1 yr. ago • 87%

Riding the technology wave, which of THESE devices have you owned? (Intended target around age 40 and up)

Years ago I worked at an electronics store and have seen some very interesting products over the years with some being very useful.

Not sure how to do a poll on here but wanted to see how people matched on the ownership of some of these useful devices .

Have you ever owned a My (answers)

-PDA? Yes, I had a Palm IIIe

-DVD-Recorder? Yes. Successor to VCR sure didn't last long... 😖

-WebTV? No. Interactive TV in the days of dial-up. 🙂

-3D Television? No

-Raspberry PI? No but I want to.

-Internet Radio Player? No This would be fun especially if it also had am/FM tuner

77 comments

Missed my favorite obsolete tech, the minidisc player. I Loved that thing. It was superior to CD in almost every way but never took off. Still loved getting 17 hours of music from one AA batt.

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- And the sounds! The articulated clamshell that popped open to receive the MD (where you could see all these miniature mechanisms), the slightly rattly plastic sound of putting the MD in the player, just chef's kiss. I had a couple in my last years of high school that I ordered from a Japanese importer. Seemed sooo futuristic. Almost forgot the inline remote! iPods had those for a minute years later but everyone gave up on inline remotes it seemed like.
  
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  That signature KaCHUNK and spinup <3
  
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Of this list, I only had PDAs. I had a couple of versions of the Palm Pilot. I remember learning the script using the stylus.

I’m getting closer and closer to my 60th birthday, and still remember my delight at using a mouse on a Mac with one 3.5 inch drive. Inserting and removing program vs storage discs was tedious, but just loving the intuitive interface and how quickly I was able to make the mouse an extension of my hand. So much easier than learning function keys and keyboard shortcuts. And then combining mouse clicks, functions, and keyboard shortcuts to be so much more productive than ever before.

We still have an original iPod that my husband uses in our basement, and I believe we still have a working Atari game console.

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I had a Palm IIIe, and a couple Handspring Treos including the thin all aluminum one and a Compaq PDA that took full sized PCMCIA cards where i connected an Orinoco Silver Ethernet card. Also got a Nokia linux PDA, can't remember the model, and sadly it was too slow.

DVD recorder i got off of Woot back when they were a good service. CD player that was the size of a VHS. A VHS player while my best friend had BetaMax. Oh and one of those Toshiba rear projection big screen TVs.

No webtv or 3d.

Tons of Pis

AnonRadio on sdf.org. i have old time radio playing at home over Ice cast and mpd which also connected to VPN so i can stream stuff from anywhere.

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- Also got a Nokia linux PDA
  
  I had the Nokia N810. Still one of the most satisfying bits of industrial design I've ever seen on a piece of Tech, but yeah, it was a bit of a slowpoke for the things I wanted it to do, and smartphones pretty quickly got good enough that I couldn't justify keeping it around for anything mobile.
  
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My parents had a WebTV when I was in highschool. They kept it for a very long time. it was awful.

I also have a Raspberry Pi Zero running a Pi Hole on my network. I don't think raspberry pi's are as unusual as some of the other things here. I know a lot of people who use them for various things.

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Not the target age (mid 20), but I daily drive a Dell Axim X5 with Windows Mobile 2003 on it. Still got a smart phone, but I enjoy using old PDAs as my alarm, jotting in appointments, calculating store prices, taking notes and making lists, and it's useful for swapping restaurant TVs away from Fox News!

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- useful for swapping restaurant TVs away from Fox News!
  
  Why did phone manufacturers stop putting IR transmitters in phones? So damned useful it was having one!
  
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  Admittedly it's a garbage means of transferring data xD I once transferred Doom from a HTC phone to a PDA. It took many minutes to do, and I had to restart it at one point xD
  
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PDA - I had a WinCE thing I picked up, never really used it

DVD Recorder - Only in my PC.. 'backed up' lots of movies

WebTV - I think my current TV still runs WebOS..

3d TV - had one, wasn't suckered into the £150 active glasses and got a passive set where the glasses were about 10p. Had fun with it but it never caught on.

Raspberry Pi - Loads of the things..

Internet radio player - I guess my car counts.

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- Those passive 3d TVs should have been cooler back then. I remember Borderlands 2 had a mode where you could use the passive 3d to do splitscreen, but full-screen. P1s screen would be polarized one way, and P2s the other way. You had some bleed between the two, but it was playable
  
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How about a Colecovision console, or a Laserdisc player?

