Car radios with traditional two-knob power, volume and tuning. Buttons for anything else are fine, but those functions should absolutely fucking be on a pair of goddamn knobs.
@Kidsandliz@Star2236@Tadlem43 I had the pleasure (?) of being able to play with vent windows in my parents’ Buicks and a USED Cadillac and Oldsmobile they had. Vent windows really were cool, cause they could both blow and suck (!).
Of course the older Buicks didn’t have A/C; it was an expensive option, so the vent window was the best you could do for airflow cooling. The Cadillac had air but it didn’t work some of the time and they never wanted to pay to fix it; living in coastal California at the time meant not very hot except for a few rare days. But I remember taking vacation trips through Northern California and they wanted to leave at 3AM to get through Redding and Red Bluff before those places got up to 100 in the afternoon which happened even back then.
@2many2no@werehatrack LOL, understood. I’ve driven them for years, but the quality seems to be declining. Plus I’m annoyed that they’re not going to sell the ID3 here. But I do love the manual transmission in my Jetta.
@2many2no@ahacksaw Blame statistics and the lobbying efforts of Ford and GM that created the loopholes that have jammed our highways full of overbloated SUVs and pickups. VW’s brain-dead analysis of the numbers, their consistent failure to replicate the ad successes that they had in the '60s, the huge black eyes they gave themselves with the Rabbit, and their overall lack of understanding of the true meaning of “quality” (not to even touch on the letters TDI) have left them absolutely convinced that there is no market whatsoever for really small vehicles in the US, and no demand at all for EVs in the modern not-really-small subcompact range. So all we’ll get is the ID4. Not that I care; VW and I parted ways in 1985. They got custody of my willingness to ever be an enthusiast about anything, ever again. I’m told it was in the dumpster ten minutes later.
@ahacksaw@werehatrack I’ve been looking at the Subaru Crosstrek, one of very few vehicles with available manual. It’s relatively small and definitely not high performance, but it’s still damned expensive. I’m hoping my 22 year old Saturn just keeps putting along, so far, so good.
@Tadlem43@yakkoTDI Non-power-operated car windows, at the very least in the driver’s door. The kind that go up and down via a sturdy crank and a strong arm.
@DocJRoberts@Kyeh
Omg I hate ultra bright vampire repellent headlights. Even on clear night (not to mention fuckin rainy ones) I can’t see with douche bags driving past me with those. I get it you can’t see but why make it so the oncoming car can’t see and almost hits you (or anything else).
@DocJRoberts The ones I hate are the people who buy the LED conversions that aren’t properly designed, purchased solely on the demerits of the seller’s claims of wattage or lumens. Once installed, they look blindingly bright to the idiot vehicle owner, so they’re sure that these must be putting out more light. Well, yes, they probably are, but not where it will do any good. Badly-designed LED conversions just dazzle oncoming traffic, and leave the driver of the offending vehicle squinting almost as much as the people he’s endangering, because the amount of light where it belongs actually is less than it was with the halogens. Well-designed LED conversions appear no brighter to the other traffic than the halogens they replace, because their output pattern precisely matches the halogen’s. In low-beams, that means there is relatively little upward throw of light, with more light on the road where it does the driver some good.
I have good conversions on our daily-driver vehicles; they don’t seem to alarm anyone in low-beam mode, but my road view is much improved. I see idiots with bad conversions all the time; you can always tell that they are clueless (and assholes) because if they get flashed, they’ll swap to what they think is high beams, and the telltale flicker will be the only clue that they did it; the brilliance doesn’t change at all. I’ve had them come past me on rural interstates lots of times, and as they pull alongside, if I’ve been in high beams, I’ll dim my lights - and as they pull ahead, it becomes painfully obvious that their headlights are doing next to nothing useful.
