What products/services are already obsolete to you NOW?

[Sarah in SC]

I don't believe I've ever had a tranny in my car...

I still refill my propane tanks at the store, have manual windows on a few of our cars, listen to albums, and have a calculator (my beloved HP10BII) on my desk, but I agree with the idea that these are all mainstream obsolete.

I might add to the list regular mail. We get fewer and fewer pieces of "real mail" and I see that dwindling down to nothing soon.

And of course I have a thread hijack to offer: Speaking of paper maps and tall vehicles, any of you map-oriented folks have good ideas for figuring out height restrictions on roads in the UK and Europe?

 

[W2R]

I agree with Sarah that regular mail is becoming obsolete, and with Katsmeow that checks are, too.

In my life (only), soda is nearly obsolete. Regular soda is too sugary , and when I stopped drinking diet soda I found it lost its appeal. I have not had any at home for about a decade.

Floppy disks are obsolete, now. So are drive in theaters, at least here.

I remember the days when we had milk delivered by a milkman.

 

[Mulligan]

I agree with Sarah that regular mail is becoming obsolete, and with Katsmeow that checks are, too.

In my life (only), soda is nearly obsolete. Regular soda is too sugary , and when I stopped drinking diet soda I found it lost its appeal. I have not had any at home for about a decade.

Floppy disks are obsolete, now. So are drive in theaters, at least here.

I remember the days when we had milk delivered by a milkman.

Please, W2R, say it ain't so! I just wrote three checks out today. I really don't want to do that online billing thing. Now if you could convince all my service providers to take auto bill pay through my credit card, I would gladly cut down to one check a month and get more cash back rewards.

 

[ERD50]

RE: Vinyl records and CDs...

Ya don't.... just put it in your computer and ...

I was with you up until....

rip it to MP3...

Horrors!

If you are going to take the time to record your vinyl, rip it to a lossless format. From there, if you want, you can make digitally compressed copies for casual listening, or for a portable player.

A few years ago I got my CDs all onto a hard disk. Been slowly working on the vinyl, which is much more time consuming - cue it up, edit the tracks, name each track, etc. I have not got any noise reduction SW to work w/o mucking up the sound, but I have learned I can go in and actually fix the individual clicks if they are few enough to not be a ridiculous time sink. Audacity has a little 'repair' mode, if you focus in on the click, it will interpolate and make it match the surrounding area. It only works on very small samples, a tiny fraction of a second. But that is enough to make an annoying pop simply vanish, with no side-effect on the sound.

Don't assume you can't hear the difference in compressed mp3 versus full resolution. I have trouble telling in an A-B, even on very good equipment. But after about 5 or 10 minutes I sense that the compressed music is dull and lifeless. It's not so obvious, but it sucks the life out of it, and you notice over time.

I've actually compared the compressed mp3 by inverting it and subtracting it from the original. You play that and you hear what is missing - it is like a weird echo/ghost of the original. All that detail is missing from the music. It's not the same. Much of the 'life' has been sucked out of it.

Also, if the popular compression formats change over time, or your device supports x instead of y, you can always go back to the original full rez file and re-compress it. You don't want to run a compression algorithm on a file that has already been compressed - that will multiply the problems.

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

As Nick Cage noted in The Rock.... "These sound better."

I consider myself neither an audiophile nor a collector, but why replace the music I like that I've already paid for?

Lots of great reasons:


1- Eliminate wear/tear on the records.

2- Convenience - So much easier to choose songs on the computer with some 'iTunes'-like software (I use Rhythmbox under Linux, there are several others on any platform). No dropping the needle and flipping the record, and so easy to skip that one song you hate.

3- Flexibility- PLAYLISTS! These have changed the way I listen. It is so great to have a few dozen (or more) playlists with different moods on them. For Christmas, I tagged all our songs with Instrumental versus vocal, serious versus 'playful', etc. I can choose Christmas music for a variety of moods.

4- Backup- Copy the library to another drive, and you have a full backup of your entire music collection. A cheap ext USB portable drive will hold a very large collection, even if stored in full rez (I use FLAC, which does ~ 2:1 compression, with no data loss - like 'zipping' the file).

-ERD50

 

[Texas Proud]

RE: Vinyl records and CDs...

I was with you up until....



Horrors!

If you are going to take the time to record your vinyl, rip it to a lossless format. From there, if you want, you can make digitally compressed copies for casual listening, or for a portable player.

A few years ago I got my CDs all onto a hard disk. Been slowly working on the vinyl, which is much more time consuming - cue it up, edit the tracks, name each track, etc. I have not got any noise reduction SW to work w/o mucking up the sound, but I have learned I can go in and actually fix the individual clicks if they are few enough to not be a ridiculous time sink. Audacity has a little 'repair' mode, if you focus in on the click, it will interpolate and make it match the surrounding area. It only works on very small samples, a tiny fraction of a second. But that is enough to make an annoying pop simply vanish, with no side-effect on the sound.

