Why People Stick With Outdated Technology

Why People Stick With Outdated Technology @ Scientific American

On the death of betamax. If you want a bigger version of the 1978 ad there's this. Silver and brown and knobs and switches and buttons that actually but. Awesome.

Maybe I, ah that is they, feel a certain comfort with the familiar. Hey, I'm still on windows 7.

I detest wading through menus within menus within menus; hunting for basic fine-tuning. Especially in audio equipment.
I want sliders and pan-pots, faders and rheostats; for real time adjustments that I can hear, instantly.

Same with my camera. I long for the instantaneous finger-tip exposure and focus controls from my old, trusty K-1000.

There is no such thing as outdated tech. There is Tech that is a commercial failure, or never worked well and never will, or isn't economically viable, or newer tech really is much better. There is plenty of really old tech still good to go.

Ergonomics on most modern products is GARBAGE due to a combination of bad UI / UX design, bad programming and cost reduction.

I still possess working 16mm, 8mm and 9.5mm projectors. I don't use them much now but I would never part with them. The 9.5mm (my particular favourite) dates back to the 1920s. I rescued it from an attic, did a bit of restoration on it and it works wonderfully. I had to replace the metal drive belt with a modified 'O' ring and it might be 'outdated' but I suspect it will outlast many millions of mobile phones around today.

One of the reasons a lot of companies still use outdated Operating Systems is that 3rd party hardware vendors never built machines with upgrades in mind.

I see Windows XP machines in production environments all the time because its CnC for some huge piece of machinery - generally easier/cheaper to virtualise XP than it would be to replace the machines.

And whats wrong with MS DOS? It's still one of the most venerable reliable dependable operating systems around. Besides, Graphical User Interfaces are so overrated .

I like old tech. Often build quality is better, and UIs are better. We have a really old hifi set with sliders and stuff in the summer house, along with a vinyl deck that still works better than my radio cd player thing.

My computer had a meltdown recently and I had to reformat it. Stayed with win7 as 8 and 10 are awful, but lost my office2010 to 2013 and it is the worst thing ever. If I could rollback I would!

Just becasue they have upgraded, doesn't mean it is better.

Kylara said:

I like old tech. Often build quality is better, and UIs are better. We have a really old hifi set with sliders and stuff in the summer house, along with a vinyl deck that still works better than my radio cd player thing.

My computer had a meltdown recently and I had to reformat it. Stayed with win7 as 8 and 10 are awful, but lost my office2010 to 2013 and it is the worst thing ever. If I could rollback I would!

Just becasue they have upgraded, doesn't mean it is better.

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There's lot to be said for abacuses , they don't need upgrading and they don't get viruses. One drawback, poor internet connectivity.

Ray McCarthy said:

There is no such thing as outdated tech. There is Tech that is a commercial failure, or never worked well and never will, or isn't economically viable, or newer tech really is much better. There is plenty of really old tech still good to go.

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Slide Rules, Napier's Bones: These are inaccurate, they only give an approximate value unless you are very skilled. My point: is only that I think "No" is quite a huge statement. If you had said "very little" or "almost no"...

I did say:

or newer tech really is much better.

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I have an Abacus and Slide Rule. (The Abacus is "digital" just slow, but 100% exact. It can do fixed point numbers). The Slide rule is analogue and less accurate than a calculator*, which is only exact for integers within a certain range, otherwise much more accurate (not perfect), though not a lot faster!

I think I wrote that badly.
"There is almost no tech that's truly outdated in the popular sense"


But my real point is that the Betamax was practically dead by 1985, not because of being outdated but for quite complex reasons. Lots of tech that people think of as outdated is actually not at all. 1977 to 1983 I serviced VTRs and VCRs when there wasn't enough other work in. EIAJ Reel to Reel, Panasonic Cartridges, VHS, Betamax, U-matic, N1500, N1700 etc. No Video 2000 machines. They were delayed for years because Philips couldn't mass produce them. Tech that was too advanced to make.

