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longview posted:Except those lovely scissors that don't work unless you twist your fingers in a cramp inducing way. The only thing I could think of would be if you ONLY had your left hand and therefore no other option.
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Jan 17, 2013 17:06
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Pilsner posted:It's such a weird thing about modern phones (smartphones): Terrible battery life, extremely fragile, horrible to hold, takes ages to make a simple call thanks to touch interface and poor sound. So many step backwards; if I used my iPhone for more actual phoning than "smart" stuff I'd go insane. I still use a regular "dumb" flip phone. I drop stuff all the time, hate having to charge something frequently, have small pockets on my clothes, and am too poor to be able to afford a data package that would make a smart phone worthwhile for me to have. Besides the fact that I spend enough time on the internet as it is, and having a smartphone would just make that habit worse. People get weirdly annoyed with me for still having a flip phone. I'm not sure why as it literally does not affect them. It even has a leathery fat little case on it  At this time my boyfriend and I are the only people under the age of 30 that I personally know who don't own smart phones. I guess we're pretty much on the cutting edge of being obsolete.edit: Another benefit is that I can text mad fast on this thing. I can effectively touch type without having to look at what I'm doing. I feel like that doesn't work with a touch screen + autocorrect.
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May 14, 2013 00:16
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Ron Burgundy posted:Also loving people on phones at dinner and during a conversation and poo poo. Obsolete technology: manners. There's a girl I don't hang out with anymore because she holds her phone basically right between our faces whenever I'd talk to her. And yeah, at my friend's birthday dinner recently I looked around at the table and for the seven of us that were there, there were six phones sitting out on the table :/ I feel like one of those old people that gets upset when people have their elbows on the table or something, it often seems like I'm the only one who cares about that kind of poo poo anymore. I feel like I've started a derail, so I'll mention something that's I guess obsolete since people usually have trash cans in their bathrooms now- my house was built in the '50s, and we haven't remodeled the bathroom pretty much at all. In the medicine cabinet is a little slot for when men were done shaving, they could drop the used up razor blade in there I wonder if it's just a drop down into the walls of the house or if there's a little cut out cave in there where I'd find a whole bunch of razor blades from the previous occupant.^^^Yeah, text message/data storage is the only thing that really bothers me. I'm a weirdo that likes to keep texts from people and my phone only holds 200 inbox texts, not including picture/media texts. I eventually started keeping a word document on my computer where I just type the texts/time/sender so I don't have to keep it on my phone but can still keep "the memory." It's not really that weird, I don't think. People used to save letters, after all. And I guess I wish the camera was a bit better quality, but I'm not the type to take pictures all the time so it mostly doesn't matter in most situations. sweeperbravo has a new favorite as of 01:37 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 01:35
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therobotking posted:It seems like you could probably find a feature phone with a week long battery that can still hold much more than 200 texts. Typing them out by hand seems insane. Can't you at least use a data cable to do regular dumps instead? The cable only transfers "objects" like pictures, sounds, videos, etc. It doesn't register the texts as things that can be saved. As for typing it out, eh, it's kind of calming  The 200-text limit isn't too bad, it's kind of a first world problem for me to complain about it. I go through every couple days and delete the ones that aren't important. Gives me something to do while I'm on the toilet or if I'm too tired to get out of bed right away. Being out of college, I don't text quite as much as I used to, so it hardly matters. I guess it was a dumb thing for me to bring up in the first place, but it's one of the only "faults" I even have with my phone so that's probably why I mentioned it. Here's an actual thing that bothers me about the phone- remember me talking about being able to text/type without looking? Sometimes my phone goes into Crazy Letters mode where it stops being able to parse my typing and, for instance, the word "too" becomes "tn" or "thinking" becomes "thghnkghng"  It's getting kind of old though so that's probably to be expected.