I would have voted ‘old-school radio’ but depending on your definition of such, it never went away. I can still listen to the AM band on my tube radios dating back as far as the late 1930s. The broadcasted content could be better, though…
@PooltoyWolf I never used a car with tube radios but apparently those existed before the “transistor radio” era of I guess the 60’s. I’ve heard tube-era cars needed a special alternator to make the high voltage needed for the tube radios.
But I do remember the “saved station” buttons that were mechanical and when you pressed them the indicator on a horizontal line would move to where the mechanical stop had been placed last time you set it. You’d often still need to tweak the tuning knob to fine-tune the station.
@detailer@werehatrack oh I could imagine that being a problem, but the big ol’ American cars i had experienced were all automatics. Sucky ones at that.
On the topic of dimmers and column controls — I just wish there was some standard for where wipers and headlights are. I’m constantly doing the wrong actio going between “Japanese car standard” and “European car standard” and “American car standard” (There really is no standard)
@detailer@pmarin@werehatrack When I was driving during a vacation in New Zealand (drive on the left side of the road from the right side of the vehicle), I was constantly turning on the windshield wipers when making a turn. (A sure warning to locals of a crazy foreign tourist driver.)
There are some days I go out with only my cellular Watch. It has texting and phone calls if I need it. In a pinch it also has wallet. The only thing I wish I had in a dumb phone would have is a decent camera in case I need to snap a photo of something.
@blaineg I still have a house phone. I wish I could find one of the old box phones that everyone had, the square desk phones, but the only ones they have today are horrible quality.
Everyone laughs at my landline… until the cell tower goes down then they’re all beating on my door wanting to use the phone. lol
@blaineg@Kyeh@Tadlem43 I haven’t researched this, but my guess is those old phones would survive the EMP from a nuclear blast (if not TOO close by). [And same for the POTS system of (Grand)Ma Bell, where still operational.] I’ve seen them survive housefuls of rugrats. I’ve seen them bounce off concrete floors topped with vinyl, with no damage. The only thing I’ve seen take any down were house fires.
@blaineg@Kyeh lol Does the can you use a rotary phone with today’s …or 1970’s…wiring?
That’s awesome!
Now, if you find a Ma Bell push button that works, let me know!
@Tadlem43 I have an old Bell South push button phone that for reasons unknown I am still hanging on to. Whisper me and we could work out a deal. It’s that cream color. I used it last in the early 2010’s (Bought it probably 10 or so years prior to that) as I had a recorder on it to be able to keep up with what brat child was up to next to try to keep her out of trouble (Also wouldn’t let her have a cell phone unless she had a job to pay for it but some kids, of which she was one, get in more trouble with a cell phone so I kept it in my room “after hours”. She had trouble with that job concept thing to keep one long enough to keep a cell turned on more than a month or two. LOL).
@blaineg@Kyeh@Tadlem43 believe it or not, you used to be able to rent those exact phones from the phone company. My grandparents were still paying rent on one in the early 2000s (they’d had service with the local company for probably 40-50 years). When we finally got rid of the service, we asked the phone company if they wanted it back. They told us we’d “paid for it so we could keep it”
@blaineg@Kyeh@Tadlem43 The wiring of residential and simple business landline phones, at the consumer end, hasn’t changed in at least 75 years. But about forty-ish years ago, the FCC gave the telcos permission to end support for the old pulse dialing phones, and many of them did. Some still support it at the local level, but with the caveat that the results may be unexpected when trying to input anything after the connection is made. They’re pretty much useless with a menu system that doesn’t have a voice option.
@blaineg@Tadlem43 I checked with my friend and I guess it’s no longer hooked up - he said “That phone would work, but the phone guy didn’t want to connect it for some reason, so it’s just decorative.”
@blaineg@Kyeh@Tadlem43 We still have a house phone, but it’s VOIP - no dedicated phone service. We have spotty cell reception inside our house (rural location, plus metal roof on the house), so the house phone gets used a lot. The house number rolls over to the cell phones, which is convenient when we are out.