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- LaserDisc goes back go the early 80's I didn't go back that far and I've never heard of a Colecovision console before..?
  
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- I still have my laserdisc player... i have been unable to get rid of it. Everytime i look at it, the nostalgia knocks me off my feet.
  
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- My older brother had a Colecovision. The arcade ports were obviously SO much better than the hand-me-down Atari 2600 in my room. It died though, when he was playing it while our dad yelled at him and then yanked it out of the wall and chucked it across the room... The two of them, they, uhhh, didn't always get along.
  
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Great idea for a post!

-PDA? Yes- Handspring Visor. It was supposed to be the Palm killer (it did have some success, as I remember).

-DVD-Recorder? No

-WebTV? No, but my less tech savvy friend had one. Those seemed doomed to fail.

-3D Television? Yes- spend way to much on two pairs of glasses that were used less than five time.

-Raspberry PI? Yes, but haven't done enough with it.

-Internet Radio Player? No

I also had some type of smart pen around 2001 that would transfer what you wrote onto the computer. I think you had to plug the top of the pen into a USB port. It was a large pen (probably the size width of 5-6 normal pens combined). I can't find the name of it. I think you had to have a special notebook with it too.

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- I remember being so happy going into Comp-USA and seeing so many different gadgets that I wanted to buy. It might have been 2000 when I bought my Palm PDA but they had been on the decline a little bit by then. I never hot my $300 out of it that's for sure.
  
  Regarding Raspberry Pi gonna see if there is a community for it on Lemmy. Maybe that would be part of the Linux discussion.
  
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- Did those 3D tvs actually work?
  
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  They did. But even at the height of its popularity, there were only a handful of movies that had it.
  
  The glasses were around $170 per (if I remember correctly). That was a big barrier to entry.
  
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  Yes but there was very little content and the concept never took off with the major content providers.
  
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PDA - Pretty much all the Palm devices from the Original (US Robotics) Palm 1000, III, V, even the m125
DVDR - Just in my computer not standalone
WebTV - Nope but 100% Tivo user (Standalone and Directv)
Raspberry Pi - I have one but it mostly sits in a drawer
Internet Radio - I had a friend work at SimpleDevices that was a standalone internet player (company long gone)

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PDA: I had a Compaq iPAQ which I never really got the hang of using.

DVD-R: For a while this was a great way to back things up, before large flash storage was a thing.

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PDA: UsRobotics Palm Pilot!

DVD Recorder: No (apart from the one in the desktop), but VHS recorder Yes, a couple of them.

WebTV: No, it was never a thing in my country

3D TV: I knew it would flop, never bought one. But father-in-law was discarding his 49" one, so I got it (don't even have the glasses). So yes, sort of.

Raspberry: Yes, bought one, 1st gen, to experiment for a project at work, but ended up using an ITX SBC, for all the RS232 and USB ports already integrated.

Internet Radio: No

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Raspberry Pi doesn't quite seek to match the rest. What's so strange about that? I have two, a 1b PiHole and a Pi400 that I use as a Steamlink.

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Turning 35 in October here.

-PDA? Had the HTC Excalibur

-DVD-Recorder? No but I sure used the DVD burner on my PC a lot lol

-WebTV? Yes!! I still think about it all the time. I probably interacted with the strangest and most interesting online content through WebTV. A true fever dream irl if ever there was one.

-3D Television? It came and went out of style before I ever could consider getting one.

-Raspberry PI? No. Definitely should consider getting into it since the future will have everyone programming/ engineering computers from a young age.

-Internet Radio Player? Never even knew they existed!

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49 year old here. I still own a 3D tv, but I've never actually used the 3D feature. I didn't even buy the TV. My dad gave my his old one when he upgraded.

I bought a Raspberry PI but never really did much with it.

I've never owned any of the others.

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PDA - yes. Palm Pilot and even an Apple Newton

3d TV - Yes, but I never used it
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PDA: XDA EXEC and some others I can't recall.

3D TV: no but I did setup my PC for 3D with Nvidia 3D

Raspberry Pi: setup a bunch of the gen 1 units as TVs at a children's creche

Internet radio: skipped that went straight to streaming

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- I need to check my processor/motherboard specs to make sure I can set up 3d . Sounds like a blast.
  
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DVD recorder - hell yes. I probably ended up with 300 totally legally burned copies of Netflix rentals that I've since thrown away because DVD quality now looks like trash.

Raspberry Pi - yes,though underused.

