea of life being ruled by money and technology and I started to get this very particular type of impatient technology rage when my gadgets didn’t work- which was often. I just reached a point where I wanted to keep things simple and technology actually makes life a lot harder and more complicated.
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I went looking for CD singles the other day. Sad to be told I needed to get with the times and get it from itunes.
I guess by rights my VCR should be obsolete but until the kids get bigger, I’ve just too too many videos for them to watch and bonus, don’t have to wait a million years to get to main menu.
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another benefit of VCR – if it gets ejected from the machine it starts at the exact spot you stopped it! No stuffing around with main menu, chapters, and fast forward that only skips chapters.
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But what about the picture quality? My husband was appalled the other day when I couldn’t tell the difference between a DVD and Blu-ray image.
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Yeah, the quality is crap, but to a 4yo, Dory is Dory
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absolutely – let me know if you want some more – adults and kids
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I am sad some of these things have moved on. I LOVE getting handwritten letters. And I still send lots of them, even if its a cheapo $1 card with a flower on it, with a 60c stamp, and a little note in it to my grandparents/great aunty/friends etc and will still post off hand written thank you notes from kids bithday parties/christenings/birth gifts. Its just so much more a personal and you’ve at least taken 5mins to do it, rather than a 20sec emailed or texted ‘thanks’. Same as previous posters with photos, I print them off becuase I love having something tanglible, and again, I post them to people.
Hmm, perhaps I haven’t moved into the new decade at all, becuase I still love reading a physical mag. Will read online newspapers all day, but still buy a phyiscal version because not everything is in the online version, and when we moved 4 months ago, I still got a landline connected. Funnily enough – WAY out here in the the regional areas, our mobile phone service (and wireless internet one any other given day) are so unreliable if you want to speak to someone, you need a landline … oh gosh, I feel so 2000!!
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Hahaha Mia, I love it
What became obsolete: Your virginity?
That it did!
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Things that have become obsolete in my life include – CD players that can’t play MP3 tracks!!! Game consoles with cords everywhere! Phones that don’t have the internet!!! My god what did I ever do without a mobile phone?
I still constantly print photos from my digital SLR (actually I’m very picky about the quality of the photo that is printed) and I have just bought an old digital SLR camera that requires film, which I love. There is something about taking photos and not being able to see the result until you go to pick up the processed photos that is fantastic.
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Obsolete: Friends Reunited/Schoolfriends web-site. Although it’s still on the internet, but does anybody use it?
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Yes! I’ve found a couple of high school friends that way (it’s been 25 years) and, until our year set up a facebook group very recently, it was our main way of finding classmates.
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Obsolete: Friends Reunited/Schoolfriends.com
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I remember on New Years Eve 99/00 asking my Dad whether he thought technology would change much, and he told me things would pretty much stay the same. How wrong he was!
I remember windows 95 and playing games on a chunky desktop computer- no need for that anymore, I can play games in bed with my iPhone!
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He sounds like the man who resigned from the Inventions Dept in the US in the 1800s because he thought there was nothing more to be invented.
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Urban myth I’m sad to say – he was actually chasing an increasing in funding for the patents office and justified it on the grounds that anyone opposing the increase would be the sort of person who thought that everything which could be invented had.
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The noise of the dial up internet sent a shiver down my spine. Every time I left the house I would double check that the internet was off because it was so expensive!
I still buy CD’s, but we no longer have a CD player! So, I play them in the car or ask my kids to download them to my iPhone. Speaking of iPhones, they are great entertainment for kids, but lucky for me, a waiter found mine under a restaurant table after the kids took off!! I would have lost every phone number and of course all of my photos and music! Haven’t used a camera in a year, the iPhone is pretty good for that. I (can’t belive I did it!!!!!) downloaded all of my photos to a USB and took it to my local photo shop. (Reminder to self, do it again). What worries me, is that we no longer have VHS, or CD: where is DVD going and therefore all of the memories that I have stored? Do we keep transferring to the new media?
I say, lets go back ‘to my day’ and take print photos and put them in albums!
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I still print out my digital photos (not all of them) and put them in albums (and write date/place/people on the back). I find them much easier to look at that way, and if all the digital storage systems (USB,CD’s, DVDs) die i’ll still have photos.
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That’s what I’d love to do but my husband reckons it’s a waste of time and money cos we back everything up onto a separate hard drive! I love poring through old albums – it’s so much more satisfying than looking through them on the computer screen. Think I might just have to bite the bullet but where do I start with nearly 20,000 pics taken digitally over the past 7 years??!!
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Just print out the good ones, Janey. Much like Mia’s post the other week, digital gives us WAAAYYY too many images. I bought a 400 space album the other week, and have allowed myself 400 printed photos a year. It’s plenty.