@blaineg@Kyeh@werehatrack Well, the only thing I use it for is making phone calls and the very rare fax. If I want something to ‘input’ into, I use my cell phone. I’m just keeping ONE of my feet in the past. lol
@blaineg@Kyeh@macromeh I thought about getting VOIP, but, for me, that’s using the internet and kinda defeats the purpose of having a land line. They keep trying to push me to change to fiberoptic, but I continue to resist.
It costs a small fortune, but I’m going to keep it as long as I can.
@blaineg@macromeh@Tadlem43 That might be what happened with my friend’s phone - I think he got fiber. This guy has a landline inside his house but it’s not a rotary. He’s one of the few remaining Luddites in the world who doesn’t have a cell phone!
@blaineg@macromeh@Tadlem43 Well, he spends lots of time on his computer instead. It was actually a problem at some businesses during the pandemic shutdown because they expected people to call them from outside when they arrived, and he couldn’t!
@blaineg@Kyeh@macromeh ah… I see.
I have a suggestion for him. Since he doesn’t want to use a cell phone all the time and won’t be spending a lot of time on it, I have a Tracphone plan that is $19.99 for 3 months, 60 talk/text/data, and if he renews it, all of it that’s unused rolls over. It’s great for people like us who don’t want to go fully to a cell phone, but want to have one for emergencies, etc. and it doesn’t cost a lot.
He just needs to be careful about using it for accessing the internet because 60 mb of data doesn’t go very far. I have mine wi-fi’ed on my home internet, so the only time I use data is when I’m out. I make sure it’s turned off when I’m not using so that I won’t unintentionally use the data when I’m playing games or whatever here at home.
Just a thought.
@blaineg@macromeh@Tadlem43 Thanks, I’ll tell him. He had a flip phone once with the deal where you just buy minutes when you need them and somehow thinks he could still find something like that again, even though I’ve told him otherwise.
@blaineg@Kyeh@macromeh@Tadlem43 Tracphone still does that. Their flip phones are technically smart phones (they run Android instead of Java) but have only the flip phone keypad to do anything.
@blaineg@Kyeh@macromeh@pakopako No, but it’s only $19.99 for 3 months. You get 60 minutes/60 texts/ 60 mb data, but if you don’t use it, it rolls over. If you use more, they charge by the minute…I think. I never go over on mine.
It’s great for people who don’t use their phone a lot or for an extra to keep for just emergencies.
@Targaryen It’s so pretty! My friend who wants a flip phone - I’ll tell him. Thanks!
(Even though I prefer that design I will probably stick with my iPhone.)
@Kyeh@Targaryen Not quite as sleek, but my Galaxy Flip fits in a pocket and is so much easier to hold on to than a brick phone. It sits on a Qi charger folded. I’m happy with it.
A dumb monitor TV with high quality display. We have an HD Toshiba that is getting a little weary, and everything at the store has built in Roku/Chrome/Fire/randomchineseapps/etc that are probably vulnerable and almost certainly won’t be supported with updates for very long. Big screen, multiple video and combined A/V ( but no network or wifi) inputs, and just a management GUI. I’ll plug in whatever streaming box I want, that will be from the actual vendor and will be properly supported with updates.
@brainmist Or the guilt trip. Or the incessant need to fiddle with it multiple times per day just to keep it from dying. Or the need to actually pay attention to what you’re doing when you actually need to fiddle with it, if it’s a wind-up watch.
Bonus: It does something useful.
IMO, both pocket and wrist dumbwatches are far more useful than any Tamagotchi was. (And so far, my opinion of “smart watches” is that the smartest move is not to have one, for me. YMMV.)
@brainmist@werehatrack I always admired the kids in school who had a robot watch; it transformed and stood up and had a cheap 4 column Space Invaders built in!
Car radios with traditional two-knob power, volume and tuning. Buttons for anything else are fine, but those functions should absolutely fucking be on a pair of goddamn knobs.
Vent (wing) windows in cars.
@Tadlem43 Agreed!!! I came here to say that!!!