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May 14, 2013 19:36
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From the Weird Fanart thread: Robert Denby posted:On a similar note: When my family got our first "real" computer, we sat in a semicircle around its desk as it booted for the first time. I recall "oohs" and "ahhs" as the startup sound played and the logo proudly beamed ascreen, though that may have just been an addition by my eight-year-old imagination. On the one hand, this video makes me say, "Aww, those simple, peaceful days," and on the other hand I got annoyed just watching it imagining how long everything takes from when you open something until it's finally loaded and ready to use. Here's another dumb family anecdote- when we only had one computer in the house, it was obviously tantamount that we converse with one another to ensure that anyone who needed (or in the case of us kids, wanted) to get on the computer at some point would let the person already on the computer know about it, lest the user turn off the computer and make the second user have to sit through the whole booting process again. My sister and I chain-smoked The Sims, so whenever one was playing, we'd be sure to ask whether the other one minded if we quit or not. If the other wanted to play, we'd just leave the game on. Sometimes, though, we'd forget, and then the next person would have to go through the 10-15 minutes it would take for the game to load, load, load, load, load.... If you had told me at age ten that there would come a day when our household would have not only two desktop computers, but THREE LAPTOPS and a mystic ~*iPad and iPhone*~, I would have wept tears of hopeful disbelief and dreamed about it basically every night until it eventually came true.
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May 29, 2013 20:01
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Dick Trauma posted:I don't think I've seen this yet. It was a regular in Popular Science/Popular Mechanics back in the late 1970s: the BONE FONE! Huh. With the name, I was really expecting something different 
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Jul 6, 2013 21:28
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JediTalentAgent posted:I do remember about 10-13 years ago there was a lollipop company that came out with a device that had a built-in radio and it would hold your sucker at stem. When you tuned it in and turned to a radio station, if you rest the sucker portion on your teeth you could 'hear/feel' the music in your ears. It was relatively decent sounding, all things considered. I bought one on clearance as a goof but never really used it all that much because I could just wear headphones. It even came with a plastic 'sucker' so you didn't have to constantly have a lollipop rotting your teeth just to secretly listen to the radio. Oh, drat! I remember this! It was like the most technologically advanced of the "inventive candies" at the time. Push pops? So 90's. Ring pops? Pretty basic. Baby bottle pops? Wonder balls? Gimmicky. RADIO LOLLIPOP??? You have my preteen attention
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Jul 7, 2013 22:56
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PhazonLink posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope Oh, hey, that was a brief scene in the book IT. I thought Stephen King was kind of just making something up there. I'll never doubt you again, big man.
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Jul 16, 2013 18:32
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DrBouvenstein posted:The thing that's annoying about them, is that you should never use them on towels, because the substance coats them and makes them really bad at doing their job. The day I learned to dry my towels separately from the rest of my clothes changed my life. What I'm saying is, you're the only person on this planet who gets me.
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Jul 22, 2013 19:24
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Jerry Cotton posted:Quite the opposite here. Air-drying probably helps with the static? Or rather, not tumble drying means there is no build-up in the first place. My clothes seem soft enough anyway It doesn't. I took my un-Downy-ed clothes off the line the other day and played frisbee with them. edit: I now see you said "static" and not "stiffness." Well, uh. I guess they were pretty staticky too.
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Jul 23, 2013 04:37
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Monkey Fracas posted:Everything looked ugly but comfortable, I guess. This is a really good way of putting it. I love the aesthetic but I have a weird propensity toward adoring ugly things v v This seems a good reason as any.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:13
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Krispy Kareem posted:It must have been their awesome advertising campaigns. 58 out of 100 people chose this car over our competitor. I mean, that's nice they're being probably honest, but talk about a soft-sell. Fozaldo posted:Do all American cars have a big wing nut on the ignition barrel? Do you guys break a lot of keys or something? Sometimes it helps just to give you a bit more surface area to grip onto for leverage
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Apr 2, 2014 19:31
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umalt posted:
So you can carry it on your shoulder
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Apr 7, 2014 01:46
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Lowen SoDium posted:I had a stereo that the face plate would flip around when the car was turned off so that it looked like you had taken the face plate off. Awww, my dad had one of these in his old pickup Did yours have the little screen that would show cute little graphics while the music was playing? And it would run text when you turned it on like "HELLO" and when you turned it off "GOODBYE" ?
