

12 Obsolete Technologies Americans Still Use - scholia
http://www.livescience.com/37004-12-outdated-technologies-refuse-to-die.html

======
jemka
Consumerism: Use something because it works (regardless of its age) and we'll
mock you for not replacing it with something newer.

If you use these products and they work for you, awesome. You know who misses
out on the benefits of you switching? Corporations.

So laugh at others for saving money while you spend half your paychecks on
what's new and cool, just because it's new and cool. /rant

------
snogglethorpe
A fairly stupid article, which seems to be pushing the silly idea that as soon
as neat new tech A becomes popular, old tech B _suddenly becomes completely
obsolete and useless_. The "cult of the new" you might call it.

In reality almost all new tech, even that which is a good general replacement
for something older, involves tradeoffs. Sometimes the bad points outweigh the
good ones for use-cases slightly out of the mainstream. In other cases, the
advantages of the new tech simply aren't great enough to warrant replacing
something you already own.

[I own a (small) old CRT TV. A new LCD TV might be neat and appeal to my
gadget instinct, but ... why bother? I don't really use it so much, and the
old one works well enough. I just don't care about it very much, and would
rather spend the money on something I _do_ care about.]

------
varkson
I can't tell if this article is supposed to be mocking these technologies or
justifying their use.

I don't see why landlines are dying, mobile phones are way too expensive for
general use. Hell, I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have a landline.

~~~
eitland
Serious?

Where I live (across the pond) cellphones are the cheaper alternative.

Landlines are all swapped for ip "landlines" or mobile phones not only for
convenience but also for price.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Cellphone pricing can be a bit of the wild-west...

I have unlimited free calls to anybody with the same carrier—but calls to
_other_ carriers are really expensive, much more than a payphone.

[I'm actually surprised this is even _legal_ , but ...]

------
mordae
Actually, I can see why people want Dot Matrix Printers,
<http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers> sums it nicely.

Also, CRTs don't have only disadvantages, as
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube#Advantages_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube#Advantages_and_disadvantages)
explains.

The problem with faxes is that people continue to (wrongly) assume that you
can't spoof them. Especially now that you can fax arbitrary PDF.

------
J_Darnley
I'd take a CRT television or computer monitor over any widescreen flat
display. The one I have next to my some-what old LCD looks much better when
playing video. It can render 640x480 games correctly without some horrible
scaling artefacts.

I also wish there were still more pay phones in my local area.

------
Tloewald
Fax machines are the big one. They were obsolete ten years ago and still
cheerfully screwing up documents and wasting paper today.

I'd argue that the printer and books pretty much qualify.

~~~
rkalfane
But then, fax machines are still the fastest and most usable way to transmit
paper documents.

It's way easier to fax something, than to scan and send it, then having the
others print it. I think that we haven't found a good replacement for the fax
machine.

~~~
AdrianRossouw
i'm pretty much a convert to hellosign.com

most documents I deal with never make the transition to paper in the first
place anymore.

------
taylodl
In other words poor people, people living in rural areas and people in niche
markets are using old technology. Hardly a surprise.