@Kidsandliz @Tadlem43
Me too. I hate when it’s a cooler rainy day and you have to put the ac to clear up the window and freeze in the car.
@Tadlem43 cozy wings
@Kidsandliz @Star2236 @Tadlem43 I had the pleasure (?) of being able to play with vent windows in my parents’ Buicks and a USED Cadillac and Oldsmobile they had. Vent windows really were cool, cause they could both blow and suck (!).
Of course the older Buicks didn’t have A/C; it was an expensive option, so the vent window was the best you could do for airflow cooling. The Cadillac had air but it didn’t work some of the time and they never wanted to pay to fix it; living in coastal California at the time meant not very hot except for a few rare days. But I remember taking vacation trips through Northern California and they wanted to leave at 3AM to get through Redding and Red Bluff before those places got up to 100 in the afternoon which happened even back then.
I’d love a non-web, non-smart, straight-up cell phone that actually works!
@ybmuG Nokia 1110. Best selling cell phone ever. 250 million units sold. Text and calls only. https://nokia.fandom.com/wiki/Nokia_1110?file=Nokia_1110.jpg
@tweezak @ybmuG Put a slide-out keyboard and a stylus on that, and I know some people who would be all over it
@tweezak @ybmuG and snake. Played snake on that thing like it was going out of style.
/image stick shift
but in normal cars.
Why do I need to get something fast’n’furious to get a shifter?
@2many2no ^^^^^^SO MUCH THIS^^^^^^
@2many2no Get a Jetta. Doesn’t have a pretty shifter like the one in the pic, but still available with a manual transmission.
@2many2no @ahacksaw I’m allergic to VW, I used to work there.
@2many2no @werehatrack LOL, understood. I’ve driven them for years, but the quality seems to be declining. Plus I’m annoyed that they’re not going to sell the ID3 here. But I do love the manual transmission in my Jetta.
@2many2no @ahacksaw Blame statistics and the lobbying efforts of Ford and GM that created the loopholes that have jammed our highways full of overbloated SUVs and pickups. VW’s brain-dead analysis of the numbers, their consistent failure to replicate the ad successes that they had in the '60s, the huge black eyes they gave themselves with the Rabbit, and their overall lack of understanding of the true meaning of “quality” (not to even touch on the letters TDI) have left them absolutely convinced that there is no market whatsoever for really small vehicles in the US, and no demand at all for EVs in the modern not-really-small subcompact range. So all we’ll get is the ID4. Not that I care; VW and I parted ways in 1985. They got custody of my willingness to ever be an enthusiast about anything, ever again. I’m told it was in the dumpster ten minutes later.
@ahacksaw @werehatrack I’ve been looking at the Subaru Crosstrek, one of very few vehicles with available manual. It’s relatively small and definitely not high performance, but it’s still damned expensive. I’m hoping my 22 year old Saturn just keeps putting along, so far, so good.
Armstrong windows!!
@yakkoTDI With cranks that don’t break.
@yakkoTDI With all due respect, what’s that?
@Tadlem43 @yakkoTDI Non-power-operated car windows, at the very least in the driver’s door. The kind that go up and down via a sturdy crank and a strong arm.
@werehatrack @yakkoTDI Ah… ok, thanks. I’ve never heard them called that. Just ‘windows that crank’.
@Tadlem43 @werehatrack @yakkoTDI
I call them crank windows
@yakkoTDI cozy wings
@hap46st @Tadlem43 @werehatrack @yakkoTDI I never knew that’s what they were called either, but YES!!! I want those too!
@hap46st @Kyeh @Tadlem43 @werehatrack They are called Armstrong windows because they make your arm strong!
@hap46st @Tadlem43 @werehatrack @yakkoTDI
Makes perfect sense!
Dial-Up Modems!!
I miss the screech, squeal and funky beep sounds! 
For old times sake here’s a flashback. ENJOY!!
@IndifferentDude I’ve got several fax numbers I can pass on to you if you are desperate for a goodnight lullaby.