Don't assume you can't hear the difference in compressed mp3 versus full resolution. I have trouble telling in an A-B, even on very good equipment. But after about 5 or 10 minutes I sense that the compressed music is dull and lifeless. It's not so obvious, but it sucks the life out of it, and you notice over time.

I've actually compared the compressed mp3 by inverting it and subtracting it from the original. You play that and you hear what is missing - it is like a weird echo/ghost of the original. All that detail is missing from the music. It's not the same. Much of the 'life' has been sucked out of it.

Also, if the popular compression formats change over time, or your device supports x instead of y, you can always go back to the original full rez file and re-compress it. You don't want to run a compression algorithm on a file that has already been compressed - that will multiply the problems.

-ERD50

Well, thanks for the info... how do you do lossless conversions


For what I was using it for, the MP3 was just fine... it was an MP3 player and there was so much noise around when listening (bus, walking etc.) that it did not matter... I do not listen to the files on my good stereo.... still use the CDs... but hey, I still listen to the radio in the car unless on a long trip....

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

I own one of these manual crank types. It is fabulous!

Sportsman Old Fashioned Popcorn Maker STPOP - product summary - Bing Shopping

Do you used it for popcorn or for coffee roasting?

 

[Nords]

DD's name is Mary. Her friends call her Andretti.

Good one! Except in a few years she'll be hearing "Grandma, who's Mario Andretti?"

I only wish FAX machines were totally obsolete. I got rid of mine when I found that the printer in which resided didn't play nice with my new computer. Since then I've had a number of interfaces with companies that do not do email attachments and insist on sending / receiving faxes. And no, my Windows 7 doesn't have FAX capability like the XP platform did.

I'm running Win7 "Ultimate" which includes a fax program. I don't know if the upgrade is worth the price for just a fax capability.

However John Hancock is another one of those companies that refuses to do e-mail attachments... not even on their own secure website.

 

[travelover]

I haven't gotten an AOL CD in the mail in a while.

 

[Nodak]

RE: Vinyl records and CDs...

I was with you up until....



Horrors!

If you are going to take the time to record your vinyl, rip it to a lossless format. From there, if you want, you can make digitally compressed copies for casual listening, or for a portable player.

A few years ago I got my CDs all onto a hard disk. Been slowly working on the vinyl, which is much more time consuming - cue it up, edit the tracks, name each track, etc. I have not got any noise reduction SW to work w/o mucking up the sound, but I have learned I can go in and actually fix the individual clicks if they are few enough to not be a ridiculous time sink. Audacity has a little 'repair' mode, if you focus in on the click, it will interpolate and make it match the surrounding area. It only works on very small samples, a tiny fraction of a second. But that is enough to make an annoying pop simply vanish, with no side-effect on the sound.

Don't assume you can't hear the difference in compressed mp3 versus full resolution. I have trouble telling in an A-B, even on very good equipment. But after about 5 or 10 minutes I sense that the compressed music is dull and lifeless. It's not so obvious, but it sucks the life out of it, and you notice over time.

I've actually compared the compressed mp3 by inverting it and subtracting it from the original. You play that and you hear what is missing - it is like a weird echo/ghost of the original. All that detail is missing from the music. It's not the same. Much of the 'life' has been sucked out of it.

Also, if the popular compression formats change over time, or your device supports x instead of y, you can always go back to the original full rez file and re-compress it. You don't want to run a compression algorithm on a file that has already been compressed - that will multiply the problems.

-ERD50

+1 - I will use 320Kbps mp3 for CDs in my car but other than that I use lossless format.

 

[Midpack]

Well, thanks for the info... how do you do lossless conversions

iTunes (and others) let you choose how much compression you want up to none (lossless). I can't hear the difference (especially with 58 yo ears), and I seriously doubt most people can when listening in a car, through earbuds, or an iPod dock of some sort. You can choose in iTunes settings, but IIRC lossless files are about 10X the size of the most common mp3/AAC compression files.

 

[Midpack]

And then

 

[Ronstar]

The tv guide magazine. Who would ever need that now? The guide is on directv, cable, and on smartphones/tablets.

 

[ERD50]

... I can't hear the difference (especially with 58 yo ears), and I seriously doubt most people can when listening in a car, through earbuds, or an iPod dock of some sort. ...

but IIRC lossless files are about 10X the size of the most common mp3/AAC compression files.

Close, some lossless formats (Like the open source FLAC, or Apple's ALAC/ALE) reduce the file size by ~ 1/2, w/o any losing data. So closer to ~ 5x the size of a 128Kbs mp3.

1411 kbps for raw CD format, ~ 1/2 for lossless, around 700kbps.

So by the time you get to the higher quality mp3, say 192 or 320 kbps, you haven't saved that much from lossless.

But even if one thinks they can't hear the difference, it's good to keep an original lossless file- you can recreate any bit rate or format from that 'master' later, for whatever purpose.

-ERD50

 

[David1961]

RE: Vinyl records and CDs...

I've actually compared the compressed mp3 by inverting it and subtracting it from the original. You play that and you hear what is missing - it is like a weird echo/ghost of the original. All that detail is missing from the music. It's not the same. Much of the 'life' has been sucked out of it.