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“digital gives us WAAAYYY too many images”
Hell yeah. I took about ? maybe 2000? pictures on my 5 week holiday last year. Much later, I looked through them onscreen & picked about 250-280 for printing. But I don’t think they’re any better than the pictures I took on film the first time I went to Europe – maybe fewer thumbs, but that’s about it.
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I still print out mine too (the good ones), and I write the date and who/ where on the back too. I started this after my father died, and we had to go through his photos with NO idea of any details. It still makes me sad that I can’t ‘share’ these memories with him.
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But your iPhone is the one device you can truly back up! Not like losing a mobile in the old days and saying goodbye to all that information. Backing it up to the computer is amazing, it’s saved my bacon a few times.
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We got a Golden Book Encyclopaedia when I was in primary school (ahem 26 years ago). I had kept it, and it was sitting on my son’s shelf for the past 12 years.
I threw the lot out two weeks ago. We google his assignments (hoping that will change to “he googles his assignments” can you spot the subtle difference)
We’ve got a media centre for our tv, so are slowly “ripping” our DVD collection to the hard drive, soon, no need for DVDs.
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But what happens when you split up and can no longer do the ritual Division of the DVD/CD rack?? Or do you have
two hard drives?
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Going into a bank. Every single transaction is now online. Even our mortgage was arranged through a broker and done online and over the phone. I never have to set foot into a bank anymore except on the rare occasion that I have to bank a cheque – wonder when they will become obsolete too?
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I had to bank a cheque the other day. Felt like a fool cos I forgot what to do.
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Don’t worry Reggie, I’m sure I’d be the same! Cheques and faxes – still baffles me why we use them when we have the technology to bypass them.
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I’ve had to fax heaps this week because i needed to return signed copies of docs, and I have no idea how to sign a digital copy of something and email back. Can you do that?
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You could print the doc, sign it, scan it back in and then email it off but to be honest, faxing it back is easier if you have access to a fax machine
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I just got a new iPhone app called Sign-N-Send which allows you to sign a digital copy and email it off! I haven’t tested it out yet but it came highly recommended. Buh-bye fax!
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Thanks for the heads-up. Downloaded it and it works great!
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I get so mad when I go to the post office and there is someone waiting to pay a bill over the counter. I’m like ‘gah, you are wasting my time because you can’t do Internet banking’
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I had a discussion with my MIL about internet banking and Bpay the other week. She maintains it’s dangerous. I said her way of doing it (getting CASH from bank and taking bill to PO as she doesn’t trust EFTPOS) was much more dangerous. there’s insurance from the banks for online transactions but if you get mugged between bank and PO you’re on your own (and would, I imagine bear some psychological scars). Internet banking has it’s risks, but it’s just money. Carrying huge amounts of cash around is far more risky.
End of MIL rant.
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There is just no reasoning with those MIL’s I swear….They smile and nod while you are explaining but the look in their eye says “don’t waste your breath girl, I will continue to pay my Telstra bill, with cash, at the Post Office until my dying days”.
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you’re not alone – my MIL is exactly the same, It is really irratating when she says ‘ you’ll be sorry – you’ll see’ I wonder how long it will be before someone snatches her bag after going to the bank same day/time every week then to P.O, hasn’t happened yet touch wood
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It annoys me how many people are in the bank everytime I go there. I go once a week for work to bank all the cash/cheques/credit card transactions. But you can’t bank cash or cheques online. I just don’t understand why there is always so so many people in there who seem to take forever to complete a simple transaction.
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Maybe they’re in there doing the same thing as you? Or they don’t have a computer or don’t know how to use it?
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I bank with a community branch of Bendigo Bank and love going in for a chat with the manager. Call me old fashioned at the tender age of 33 but I like personal contact.
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Oh dear. I seem to be living in last decade!
I use phone booths (I often leave my phone at home), I have a landline phone and I sometimes write hand written letters…
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Phone booths still exist??
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I know, it seems bizarre but I often see people using phone booths!
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Did you hear the one about the stupid vandal ? Smashed up his own Iphone.
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I’m going to guess your parents have a landline. Most of my friends and I have not bothered with one since we moved out of home except where it was necessary to get the internet put on.
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I love my landline. If my mobile rings when I’m at home I dont answer it, thats if its turned on. I usually turn it off once I get home.
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Yeah, my parents have a landline!
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I need a landline because my mobile has practically no reception in the house and I really don’t like the idea of sitting outside in the disgusting heat and humidity to talk on the phone when I can be sitting in airconditioned comfort on the couch.