@IndifferentDude Only if used to contact W.O.P.R.
@IndifferentDude @w3kn How about a nice gane of chess?
@IndifferentDude @werehatrack A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
@IndifferentDude Hahah, omg, you had a color computer?
Bring back Zork.
Headlights. Friggin 5000k+ LEDs should never had been put in a vehicle headlight
@DocJRoberts YES - this too!
@DocJRoberts @Kyeh
Omg I hate ultra bright vampire repellent headlights. Even on clear night (not to mention fuckin rainy ones) I can’t see with douche bags driving past me with those. I get it you can’t see but why make it so the oncoming car can’t see and almost hits you (or anything else).
@DocJRoberts The ones I hate are the people who buy the LED conversions that aren’t properly designed, purchased solely on the demerits of the seller’s claims of wattage or lumens. Once installed, they look blindingly bright to the idiot vehicle owner, so they’re sure that these must be putting out more light. Well, yes, they probably are, but not where it will do any good. Badly-designed LED conversions just dazzle oncoming traffic, and leave the driver of the offending vehicle squinting almost as much as the people he’s endangering, because the amount of light where it belongs actually is less than it was with the halogens. Well-designed LED conversions appear no brighter to the other traffic than the halogens they replace, because their output pattern precisely matches the halogen’s. In low-beams, that means there is relatively little upward throw of light, with more light on the road where it does the driver some good.
I have good conversions on our daily-driver vehicles; they don’t seem to alarm anyone in low-beam mode, but my road view is much improved. I see idiots with bad conversions all the time; you can always tell that they are clueless (and assholes) because if they get flashed, they’ll swap to what they think is high beams, and the telltale flicker will be the only clue that they did it; the brilliance doesn’t change at all. I’ve had them come past me on rural interstates lots of times, and as they pull alongside, if I’ve been in high beams, I’ll dim my lights - and as they pull ahead, it becomes painfully obvious that their headlights are doing next to nothing useful.
I would have voted ‘old-school radio’ but depending on your definition of such, it never went away. I can still listen to the AM band on my tube radios dating back as far as the late 1930s. The broadcasted content could be better, though…
@PooltoyWolf I never used a car with tube radios but apparently those existed before the “transistor radio” era of I guess the 60’s. I’ve heard tube-era cars needed a special alternator to make the high voltage needed for the tube radios.
But I do remember the “saved station” buttons that were mechanical and when you pressed them the indicator on a horizontal line would move to where the mechanical stop had been placed last time you set it. You’d often still need to tweak the tuning knob to fine-tune the station.
And put the fucking dimmer switch back on the dead pedal where it belongs.
@detailer Eh, not so much for me. I don’t miss hitting the dimmer as collateral damage in a slightly sloppy clutch pedal stomp.
@detailer @werehatrack oh I could imagine that being a problem, but the big ol’ American cars i had experienced were all automatics. Sucky ones at that.
On the topic of dimmers and column controls — I just wish there was some standard for where wipers and headlights are. I’m constantly doing the wrong actio going between “Japanese car standard” and “European car standard” and “American car standard” (There really is no standard)
@detailer @pmarin @werehatrack When I was driving during a vacation in New Zealand (drive on the left side of the road from the right side of the vehicle), I was constantly turning on the windshield wipers when making a turn. (A sure warning to locals of a crazy foreign tourist driver.)
There are some days I go out with only my cellular Watch. It has texting and phone calls if I need it. In a pinch it also has wallet. The only thing I wish I had in a dumb phone would have is a decent camera in case I need to snap a photo of something.
Mimeograph machine. I miss that smell.
@heartny now there is a scent memory I didn’t know I had, but yes!
@heartny @pmarin And the even nastier smell of the ditto machine.
@blaineg I still have a house phone. I wish I could find one of the old box phones that everyone had, the square desk phones, but the only ones they have today are horrible quality.