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Apr 7, 2014 22:09
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DrBouvenstein posted:Too bad touchscreens for a car stereo/information center are a terrible idea. Honestly this is my biggest issue with touch screen technology in general for devices being used on a daily basis (ie not like ATMS and stuff where you use them less often). I like to use things without having to look at them the whole time. Like, I know you can kind of get muscle memory of how to position your hands in order to do something, but I don't know about relying on that. Then again I am also a huge luddite weirdo so
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Apr 8, 2014 17:37
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The Twinkie Czar posted:Anecdotally, it was their books on tape. Even as audio books transitioned to CDs there were still libraries, personal and public, full of books on cassettes. Cassette adapters had also just become a normal accessory in the consciousness of old people. Yes. The top thing was almost exactly what my dad had but with red accents instead of blue.
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Apr 8, 2014 21:13
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Captain Trips posted:I've never understood a rear USB input in a car stereo. What do you use it for, and how do you hook it up? A lot of apple devices come with a cord to charge/transfer to a computer that has a usb dingle on one end.
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Apr 8, 2014 23:33
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The Ape of Naples posted:I dunno, I used the CD track program function fairly often. It was great when an album had an annoying song that I didn't want to listen to or a long, wanky instrumental or something. Same. I could just program it to the songs I liked on the album, possibly repeating my favorite song in between all the others, and just go about cleaning my room without having to think about what was playing
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Apr 19, 2014 20:08
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Humphreys posted:That is beautiful - pair it with an orange version of this keyboard and I think it would be perfect! I can hear the clackalacking and now I know my life's dream
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Apr 20, 2014 16:25
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Jerry Cotton posted:Yes I've read Huckleberry Finn; about 30 years ago like most people my age so I remember just about jack poo poo from it. (Also, I don't need Mark Twain to tell me about verdigris.) I think Zopotantor was being a bit tongue in cheek there 
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Apr 21, 2014 16:46
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With the centralized vacuums, is there a risk of kids opening and putting valuable stuff into the hose outlets or are they pretty child-proof? I suppose there being a centralized containment means whatever went in there could be retrieved if needed, but not something you'd want to have to do everytime Junior decides daddy's watch should go in the bye-bye wall.
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Mar 13, 2015 18:31
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Oh, neat! That makes a lot of sense. I don't know why I didn't put that together myself. Chalk up another thing to add to my Imaginary Someday As If Dream House.
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Mar 13, 2015 18:52
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We have a razor blade slot in our medicine cabinet, which is apparently the very same one as came with the house when it was built in the 1950's. Still got the same ancient textured wallpaper above the tiles in the bathroom as well. I'll see about getting a photo of our razor slot, too lazy now. Also our bathroom is sad and gross and probably a health hazard.
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Mar 14, 2015 14:56
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Base Emitter posted:Some pics from the Georgetown Steam Plant in Seattle, an electric generating plant built in 1906. Great photos, I can practically "hear" them. What's the hangy-dangy brown thing in this picture?
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Mar 16, 2015 11:22
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Besesoth posted:I think they mean this guy, not the chains: I did, thanks. It looked to me like it was hanging, but now that i look at it again it seems actually attached to the wall behind it. That's what I get for asking questions that early in the morning. Still curious about its use either way.
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Mar 16, 2015 20:03
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Nothing beats coming away from a garage sale with a stacked handful of possibly good CDs that you got for a couple bucks altogether
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Jun 28, 2015 03:56
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Dick Trauma posted:How about the Greenwich time ball? That's pretty cool. Is that where they got the idea for the New Years Eve ball?