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I had to use a public phone the other day when I was in a town with no phone signal. First time in 10 years I think. My friend gave me a 50c coin for the call – I expected 20c change but nope, got no change. Also I was surprised to see you can send text messages from a payphone. Since when?
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Worse still I was driving from WA to Victoria and had a night at a place that had no mobile reception but had 2 payphones and neither took coins… had to spend $10 on a card for it (the cheapest they had) to make a 2 minute call to let my family know where I was and that I was stopping, so they didn’t worry about me!
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I locked myself out of my house last year and had to set off in search of a payphone. I miraculously remembered my homelink number from when I was in school (product of a nervous mother constantly testing if I knew it I guess) and it worked!!
Called mum, asked her to call my housemate before realising I didn’t know her number. Before my mobile, I knew all of my friends numbers by heart because I dialled them so often on the landline. Now I’ve got my phone with all the numbers saved I don’t have a clue what they are.
Mum looked up housemates mum in the phonebook, called her, she called housemate and I was saved! Sometimes the old-fashioned methods are actually quite useful.
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This is so annoying! I once had quite a lot of my money gobbled up because they give no change!
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I think the reason this public phone gave no change wasn’t a malfunction.. it was purely because calls now cost 50c. Big surprise for me. There I was thinking they were still 30c…
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Magazines and newspapers – is there a reason to buy them anymore? I can get newer content online for free.
The post office – why even bother?
Bookcases – I’m getting a Kindle and saving on space and money.
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newspapers are still necessary because of the crossword in it!
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And sudoku.
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SMH crossword is online.
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Sorry
not giving up my papers (yes, two) being delivered to my home.
I waited for a long time for this ‘luxury’ after the years in the country when weekend papers came Tuesdays, and weekday papers Saturday (dont ask, but there’s a flood there now, in NSW/QLD border)
My morning, work days and now retirement days, is not MY morning until paper is glanced through – depending on caring duties that day – as I consume breakfast toast and tea.
I have apps for papers, but nothing will stop me having my idea of luxury and indulgence (on a mean budget) EVER!!
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Sorry to be so naive, but can someone please explain what a kindle is? Where do you get them and how much do they cost?
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It’s a tablet like an iPad, only smaller and it just reads documents/books. It is to amazon.com and books what the ipod is to Apple and music. My sister bought one for her PhD – instead of printing out reams of documents and articles, she downloads them onto her Kindle and reads them at home or on the train.
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Yes! A Kindle is the best – amazing for travel – you can store about 3000 books onto one little device that weighs less than a paperback. I find it hard to justify carrying around a book to read when it’s so much easier to read from a Kindle…I love mine ever since I bought one. They cost less than $200 and books are usually about half the price as in the shops, and they download in less than 60sec. It’s brilliant!
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and even better if you have a smart phone running Android you can download a kindle app (prolly iphone as well) and it syncs with your tablet so you’re never without a book, and if you read it on the phone then get home and start reading on the tablet it picks up at the same place! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the functionality
It will never replace actual books for me but it does mean i don’t need space in my suitcase for 6 books on a 2 week holiday.
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I use the post office so much more now – to send off things I have sold on Ebay
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but you can’t lend a kindle book to a friend or highlight/underline important passages, or write margin notes. There’s still a place for hardcopy.
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You can’t lend it, but you can highlight/underline, and write notes in the margins.
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But it means an end to sticky-beaking other people’s reading choices on the tram!
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That’s half the joy. Erotica is one of the biggest selling kindle genres.
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You can lend them…
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hmmm, i’ve learned something then. But it still wouldn’t be the same as finding my yr 12 english scribbles in the margin of favourite texts.
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and you can email those notes to other people…
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I hope you’re wrong about magazines, I love them!
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Huge CRT TVs… and monitors… photo albums… backyards… trampolines without safety nets…
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Trampolines are far too safe these days – its no fun unless there’s a significant risk you’re going to break something (or pinch your legs in the springs).
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Trampolines with safety nets I find so annoying! They are so big and heavy! Give me the old fashioned type any day! My sister tried to find a normal one last week, just a small one as she has a small backyard but she can’t find one anywhere unless it’s huge with a safety net!
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Clearly I am backward. We have an answering machine, a landline, kids watch videos and I buy CD’s! I even have a couple of rolls of 35mm floating around which came in handy when my digital camera batteries died just as Fairy Mary arrived for Miss 4′s birthday party!
My in-laws are on dial-up internet and looked shocked when we told them they’d have to upgrade if they want to use Skype with us when we move. (it would probably be cheaper, too!)
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No, we have a landline, answering machine, street directory, cd’s and photo albums as well. Give the trampolines with a net a couple of years in the sun and the net will decay. I also like being able to look at photos or book without charging or turning anything on (that said I do have apps for reading on my iPad).