Everyone laughs at my landline… until the cell tower goes down then they’re all beating on my door wanting to use the phone. lol
@blaineg @Tadlem43 My friend has one of these out in his studio. It works.
Once when he had a party the millennials were all marveling at it.
@blaineg @Kyeh @Tadlem43 I haven’t researched this, but my guess is those old phones would survive the EMP from a nuclear blast (if not TOO close by). [And same for the POTS system of (Grand)Ma Bell, where still operational.] I’ve seen them survive housefuls of rugrats. I’ve seen them bounce off concrete floors topped with vinyl, with no damage. The only thing I’ve seen take any down were house fires.
@blaineg @Kyeh lol Does the can you use a rotary phone with today’s …or 1970’s…wiring?
That’s awesome!
Now, if you find a Ma Bell push button that works, let me know!
POPSOCKETS! SPA KITS! POLLY POCKETS! AWESOME!
@blaineg @Tadlem43
Evidently he does use the rotary with today’s wiring, if that’s what you asked?
@blaineg @Tadlem43 This is on Ebay right now:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225453319007
@blaineg @Tadlem43 I got this odd thing from a friend who was clearing out a relative’s house - not sure if it works though.
@blaineg @Kyeh Interesting. I didn’t think it would work with today’s wiring. That’s cool!
@blaineg @Kyeh Yeah! The square one is what I’m looking for! I’ll check it out.
Thanks!
@Tadlem43 I have an old Bell South push button phone that for reasons unknown I am still hanging on to. Whisper me and we could work out a deal. It’s that cream color. I used it last in the early 2010’s (Bought it probably 10 or so years prior to that) as I had a recorder on it to be able to keep up with what brat child was up to next to try to keep her out of trouble (Also wouldn’t let her have a cell phone unless she had a job to pay for it but some kids, of which she was one, get in more trouble with a cell phone so I kept it in my room “after hours”. She had trouble with that job concept thing to keep one long enough to keep a cell turned on more than a month or two. LOL).
@blaineg @Kyeh @Tadlem43 believe it or not, you used to be able to rent those exact phones from the phone company. My grandparents were still paying rent on one in the early 2000s (they’d had service with the local company for probably 40-50 years). When we finally got rid of the service, we asked the phone company if they wanted it back. They told us we’d “paid for it so we could keep it”
@blaineg @Kyeh @Tadlem43 The wiring of residential and simple business landline phones, at the consumer end, hasn’t changed in at least 75 years. But about forty-ish years ago, the FCC gave the telcos permission to end support for the old pulse dialing phones, and many of them did. Some still support it at the local level, but with the caveat that the results may be unexpected when trying to input anything after the connection is made. They’re pretty much useless with a menu system that doesn’t have a voice option.
@Kyeh @Tadlem43 A friend has one like this, still working. He says it confounds the younglings.
@blaineg @Tadlem43 I checked with my friend and I guess it’s no longer hooked up - he said “That phone would work, but the phone guy didn’t want to connect it for some reason, so it’s just decorative.”
@blaineg @Kyeh @Tadlem43 We still have a house phone, but it’s VOIP - no dedicated phone service. We have spotty cell reception inside our house (rural location, plus metal roof on the house), so the house phone gets used a lot. The house number rolls over to the cell phones, which is convenient when we are out.
@blaineg @Kyeh @werehatrack Well, the only thing I use it for is making phone calls and the very rare fax. If I want something to ‘input’ into, I use my cell phone. I’m just keeping ONE of my feet in the past. lol
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh I thought about getting VOIP, but, for me, that’s using the internet and kinda defeats the purpose of having a land line. They keep trying to push me to change to fiberoptic, but I continue to resist.
It costs a small fortune, but I’m going to keep it as long as I can.
@blaineg @macromeh @Tadlem43 That might be what happened with my friend’s phone - I think he got fiber. This guy has a landline inside his house but it’s not a rotary. He’s one of the few remaining Luddites in the world who doesn’t have a cell phone!
