Tech you miss/ new tech trends you hate - ok boomers

[lemonsolebrother]

Only Actual Boomers remember that.

And some from Gen X too:

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Why do I need to register an account to use a printer to its fullest potential?

I agree. Newer printers behave more like IOT devices in how they always want to download patches or firmware updates and such.

When I moved out of my office, one of the things I was sure take to my home office with me was an older color printer that was made before connecting to the internet became a thing. All it does it print without the needless bells, whistles, and annoyances found in today's printers. It's a good standby/backup printer and serves as a reminder of the time when devices did only what you bought them for without extraneous bloat and functionality.

The other trend I hate is how color printers need to do periodic "maintenance" even if you hardly use them. All it seems do is deplete the (costly) color ink cartridges at a faster than usual rate. If anything, this feature maintains the company's revenue stream due to all the wasted ink people have to replace.

I'm probably older than a lot of the Kiwis here, but when I was a kid I had a Dick Tracy watch:

In junior high, my best friend at the time had a multi-function watch. Although there was no radio a la Dick Tracy, it had the usual options for time, date, and stopwatch along with one other built-in feature I hadn't seen on a watch before or after: the ability to keep score for two entities up to a 99-99 tie.

I see Apple Watch offers this ability as an app, but I haven't seen this feature be offered natively ever since my classmate showed off his watch ages ago.

 

[AbyssStarer]

I very much dislike dealing with computers' more technical side and wish we could not do everything digital. Every time I come into a computer error and I follow a guide I encounter some issue that isn't in the guide and I'm lost. Even goddamn Sony fucked up the Vita's content manager (the application that backs up your data to PC) and if you try to install it now you'll get an error. All because they got so asshurt about the PSP's piracy issues they needed to gimp the Vita with awful memory cards. Sure, they were right to be asshurt, and at least I can backup my data to my own drive and not just a cloud, but fuck.

I hate eBooks which are DRM. God forbid you want to use one eReader brand over another, you could lose access to your books because fuck you. I tried to figure out how to get rid of DRM on some of my eBooks and it took forever to get through because computers are annoying and and I ended up having to stop anyway because I wasn't about to figure out how to extract account keys.

Remember those days where if you had CDs, you could "rip" songs from them and make a collage of your favorites into another CD?

I did this last week. I make mixes every ~6 months of the music that's come out or I've found to listen to in my car so I don't touch my phone while driving. Just a couple weeks ago I got a new import CD in the mail, put it in a USB disc drive since my new PC doesn't have a drive and I ripped the m4a's off the CD to archive and put on my phone. If there's any B-sides to the singles that are on a CD I import which aren't on the disc then I find them online and put them on the mixes I make.

Release it on USB drive that's read only at the firmware level to prevent accidental erasure. A Kingston 32GB USB drive costs about £5 retail, which means bulk purchase of duplicator grade drives will be a significant reduction on that. Yes, more expensive than stamping optical disks to duplicate but with people not having optical drives nowadays, is it really such a big deal. I'm pretty sure there exists a PCIe mass duplicator card which allows for copying data to a stick of USB drives at the max speed allowed for by USB 3.0 so it wouldn't be that slow really.

This sounds like a great idea. I've had too many times I've tried to play PC games and got caught on something dumb like a missing C script (I dont remember specifically what it was or care) or video codec. I hate dealing with computer errors and if they could make PC games where that shit does not happen and I get to have a physical edition then for the love of god gimme.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

I miss being able to play all of the music I paid for through the Google Play app. I can't believe what they did is even legal.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

I miss being able to play all of the music I paid for through the Google Play app. I can't believe what they did is even legal.

Its only legal because AFAIK ToS'/shrink wrap agreements have yet to be really tested in the courts (assuming US) they also have a defense of "We gave people notice and allowed them to download the music they paid for (and even the music you added to your library that you didn't pay for)."

What really stinks is that Google Music offered higher bit rates for streaming then Youtube Music (the so called replacement).