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Jun 28, 2015 21:40
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Freshman year of college for my radio course we had to go out and purchase minidiscs to record our assignments on  This was in 2009, cannot speak to whether or not this was already an obsolete thing but it definitely felt like it was.
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Jul 2, 2015 02:44
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We have the original (un"updated") Star Wars trilogy on VHS. It's kind of like having a relative on long term hospice. I know the tapes are gonna kick the bucket someday and it's really depressing. They probably haven't been stored properly (along with the other million vhses we owned), as evidenced by other VHS tapes from the same storage bin I've tried to watch recently. We had them all in the basement in a rubbermaid container. I have a TV in my room that has no cable hookup so all I can do is plug in my portable DVD player into it (which is kind of a pain int he rear end) or put in a VHS because it has a built in player, so a few months ago I decided to watch my old copy of Fantasia. So heartbreaking. I want to say the first 20 minutes were almost unwatchably garbled. At some point the warp eased up but there's still continual static throughout the entire thing. (Part of me bitterly wonders if, had we not kept it rewound, it would just be the last empty part of the tape that got hosed up and the content would have been safe, but who knows, tha'ts a long rear end movie, the fuzz/warp probably would have cut into Ave Maria had it been unrewound). I remember being like 10 and popping in a VHS we hadn't played in a long time, something simple like just one of those random Looney Tunes collections or something. It was so messed up we just got a blue screen and a high pitched beeeeeeeeeeep. We thought maybe it was a problem with the player but I think a couple movies were like that. Tape goons, was it how we stored it, or were those lower-quality tapes? It doesn't really matter anymore, I'm just curious though.
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Jul 8, 2015 04:28
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pookel posted:
The repetitive insistence of the word SPECIMEN is kind of unnerving.
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Jul 14, 2015 15:41
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WebDog posted:And the downside to self-serve is that supermarket thefts have risen. I gently caress up the self-checkout machine/transaction about 25% of the time  It tends only to happen though when I'm trying to do something acrobatic, like type in my phone number for the membership discount or apply a coupon code.
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Jul 15, 2015 14:26
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Antifreeze Head posted:At least that held true until the Mint here started issuing commemorative designs all the drat time. Now I only make an exception to set aside the quarters struck in 1999 because they are a loving embarrassment and I hate that they are in circulation. What is this commemorating? Was the first grade of 1999 super impressive? Or was this some thing where like a bunch of kids died and I'll feel like an rear end in a top hat
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Jul 15, 2015 18:10
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AwwJeah posted:I look back now and think that they were actually beautifully designed and to Sony's credit it's probably the most well-known and most successful consumer grade household robot ever made. I could never justify it, but I really want one just for novelty and nostalgia. I imagine in 20 years they'll be looked on rather fondly. Cleaning today and decided to go through my binder of instruction manuals for things that are long gone or just unnecessary to begin with, and found the directions for playing with Meowchi, the robot cat version of Furby. I'll scan them when I get the chance. As much as I wanted to like my Furby (I genuinely was not freaked out by it, but I also never was afraid of clowns so I might just have poor taste) as a kid, it just wasn't fun for me to play with. I found a lot of virtual interaction toys to be that way- if they did too much of the "imagining" for me, it took a lot of the fun away. Meowchi likely suffered the same fate, especially since I had truly forgotten I'd ever had it until finding that instruction paper today.
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Jul 21, 2015 01:58
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Dick Trauma posted:If you wanted to display your wealth and power in the mid 1970s one of these monolithic console TVs (with onscreen channel display!) would do the trick. I can see John Houseman watching one of these in his swanky Rollerball office. I think my grandparents had this exact TV/stand, with the decorative drawer at the bottom (kid me was super disappointed it was a false drawer). I don't think theirs had the channel number quite as large as that but I am fairly certain it did display all the time. They also sometimes referred to their old TV, a Dumont, which everyone else I've ever spoken to has pronounced "du-MONT" but my family pronounced "DOO-mont" because who knows. Seconding electronic/appliance furniture being beautiful. I guess it makes less sense to do that now since electronics get replaced so quickly these days. In the era where they were built into furniture, it was expected that if something went wrong you would call a repairman (or try to fix it yourself) rather than just junk it and get a new thing.