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh And is probably more mentally healthy because of it. lol
@blaineg @macromeh @Tadlem43 Well, he spends lots of time on his computer instead. It was actually a problem at some businesses during the pandemic shutdown because they expected people to call them from outside when they arrived, and he couldn’t!
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh ah… I see.
I have a suggestion for him. Since he doesn’t want to use a cell phone all the time and won’t be spending a lot of time on it, I have a Tracphone plan that is $19.99 for 3 months, 60 talk/text/data, and if he renews it, all of it that’s unused rolls over. It’s great for people like us who don’t want to go fully to a cell phone, but want to have one for emergencies, etc. and it doesn’t cost a lot.
He just needs to be careful about using it for accessing the internet because 60 mb of data doesn’t go very far. I have mine wi-fi’ed on my home internet, so the only time I use data is when I’m out. I make sure it’s turned off when I’m not using so that I won’t unintentionally use the data when I’m playing games or whatever here at home.
Just a thought.
@blaineg @macromeh @Tadlem43 Thanks, I’ll tell him. He had a flip phone once with the deal where you just buy minutes when you need them and somehow thinks he could still find something like that again, even though I’ve told him otherwise.
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh @Tadlem43 Tracphone still does that. Their flip phones are technically smart phones (they run Android instead of Java) but have only the flip phone keypad to do anything.
@blaineg @macromeh @Tadlem43 @pakopako They let you buy minutes as needed? Instead of a monthly charge?
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh @pakopako Yeah… that’s the one I use. I have a Samsung android and it works well.
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh @pakopako No, but it’s only $19.99 for 3 months. You get 60 minutes/60 texts/ 60 mb data, but if you don’t use it, it rolls over. If you use more, they charge by the minute…I think. I never go over on mine.
It’s great for people who don’t use their phone a lot or for an extra to keep for just emergencies.
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh @Tadlem43 Aw, they stopped the 1 year 400 minutes plan?
@blaineg @Kyeh @macromeh @pakopako No. They still have it
https://www.tracfone.com/plans/basic-phones-full-year-plan-400-minutes
Flip phones. There was something satisfying about flicking it open and closed.
@Targaryen Easier to hold, too,
and fit into pockets.
@Kyeh I guess Razr made a comeback if you liked those.
@Targaryen It’s so pretty! My friend who wants a flip phone - I’ll tell him. Thanks!
(Even though I prefer that design I will probably stick with my iPhone.)
@Kyeh @Targaryen Not quite as sleek, but my Galaxy Flip fits in a pocket and is so much easier to hold on to than a brick phone. It sits on a Qi charger folded. I’m happy with it.
@rockblossom @Targaryen
Those look pretty nice!
Click clacks…
A dumb monitor TV with high quality display. We have an HD Toshiba that is getting a little weary, and everything at the store has built in Roku/Chrome/Fire/randomchineseapps/etc that are probably vulnerable and almost certainly won’t be supported with updates for very long. Big screen, multiple video and combined A/V ( but no network or wifi) inputs, and just a management GUI. I’ll plug in whatever streaming box I want, that will be from the actual vendor and will be properly supported with updates.
@duodec can’t you turn off the smart features?
@duodec @pakopako With some I’ve seen, no. The Helpiness is baked in, through and through.
Analog pocket watches. It’s like a tamagotchi but without the animation!
@brainmist Or the guilt trip. Or the incessant need to fiddle with it multiple times per day just to keep it from dying. Or the need to actually pay attention to what you’re doing when you actually need to fiddle with it, if it’s a wind-up watch.
Bonus: It does something useful.
IMO, both pocket and wrist dumbwatches are far more useful than any Tamagotchi was. (And so far, my opinion of “smart watches” is that the smartest move is not to have one, for me. YMMV.)
@brainmist @werehatrack I always admired the kids in school who had a robot watch; it transformed and stood up and had a cheap 4 column Space Invaders built in!
Video recording devices that can record and playback video without any possibility of the footage being transmitted nor copied. For…reasons.