 

[Molly White's Breast Milk]

Why stream music when you have mp3s and winamp? Invite a fly honey over and her panties will be SOAKED after seeing your custom winamp skin.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Why stream music when you have mp3s and winamp? Invite a fly honey over and her panties will be SOAKED after seeing your custom winamp skin.

I had all of my music stored on my phone. Now, when I'm working in areas with poor reception, I can't listen to any music at all. Fuck you, Joogle

 

[AnOminous]

I hate dealing with computer errors and if they could make PC games where that shit does not happen and I get to have a physical edition then for the love of god gimme.

Another thing that sucks is stupid cutesy error messages like "O NOEZ GERBILS HAS EATEN YOUR DOCUMENT" or some dumb shit like that instead of just telling you what went wrong.

 

[Erika Furudo]

I had all of my music stored on my phone. Now, when I'm working in areas with poor reception, I can't listen to any music at all. Fuck you, Joogle

This is why MP3 players still exist.

Remember those days where if you had CDs, you could "rip" songs from them and make a collage of your favorites into another CD?

Physical media is slowly, but surely fading away. I like the convenience of digital media and streaming, but you lose ownership. Not even that, stuff can get pulled and removed at any time for any reason.

It's not like I bought CDs anyway, but still.

Just buy CDs. Storage sucks, some silver has peeled away on some, but I still have access to a disc drive and a device I can shove all my CDs on. I get piracy is a thing, but I think eventually they will find a way to even fuck over pirates. When cancel culture moves to music expect your library to get significantly smaller, they have removed products for less. I'm honestly shocked MJ hasn't been written out of everything due to the sex abuse allegations, then you will have other songs removed for being "problematic", etc.

I fucking hate word. Everything on my PC has the correct language settings, but no matter what word spellcheck keeps resetting to American English. At this point I dont think whatever follows windows 10 could somehow be worse, we already have it murdering HDDs, spying on you, generally being shit, constant fucking updates, etc. Old PC's were slower, the old internet was slow, and everythign was big and clunky, but holy fuck I miss that stuff compared to all the shit we have today, it was just simpler.

 

[Kosher Dill]

This is why MP3 players still exist.

Who needs a dedicated MP3 player? You can load your own MP3s onto most phones and play them back through the media player app of your choice.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Who needs a dedicated MP3 player? You can load your own MP3s onto most phones and play them back through the media player app of your choice.

I actually use VLC as my mobile music player and it works really well.

The google player can eat a big dick and after spending 30 seconds looking for a replacement on the app store I decided that I don't trust those. VLC also plays FLAC, WMA and all kinds of shit and lets you browse a directory structure instead of going by tags. God forbid something isn't tagged right when using google music, that song will then go into the "lol idunno" pile. If the album or artist name is misspelled on one song that will be treated as a separate thing. I hate it so much.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Another thing that sucks is stupid cutesy error messages like "O NOEZ GERBILS HAS EATEN YOUR DOCUMENT" or some dumb shit like that instead of just telling you what went wrong.

That or cryptic messages such as "Error 1345673254389. This program will now terminate." which tell you nothing about what happened or the possible cause/solution.

I fucking hate word. Everything on my PC has the correct language settings, but no matter what word spellcheck keeps resetting to American English. At this point I dont think whatever follows windows 10 could somehow be worse, we already have it murdering HDDs, spying on you, generally being shit, constant fucking updates, etc. Old PC's were slower, the old internet was slow, and everythign was big and clunky, but holy fuck I miss that stuff compared to all the shit we have today, it was just simpler.

My home office PC installed a windows 10 update the other day that added a useless feature for me and may have tweaked some settings I didn't want it to. That's always aggravating and it clashes with the idea that updates should be as unobtrusive as possible and minimize any side effects.

It's also funny that as users, we're told to be careful what we install on our computers lest we get infected with nasty malware, but we're totally at the mercy of Microsoft with whatever it wants to put in its Windows updates. The whole "telemetry" thing that got introduced with Windows 10 reeks of spy or snoop ware and certain things seem much slower with win10 than they did with prior versions of Windows.