Didn't have the others cause they didn't really appeal to me. No major use case, IMO

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PDA: Palm zire

3D TV: I had one once, but never used the 3D capabilities

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Dvd recorder, raspi sn 3DTV (still my tv. It'd a 4K LG one)

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PDA- yes, plenty of Palm devices over the years. Pretty sure I had an IBM WorkPad 30x, a Zire 71, and a Tungsten T3. They were great devices, absolutely fantastic for the time period.

DVD recorder- yes, both for the TV and DVD burner drives in PCs.

Web TV- not me, but we did get a setup for my grandparents back in the day. What an absolutely terrible way to browse the internet.

3D tv- never saw the need personally.

Raspberry pi- oh yes, been playing with them since they came out.

Internet Radio Player- no, never did. By the time this made sense I was fully invested in the iPod world and had hoarded enough music to not make it worthwhile.

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Had a few Palm Pilots. Had a DVDR.

How come no love for the Mini Disc? What about the Laser disc? Laser Disc was the first porn I saw on a TV! Can't forget about that innovation.

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Let’s see

PDA: I mostly dodged this one. I did have a blackberry phone before I got my first Android.

DVD Recorder: Nope. I had a reader and a burner in my PC and I occasionally copied like that. My buddy had a 6 drive dvd duplicator though and that thing was amazing. Source disc I. The top, 5 blanks in their burners.

WebTV: No also. My mom almost bought a Philips 3DO but bailed at the last second crushing my hopes and dreams.

3D TV: I had a set of active shutter glasses from MSI that worked with a pair of 32mb Voodoo2 video cards in SLI. Each card rendered the image for an eye. I remember playing TONS of Quake 2.

RaspPi: Yes and it’s still in use running my 3d printer.

Internet Radio: I streamed a ton of internet radio on iTunes. Worked as a graphic designer for a newspaper and that was the only way to not hear my bosses breath whistle through her teeth.

Any TiVo veterans?

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- I loved my Tivo.. could never get anyone at the time to understand the concept of recording without tapes. But it could have succeeded.
  
  Then Tivo decided to force push a recording at peak time of an absolute garbage comedy program.. and as these things only had a single tuner, hilarity ensued. The tabloids loved it. Tivo left the UK shortly afterwards.
  
  VM licensed the tech many years later but it wasn't the same.. gone was the hackable powerpc board running luascript, replaced by a fully locked down vendor specific cable box.
  
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  A buddy of mine was so proud that he had the entirety of The Simpsons on his TiVo (at the time). He was soooooo pissed when lightning hit a utility pole and fried a bunch of his electronics. The tivo was wrecked.
  
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- Yes, TiVo lifetime but it has a s-video cable on it. 😥 Series II I believe
  
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I still have a 3D Plasma TV. I haven't found a reason to replace it as it's still going just fine.

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PDA: Had a Palm Treo 90. Also owned a second-hand Nokia N810.

DVD Recorder: Obviously had DVD burners in my PCs, but not as a standalone device.

WebTV: Technically Yes, but got it for shits and giggles at a Goodwill and never had service.

3D TV: No. I don't even like it in theaters.

Raspberry Pi: I have a 3B+ running OctoPi for my 3D printer. I also have a couple of Picos, one in use in a handwired keyboard, but I don't they count.

Internet Radio: No, but my wife bought an early streaming device, a Muzo Pebble I think. It was annoying and never got used much.

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Many PDA's, a few DVD recorders. No WebTV or 3d TV. A few Raspberry Pi's and my car's head unit can play internet radio.

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Out of that list I only owned a PDA. I had a HP Ipaq 214 that I used as a digital dictionary to look up Kanji by written input when I studied Japanese at university. It was right before the dawn of the smartphone and it was truly remarkable technology.

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I had a Handspring PDA. Still in a box in my garage in fact, alongside my Nokia 770 "internet tablet".

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30yo here. I've only owned a Raspberry Pi. I got one in college after a friend won in a contest and didn't know what to do with it so she gave it to me.

I did have a few toys growing up that were basically PDAs for kids.

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Many PDAs, DVD recorder on the computer (never for TV), no to webtv or 3D TV, many rpis (and banana pis and countless other embedded boards)... internet radio player... not as a separate device.

Despite spending my entire life designing and improving tech, I am actually kind of tech-adverse. A good laptop, good phone and good internet connection, and all the gadgets tend to be left behind. Smart home? Yes, but it runs off of HomeAssistant. Alexa? Yes, but only because the non-hive-mind solutions aren't quite there yet. Heck, my oven/range doesn't even have a timer.

edit: 46yo

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I'm in your intended audience. I currently have a Pi. None of the other stuff appealed to me.