A 14" Mono CRT can actually use less power and do higher resolution than a same size LCD. CRTS are also variable resolution and refresh rate. Nearly impossible for LCD / Plasma / LED. But CRTs are not suited to widescreen (the Widescreen CRTs had high fail rate) nor more than 56" (yes there were CRTs that big!) and are bulky. I think the last factory might have closed in 2012. A Victorian invention!

[* Come the apocalypse, a solar powered calculator will be be useful, though most of those are not scientific.]

As far as music goes, record players, tape decks, dat... all still work fine. The only good thing about modren digital stuff is - the record/tape collection no longer fills a small room. And, I found all 350 rare records online, all the stuff that was very hard to track down, let alone afford. So thank you, internet. *)

J Riff said:

The only good thing about modren digital stuff is - the record/tape collection no longer fills a small room.

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And backups are easy. So two good things!

My music collection (mix of 78s, 45s, 33s, cassettes and CDs) fits on a fingernail micro SD card. I convert at 256Kbps. I don't have much music digital downloads, just some genuinely free samples and out of copyright 78s from 1920s and 1930s. I prefer to buy a CD as that is then an archive backup.

SilentRoamer said:

I see Windows XP machines in production environments all the time because its CnC for some huge piece of machinery - generally easier/cheaper to virtualise XP than it would be to replace the machines.

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Geez... we only recently retired a Windows 95 machine with special testing hardware for which there are no XP drivers.

As for the original question, people switch to new tech when it's a) better and b) cost-effective. For example, when I feel the urge to buy a movie rather than stream it, I mostly buy DVDs, because you never know when a Blu-Ray won't work in any random Blu-Ray player. The small improvement in picture quality isn't worth the risk of bot being able to see a picture at all.

Edward M. Grant said:

I mostly buy DVDs, because you never know when a Blu-Ray won't work in any random Blu-Ray player.

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We can buy and play any region on any of our DVD players. But the Blu-Ray players are region locked even for DVDs. Even the Australian "PAL" releases won't play on it.
Region Locking is an evil as is DRM at all.
Some Blu-Ray players only work for BD content if connected to the Internet! Madness.
My Eldest son buys Blu-Ray. We don't.

On the subject of outdated technology...

I have a perfectly good Pioneer amplifier and turntable from the 70's (Pioneer analogue radio tuner and cassette player to go with them as well). The speakers work perfectly but I now want other speakers around the house but don't want to go to the bother of running wires under the floorboards etc. It occurs to me that there might be something on the market that attaches to the speaker outlet from from an old amp and converts that into a radio / bluetooth signal for reception by radio / bluetooth speakers. There must be millions of people who have old amps that they are refusing to part with that would welcome such a device. Anyone heard of such a thing?

If such a thing doesn't exist I think I might have spotted a gap in the market and will get it patented immediately.

The Judicial Helpmeet is sure there is something of the kind, as he remembers reading about it in the last few months, possibly online. Unfortunately, he can't recall what it is, nor where he read it. I shall feed him fish to improve the old grey matter (the Vit D tablets having had no discernible effect over the last month) to see if he can come up with anything.

Meanwhile, not quite what you want, but perhaps as an alternative, he says have a look at Sonos which does something or other (he's warbling on at length here in the background but I'm understanding only about one word in twenty so I've no idea what it might or might not do).

The Judge said:

The Judicial Helpmeet is sure there is something of the kind, as he remembers reading about it in the last few months, possibly online. Unfortunately, he can't recall what it is, nor where he read it. I shall feed him fish to improve the old grey matter (the Vit D tablets having had no discernible effect over the last month) to see if he can come up with anything.

Meanwhile, not quite what you want, but perhaps as an alternative, he says have a look at Sonos which does something or other (he's warbling on at length here in the background but I'm understanding only about one word in twenty so I've no idea what it might or might not do).

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Thanks very much TJ. I've tried searching but can't find anything. I'm sure it's just a question of getting the write word combinations to search with. Anything extra he remembers would be gratefully received.

I'll ask my OH, currently specialising in Bluetooth modules, so theoretically, being the type of person he is, knows everything bluetooth

Kylara said:

I'll ask my OH, currently specialising in Bluetooth modules, so theoretically, being the type of person he is, knows everything bluetooth

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Much appreciated!