As much as 386 and 486 machines would be deemed clunky and obsolete by today's standards, they were certainly the workhorses of their era in spite of their performance limitations. Sure, the software from that area was also clunky -- especially applications that still ran under DOS -- but at least the programs did their job well with little to no bloat because space and efficiency mattered more back then. I wish this was more of a priority with current year application development than diversity hires and quotas.

 

[Guest 666]

iPod classic. Fuck, just something without a touch screen that has no internet capability to distract me with.

 

[Molly White's Breast Milk]

That or cryptic messages such as "Error 1345673254389. This program will now terminate." which tell you nothing about what happened or the possible cause/solution.


My home office PC installed a windows 10 update the other day that added a useless feature for me and may have tweaked some settings I didn't want it to. That's always aggravating and it clashes with the idea that updates should be as unobtrusive as possible and minimize any side effects.

It's also funny that as users, we're told to be careful what we install on our computers lest we get infected with nasty malware, but we're totally at the mercy of Microsoft with whatever it wants to put in its Windows updates. The whole "telemetry" thing that got introduced with Windows 10 reeks of spy or snoop ware and certain things seem much slow wit win10 than they did with prior versions of Windows.

As much as 386 and 486 machines would be deemed clunky and obsolete by today's standards, they were certainly the workhorses of their era in spite of their performance limitations. Sure, the software from that area was also clunky -- especially applications that still ran under DOS -- but at least the programs did their job well with little to no bloat because space and efficiency mattered more back then. I wish this was more of a prioirty with current year application development than diversity hires and quotas.

I've posted this before but everyone running windows 10 should run this.

It stops all the windows bloatware and spying shit. The best part? It only allows windows security updates.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I agree. Newer printers behave more like IOT devices in how they always want to download patches or firmware updates and such.

When I moved out of my office, one of the things I was sure take to my home office with me was an older color printer that was made before connecting to the internet became a thing. All it does it print without the needless bells, whistles, and annoyances found in today's printers. It's a good standby/backup printer and serves as a reminder of the time when devices did only what you bought them for without extraneous bloat and functionality.

The other trend I hate is how color printers need to do periodic "maintenance" even if you hardly use them. All it seems do is deplete the (costly) color ink cartridges at a faster than usual rate. If anything, this feature maintains the company's revenue stream due to all the wasted ink people have to replace.

I was helping a friend set up their new printer on their new computer and it was horrifying. He's pretty clueless and trusting, it's old lady syndrome in a way. At one point during the driver installation HP tried to sign him up for a subscription that would send him new ink cartridges at a regular interval. If I hadn't been there he would have filled it all in, thinking it was mandatory and surely HP would know these things better than him.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

So many PC gamers nowadays are obsessed with having old games run in modern resolutions, and I don't understand why. Most of the time, the games are clearly not meant to be played at modern resolutions because something inevitably breaks, be it the HUD that gets stretched out or cutscenes that show things that aren't supposed to be there. The first two Fallouts are a good example; there's a widescreen mod for them but it zooms the game so far out and it makes the dialogue boxes not even fill out the screen like they're supposed to. The GOG release System Shock 2 gives you the option of playing in modern resolutions, but they make all the text and menus tiny, which is especially annoying for a game with a lot of menus and reading.

I just don't get what's so hard about playing games in 4:3 resolutions. I could understand it if it's one of those cases where the game plays in a tiny window and you have to mess with the resolution to get it working, but most of the time it's sperging about how to get some game that was made 30 years ago playing in ultra-widescreen.

 

[Molly White's Breast Milk]

So many PC gamers nowadays are obsessed with having old games run in modern resolutions, and I don't understand why. Most of the time, the games are clearly not meant to be played at modern resolutions because something inevitably breaks, be it the HUD that gets stretched out or cutscenes that show things that aren't supposed to be there. The first two Fallouts are a good example; there's a widescreen mod for them but it zooms the game so far out and it makes the dialogue boxes not even fill out the screen like they're supposed to. The GOG release System Shock 2 gives you the option of playing in modern resolutions, but they make all the text and menus tiny, which is especially annoying for a game with a lot of menus and reading.

