With holiday gift buying behind us, geeks around the world are no doubt enjoying the spoils of the season: the latest tech gadgets and computer gear. Today we live in an amazing age of impossibly thin high definition flat screen TVs and smart devices that are more powerful than many of our first computers.
However, no matter how cool an electronic device in its time, no gadget stays new forever.
Years later, the once state of the art electronic gear we lusted after becomes obsolete and quaint in hindsight. In this post we reflect on gadgets that we loved back then and despite their obsolescence, we still have fond memories of now. We asked friends of Dell TechCenter to share stories about their favorite gadgets from the past. Here's what they had to say:
What is your favorite retro gadget?
(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
Peter Tsai - Dell TechCenter crew
In 1999, the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) was a huge novelty. ThePalm V, with its whopping 2MB of memory, serial cable sync connectivity, black and white screen (with Indiglo), lithium ion battery in a thin form factor, and touch screen made it stand out. I was using the Palm V all the time in my college classes and to my professors I probably looked like the most studious kid in the class. While sometimes I was taking notes, most of the time I was actually playing spades or minesweeper to stay awake.
Kong Yang - Dell TechCenter crew
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I spent countless hours with family and friends playing Super Mario Brothers, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Zelda, Contra, Tecmo Super Bowl Football, Double Dragon and many others. NES was home arcade entertainment for me growing up. Now, there are emulators that allow you to play these same games on your PC and smart devices to relive those moments; but nothing beats the original memories on the NES. Classic.
Jeff Sullivan - Dell TechCenter crew
It’s not that old (2003) but I think the most transitional device for me was the Palm Treo 600 (and later the 650.) The first real smartphone in my opinion. Spent hours on it playing low-tech games… lost numerous stylus’s. wore it on my hip in a nifty leather phone case… 32MB of Ram AND a .3 MP camera!
(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
Yasushi Osonoi - Dell TechCenter Japan
CASIO PV-7. In 1983, Microsoft and ASCII(Japanese company) created PC standard called “MSX computer” 8bit computer based on Z80 CPU. I bought CASIO PV-7 , CASIA version of MSX. It was reasonable price like about $300. But the hardware spec is very low compare to current PC. CPU is Z80 with 2 or 3 MHz Main memory is 8KB. No storage (I bought a tape drive w/2000bps finally) Basic interpreter is build in , so I started programing Basic with this PC. Almost 30 years ago.
Matt Lorimer - Dell TechCenter Rockstar
Best gadget ever was the HP 48GX. Hands down. I loved that thing. I remember flipping through the manual to find how to do whatever we were working on in math class that day. When I got into Trig, my math teacher wouldn't let me use the built in functions because I "didn't learn anything that way." After some negotiating, I convinced her to let me use functions that I wrote on my own. I could then just turn in my code as proof of work. That was the best math class I ever took.
Alexander Nimmannit - Dell TechCenter Rockstar
Today it's nothing out of the ordinary to carry your entire music library around with you, but in 2001 (back when Apple's iPod was the new kid on the portable digital audio player scene) you could probably count on one hand the ones that had made the jump from MegaBytes to GigaBytes capacity. My good old Panasonic SV-SD80 was not in the high capacity league, rather it was the "world's smallest" digital audio player of its time (with a H x W x D of 1.750'' x 1.688'' x 0.688'' ) and it's because of this that I was able to unobtrusively take it anywhere by wearing it under clothing on its lanyard around my neck. It was not without faults (you had to transcode your audio files onto the included SD card using RealJukebox) but the plethora of included accessories, the size, and the fact that I no longer had to transfer my mp3s over a serial connection more than made up for any faults.
(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
For different Dell TechCenter members reminisced about Iomega Zip Drives.
Joe Garza - Dell Inc - "Those were my Blu-Rays of the 90's."
Matt Vogt - Dell TechCenter Rockstar - "I was the coolest kid in the dorm with my 100MB parallel zip drive!"
Lance Boley - Dell TechCenter crew - "those were cool. I had a SCSI one and it was fantastic, loved it."
Corey Betka - Dell TechCenter Rockstar - "All the cool kids got Jaz drives after their Zip drives were too small."
Rod Trent - Dell TechCenter Rockstar
My absolutely favorite PDA was the HP Jornada. With the flip-up screen it felt just like a Star Trek communicator. It came with a carrying case that attached to your belt (like a pager). It was blue, but if you closed your eyes you could just imagine that you were requesting to be beamed up to the Enterprise.
Stephen Spector - Dell Cloud Evangelist - Dell Cloud on TechCenter
My Palm Zire 72 was my greatest tool for tracking all my contacts, to do lists, etc. In fact, I spent hours perfecting my writing technique to properly create symbols and letters (see help guide on inside of the case). My obsession with handheld info devices began with this product and it sites close to me in my home office.
Steven Zessin - Dell Lifecycle Controller Wiki
My first device / computer growing up was a blistering fast Atari 400, which had 4k RAM, hence the model name. Since it did not have a hard drive, I had to use tapes to load games into memory. Loading pacman or jump-man only took about an hour to load, ah the good old days.
Kyle Bader - Friend of Dell TechCenter - Rio Diamond MP3 player, (1998) featuring 32MB of memory
I remember those too - it's hard to believe that even though they could hold less than 10 songs, people still bought a lot of these!
Do you have a favorite retro gadget?
Tell us about your vintage gear in the comments or keep the conversation going with us on Twitter @DellTechCenter!