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PDA: I loved my Palm Pilot and I can still write using that script (was quite nice when I noticed my Android keyboard supported it)

Raspberry Pi: this feels weird to be on this list! I still have one in the living room running Kodi

No to the others, although I did have one of these beauties:
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I have (and in some cases still do) all but the WebTV and the Internet Radio Player.

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I never owned a WebTV, but I do remember the first time I saw a Usenet post from a WebTV user. It was the start of the Eternal September.

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As a young adult, I've grown up with DVD recorders. Internet Radio Players and a Pi or two came along during my early teens. I had never heard of the others until today haha.

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Over-50 tech-ish. In the brief time I was an IT manager I ordered Blackberries for some of the staff but didn't use one myself. DVD recorder: not for TV but on the computer. No webtv, no 3d tv (I'm not much of a TV watcher anymore), no internet radio. With some programming help I recently set up a Pico W with a water sensor to monitor a water heater for flooding and ping my phone if it happens. That was pretty nifty.

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I had 3 of those things.

A Compaq iPaq pda that ran Windows ce

An Internet radio alarm clock

I've got a raspberry pi that I use for pihole

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Didn't have any of these, did have a dvd burner and TV tuner card so I guess I could have had a dirty dvd recorder back then but at the time I just saved the shows I wanted to HDD, watched them and then deleted it and the burner was for movies ripped with handbrake

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About a decade too young for this, but - the only one of these I had was a dvd burner. I used it in high school to make video projects. Video projects were extremely popular assignments, and I had a lot of fun with them, too. I did a lot of stop-motion animation, claymation, etc. I had shitty software that I didn't even know how to use properly so I did things like play music from my ipod into the camera speaker instead of mix an audio track in "post." Haha. Was a lot of fun though.

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- I believe OP is talking about a DVD recorder that plugs in to your tv and records live tv to a dvd, not a dvd burner on your computer.
  
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  ohhhh haha no but my parents had a vhs recorder still that they used when I was a kid
  
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I have a Raspberry Pi but none of the others.

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PDA - HP ipaq, it ran windows CE and it was dope. I was in middle school and used it to look at boobies at night. I don't know how I convinced my parents to get it for me because it wasn't cheap.

nope, just VCR and eventually DVR

I don't know what webtv is

no 3d tv, that was a fad

rpi - yes, several, gen 1 and up

internet radio? I used Pandora but I didn't have a dedicated device for it.
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I guess it depends on what counts as a PDA. Would you count a Blackberry? They sold them as PDAs when I got my first BB. But it wasn't really at all like a PalmPilot or one of those Motorola dudes.

DVD-R big time. I specifically got a recorder as my first player since I knew I would be ripping discs a lot.

WebTV came out when I was too young to afford a TV, and my parents wouldn't have gone for anything like that even if I begged.

Never had or wanted a 3D TV, as my first time hearing about them was literally seeing them in action and the effect was headache inducing. The Nintendo 3DS used the same tech, and I always kept the 3D slider at the minimum.

I do want a Raspberry Pi or some other micro computer; I just need a project and reason to get one. I have a 3D printer so I have too many awesome choices I could try.

I might have gotten an internet radio player... If I knew of their existence back when they would have been relevant. I was big time into Winamp's net radio scene in high school. Even ran my own. Reading your list was the first time I was made aware of them, though.

I am 38. I've never been on the bleeding edge, but I have tended to be an early adopter. If enough people try a thing and say it's cool, I come check it out. lol

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I had a Hairy Palm II

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I'm in my 20s and I've had most of those lol

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PDA: I had a Palm Pilot I rescued from a scrap bin at work and installed an open source OS on. I used it as an ereader until the eye strain from reading on that small screen started giving me headaches.

DVD recorder: No. I gave up on broadcast TV when I was 17 and the amount of advertising time hit 25 minutes per hour. I watched everything on rented DVDs until video streaming and adblockers became a thing.

WebTV: No. It was never available in my country.

3D TV: No. I was waiting for the format to get more support, then it went away entirely.

Raspberry Pi: Yes! I could never get wifi working on it, which limited its usefulness. Still fun to play with until I somehow broke the HDMI out.

Internet Radio: Kinda. That's what I used the Pi for after breaking video.

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