I just don't get what's so hard about playing games in 4:3 resolutions. I could understand it if it's one of those cases where the game plays in a tiny window and you have to mess with the resolution to get it working, but most of the time it's sperging about how to get some game that was made 30 years ago playing in ultra-widescreen.

Play Simcity4 on a 27" monitor and you'll get it. But for most other shit? Yeah, stick with 4:3.

 

[stupidpieceofshit]

So many PC gamers nowadays are obsessed with having old games run in modern resolutions, and I don't understand why. Most of the time, the games are clearly not meant to be played at modern resolutions because something inevitably breaks, be it the HUD that gets stretched out or cutscenes that show things that aren't supposed to be there. The first two Fallouts are a good example; there's a widescreen mod for them but it zooms the game so far out and it makes the dialogue boxes not even fill out the screen like they're supposed to. The GOG release System Shock 2 gives you the option of playing in modern resolutions, but they make all the text and menus tiny, which is especially annoying for a game with a lot of menus and reading.

I just don't get what's so hard about playing games in 4:3 resolutions. I could understand it if it's one of those cases where the game plays in a tiny window and you have to mess with the resolution to get it working, but most of the time it's sperging about how to get some game that was made 30 years ago playing in ultra-widescreen.

I have worked with some monitors that won't stretch/upscale the image but instead display what ever the native resolution the game is in, in 1:1 pixel resolution making it hard/impossible to play due to high pixel density.

 

[FAQnews Correspondent]

So many PC gamers nowadays are obsessed with having old games run in modern resolutions, and I don't understand why. Most of the time, the games are clearly not meant to be played at modern resolutions because something inevitably breaks, be it the HUD that gets stretched out or cutscenes that show things that aren't supposed to be there. The first two Fallouts are a good example; there's a widescreen mod for them but it zooms the game so far out and it makes the dialogue boxes not even fill out the screen like they're supposed to. The GOG release System Shock 2 gives you the option of playing in modern resolutions, but they make all the text and menus tiny, which is especially annoying for a game with a lot of menus and reading.

I just don't get what's so hard about playing games in 4:3 resolutions. I could understand it if it's one of those cases where the game plays in a tiny window and you have to mess with the resolution to get it working, but most of the time it's sperging about how to get some game that was made 30 years ago playing in ultra-widescreen.

I do enjoy playing old games, particularly FPSs, in widescreen to get more visibility, but I wouldn't maximize resolution if I have to sacrifice HUD visibility.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

I was helping a friend set up their new printer on their new computer and it was horrifying. He's pretty clueless and trusting, it's old lady syndrome in a way. At one point during the driver installation HP tried to sign him up for a subscription that would send him new ink cartridges at a regular interval. If I hadn't been there he would have filled it all in, thinking it was mandatory and surely HP would know these things better than him.

Ahh, the infamous "Instant Ink" program HP tries to push people into agreeing to while setting up newer models of their printers.

The same thing happened with me when I bought a replacement printer/scanner nearly 3 year ago. The setup process wanted me to sign up for that program and I did what I could to nope out. I also believe I was later nagged once or twice about it, too. So, I'm not surprised your friend would have likely signed up because the on-screen prompts make it look rather convincing that it's either an expected or a required part of the setup/registration process.

As a sidebar, this relates to another aspect of tech that I hate: software that goes out of its way to sell users install installing bundled spyware or crapware by making it look like the latter is part of the intended software's setup process. I've seen this tactic result in people unknowingly install adware, spyware, or other unwanted garbage because they believed what was being installed was all part of the same program.

From what I read after a cursory search on the Instant Ink program and this web page (archive), I couldn't in good faith recommend anyone sign up for this program. A different page claims that HP will even print the occasional ad on one of your printed pages if you participate in the Instant Ink program. No thanks. This is enough to make me think the subscription model has gone too far and is being pushed when it's not the best idea (as if that's not already the case, amirite?).