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Jul 23, 2015 19:07
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Horace posted:Oh, I love these. I'd forgotten all about them until a couple of months ago when I found some magazines from the early 00s. Here's an ad picked at random: What's GB, as in I <3 GB His whole upper body looks like a videocassette logo.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:59
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Mister Kingdom posted:So you want a smart phone, but you're old and can't give up your flip phone. Oh man. As someone who is still hasn't upgraded to a smart phone yet this is extremely tempting. Unfortunately two reasons I do want to eventually move onto something more modern are 1. I will break that hinge at some point, it has happened to every phone I've owned and it's always shocking and devastating when it happens 2. I just want to use my phone in public without people coming over being like "DUUUDE FLIP PHONE LOLOL THEY STILL MAKE THOSE?!?!" I'm really not trying to make a political statement I just hate change  I will seriously be considering this though, thanks for enabling me 
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Jul 31, 2015 22:30
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Jmcrofts posted:After you own a smartphone for a few months you'll quickly forget why you were so opposed to getting on in the first place. I know. I mean it was the same thing when I went from no phone to my first cell phone, or even my first flip phone to my second, you adapt after a while. I'm mostly sad about losing my ability to text without having to look at the screen/without having a million autocorrect misunderstandings. Love being able to walk around watching where I'm going while effectively touch typing. Never seen anybody be able to do that on a touch screen, no matter how long they've had the thing for, but maybe it's possible to do it and people just like looking at their phone while they text. I've had the same model phone since 2009. There's kids as old as my phone who have smart phones
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Aug 1, 2015 00:44
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Krispy Kareem posted:Depends on your generation. My 14 year old communicates almost exclusively through Snapchat, texting, and Facetime. So in that case, 2 of the 3 are visual. She talked on an actual telephone with a boy for the first time last week. Yeah, the kids (aged 9 & 10 give or take) at the school I work at always talked about calling each other on Facetime. I think for kids around that age, having the visual element actually gets rid of some of the awkwardness of a phone call because it gives you something to do (reading facial expressions, just looking at the person in general) when waiting for a verbal response if there's a slight delay.
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Aug 3, 2015 14:39
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:My previous phone was also a Samsung with a slide-out keyboard and I definitely still miss the tactile feedback of pressing the keys. I mean I think I could get used to a touchscreen and would like having the option for, say, selecting items on the screen/playing games and poo poo. But texting is what I primarily use a phone for, so having to handicap myself on that for a while seems like a bummer. It's getting to the point though where I need to get one, because I'm tired of not being able to read messages from people because they included an emoji and it garbled the rest of the message and deleted over half of it (which is something most people have been cool about when I've explained it to them but it's kind of an awkward conversation to have with somebody you need to interact with for, say, business purposes or whatever), or having my inbox freak out because someone included me in a group message and I'm running out of room for "special media messages" which for some reason the group message gets classified as. I also wouldn't mind being able to take better quality pictures. I just get so used to things being one way and really, really hate having to adapt to a big change with something I use so often and so personally. I know, I know, I'm the obsolete and failed technology.
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Aug 5, 2015 14:26
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peter gabriel posted:It's like complaining that a remote is harder to find than a TV so we shouldn't have remote controlled TVs Why? It's more like not being able to feel the buttons on my remote so I have to look at it instead of just being able to rely on muscle memory. It's not a *huge* deal for something like that, but when it's something that makes up a good amount of my communication, it matters to me. Imagine if you suddenly found yourself without the ability to touch type. Would you not find that a setback? Besides, I don't know where you're getting the idea that because I don't like touch screens, I feel no one else should have them  Computer viking posted:Maybe you are the target niche for the physical-keyboard blackberries?
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Aug 5, 2015 14:51
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