Technology that has died since the year 2000

[beccabear67]

I don't care for the zippy and often extremely brief texts natures of the facebook or twitter things... I'd like them to have a zipper mouth I can shut like the puppet on Rainbow and they would go away! Both have done much in terms of getting bad misinformation out there. I've never registered with either but heard enough negative about Facebook, and I've never wanted to hand over all my info to sign up.

[Mulletino]

Agreed, I much prefer using "Forums" but they seem to be viewed nowadays as niche. A few online communities i belong to were forced to ditch their forums because nobody was using them anymore due to social media. Instead they now use facebook groups, discord or reddit.
I guess usenet suffered the same fate when forums became popular, although usenet was a harsh place to be with the tech types who thrived there enjoying their abilities to belittle casual or new users. I used to have to moderate my old work's newsgroups and that was a truly horrible task, as any slip up or miss-step meant the "internet experts" would willingly jump on it as if they'd been waiting all their sad lives for it to happen.

[Arran]

Website discussion forums made with software like vBulletin or phpBB, although their heyday was between 2000 and 2010ish. Society has turned its back on them in favour of Facebook. This forum is an increasingly rare breed now.

In many respects it's tragic as it's a centralisation of the internet where the owners and users of Facebook groups are at the mercy of Mark Zuckerberg.

The internet succeeded in the 1990s and early 2000s because it was a decentralised system (compared with centralised systems like BT Prestel, Teletext, and these pseudointernet services from Compuserve and AOL - all of which have died) but now large swathes of the internet are in the iron grip of a small number of mega corporations like Google and Facebook. The 'open' internet is dying, through a combination of abandonment by users and the way that the mega corporations hoover up most of the advertising revenue, to the point where in 10 years time a 'freestanding' website will probably be as quaint and as obsolete as renting a VHS video from a shop on Saturday night.

[staffslad]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

Par boots - this is true yeah and may-be Superdrug

Video Playing Machines are another and a mega one I was only talking about yesterday is the old Computer's (around 1992/3 - 1995/97) i recall where you had too loads a Disc into the the Drive itself or on the Machine (may-be!!), but you had to save to certain Drives - one A) I think was to the machine and C/D ) to the Disc as back up/or more 1st choice!!

It is incredible to think A) pardon the pun here, that we had to this and it is only 20 years since or so and that Computers looked like they do Today and B) all this existed - abliet sllightly (in the internet days) though as though the 'net had being going many years 1992 onwards-mid 90s was when it came into existance as we know it now!!

Another 2 - lesser so though I can think of - are Paigers and the sadly missed Fax Machine as well!

80sChav

A: was the 3.5" drive
B: was the 5.25" drive
C: was the hard drive
D: was typically the CD/DVD drive or maybe another kind of drive

Even on today's PCs, the A, B, C, D etc convention is still used, though few will now have drives A and B, and even CD/DVD drives are not always fitted.

Yes, sometimes you would put a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy into the appropriate drive and copy its contents to the C drive, though sometimes if the floppy contained an executable program it could be run from the floppy, or there would be a 'setup' file which would do everything for you. You would also I think be referring to using MS-DOS rather than Windows, where text commands are entered to get the PC to do what you wanted.

[80sChav]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

Chemists shops with camera film processing facilities. Nowadays users of film cameras have to use dedicated camera shops for film processing.

Par boots - this is true yeah and may-be Superdrug

Video Playing Machines are another and a mega one I was only talking about yesterday is the old Computer's (around 1992/3 - 1995/97) i recall where you had too loads a Disc into the the Drive itself or on the Machine (may-be!!), but you had to save to certain Drives - one A) I think was to the machine and C/D ) to the Disc as back up/or more 1st choice!!

It is incredible to think A) pardon the pun here, that we had to this and it is only 20 years since or so and that Computers looked like they do Today and B) all this existed - abliet sllightly (in the internet days) though as though the 'net had being going many years 1992 onwards-mid 90s was when it came into existance as we know it now!!

Another 2 - lesser so though I can think of - are Paigers and the sadly missed Fax Machine as well!

80sChav

[Richard1978]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

Chemists shops with camera film processing facilities. Nowadays users of film cameras have to use dedicated camera shops for film processing.

Even printing from digital sources at a shop is hard, my local Asda recently withdrew their coin-op printers & I had to go to Boots to get some prints done.

[Arran]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

Chemists shops with camera film processing facilities. Nowadays users of film cameras have to use dedicated camera shops for film processing.

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

I doubt if the flashy LCD/LED TVs of today will last 15 years on a regular basis.

i had a panasonic plasma. great tv, but it give up after 9 years. my aunt bought a 26 inch panasonic lcd at the same time, and thats still going.

[staffslad]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

Prior to the digital switchover, we had a TV and VCR in nearly every room, as we could use portable aerials to pick up analogue transmissions. Now that analogue is dead, we have only 3--1 main TV connected to Sky and 2 connected to Freeview. It's a shame analogue had to go imo. I threw out 3 portable CRT TVs as digital portable aerials wouldn't pick up anything around here. Those TVs were all at least 15 years old and worked fine. I doubt if the flashy LCD/LED TVs of today will last 15 years on a regular basis.

[staffslad]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

I still have a VCR connected to a CRT TV with a set-top box sitting on top so to pick up Freeview channels. I also still use it to tape programmes that are on at ungodly hours to view later.

We still have a combined phone/fax machine, probably dating from the late 90s/early 2000s, and it is still our main landline. We used it to send faxes to my uncle. He was deaf and couldn't use a phone. He has passed away now so the fax part goes unused.

My decade-old desktop PC still has a ball mouse.

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

mini disc players / recorders.

vcd - video cd players.

[Arran]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

Mice with a ball in them.

[aaronwarrior]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

desktop computers aren't dead per say technically, but with smartphones, tablets and laptops becoming more and more popular I would definitely say that they are dying. As Apple say about the iPad pro "what's a computer".

[staffslad]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

Looking at the list I was surprised to see that I still have quite a few items on it.

Not sure, but have PDAs running OS like Windows C etc now all but disappeared? Again, I still have one bought from Aldi circa 2004 and sold with sat nav software and a separate GPS antenna.

[CrystalBall]

Re: Technology that has died since the year 2000

I think the ghetto blaster died in the late 1980s, to be honest. The Walkman effectively took over from the mid-1980s and quality CD/cassette/radio portable combo units were only popular for a short time. Mini- and micro-systems became all the range from about 1990 and, with a few exceptions, the combo units were quickly relegated to the cheap and cheerless end of the market. I wish I had bought more of them when they were available but there's always ebay to fall back on.