-ERD50

Can you tell me how to do this inverting and subtraction? Can it be done on iTunes or Audacity? I've already converted my audio files but am curious about what was lost.

When I did convert my music collection, I did a test where I'd take the uncompressed song and compare it with the compressed mp3 file using headphones. I determined that, when I was using headphones and listening closely, I could tell a difference, but it was very minor. On some songs, I could not make out any difference, though.

 

[freebird5825]

Forms that require the use of a No. 2 pencil to fill in circles
A short but easy to read description is here
http://www.howeverythingworks.org/page1.php?QNum=1529

J*b applications in hardcopy format

Cartridge pens (Shaefer brand, I think)
Click/spring type ballpoint pens

Almost but not quite gone the way of the dodo bird...coin operated telephone booths and US Postal Service metal mailboxes on public streets

 

[ERD50]

Can you tell me how to do this inverting and subtraction? Can it be done on iTunes or Audacity? I've already converted my audio files but am curious about what was lost.

When I did convert my music collection, I did a test where I'd take the uncompressed song and compare it with the compressed mp3 file using headphones. I determined that, when I was using headphones and listening closely, I could tell a difference, but it was very minor. On some songs, I could not make out any difference, though.

I used Audacity, so it looks like you are set.

1) Load the original WAV or FLAC in one set of stereo tracks

2) Load the compressed file in a 2nd set of stereo tracks.

3) Invert one set.

4) Mix and Render. Play the result.

I just did a test on Jeff Beck's Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, but just used a high quality compression versus low quality (the original FLAC is on another drive in the other room, and I am lazy). I got mostly weird cymbal crash sounds and some other drum hit sounding things.

As I said earlier, it's actually tough for me to hear the difference in an A-B, but it does seem to become noticeable to me over time. Apparently, all that stuff missing from the sound just makes it kind of life-less. Some kinda spooky echo-y sounds too.

I've heard some people say this is just phase-shift, that you wouldn't hear it as a difference w/o that reference. Maybe, but when I zoom in bit-by-bit, the phase relationships look extremely close. And some of these difference amplitude are about half scale. That would take a full 90 degree phase shift.

It could be in my mind, it's pretty hard to really test this thoroughly. I suppose I could have a random playlist selection, note my impression after 20 minutes, and repeat that a bunch of times and see if I guessed right. But that would be work, and the extra disk space really isn't an issue for me, and I'd want to keep the raw original anyhow if I had to re-encode. So I just listen to FLAC normally, except when I move something to a portable player for causal use.

-ERD50

 

[Meadbh]

Those big old heavy, heavy huge televisions...before flat screens? We purchased them for our kids years ago for Christmas. They were still in the house because, well, because they were so heavy.

At yard sale this weekend, we sold one for $2.00 and gave the other one away. We were SO HAPPY to be rid of them---and i think they cost us about $350 each.

I still have mine from 1997. Works fine. Almost never watch it, except for Olympics and such. It's in the spare room, where it doesn't take up valuable space in the living room.

 

[Meadbh]

Some guys just don't know what an attractive young lady is. It's also possible that they don't know how to drive.

DD holds a record AFAIK. Came over the hill kinda quick, saw the mounties too late, braked, got pulled over. Cop says "good brakes on your car". She says "huh?". He says "zapped you 3 times, 160, 140 and 110" (all in KPH). He says "license and registration please", she hands it over. He says "you're an RCMP sargeant?" She says "huh?". He says "slow down". At the time she was a civilian employee of the RCMP. Says she may have had too many pieces of paper with the license and registration, DW says "did he get a date?".

DD's name is Mary. Her friends call her Andretti.

There's a hill in Saskatchewan? Who knew! LOL

 

[jimnjana]

ice cube trays
yellow pages
operator assisted calls

 

[Meadbh]

ice cube trays
yellow pages
operator assisted calls

I, the pleb, still use ice cube trays, and I'm sure many LBYMs do too.

 

[Gumby]

List of things I own and still use regularly:

1. Rotary dial phones
2. Vinyl records and turntable
3. Tube amplifier
4. Manual typewriter
5. Wind up mechanical alarm clock
6. Wristwatch
7. Paper maps
8. Paper appointment calendar
9. Paper books
10. Cars with manual transmission
11. Paper checks
12. Fancy Waterman pen to sign my checks
13. Analog thermometer
14. Hand cranked meat grinder
15. Hand cranked pasta maker

 

[rbmrtn]

I only wish FAX machines were totally obsolete. I got rid of mine when I found that the printer in which resided didn't play nice with my new computer. Since then I've had a number of interfaces with companies that do not do email attachments and insist on sending / receiving faxes. And no, my Windows 7 doesn't have FAX capability like the XP platform did.

Windows Fax and Scan software is includes in all of the windows 7 versions. As long as you have supported hardware, here is a link to set it up.

Set up your computer to send and receive faxes

 

[Tyro]

Lots of great reasons:

Those may be great reasons for you to do it, but they're not for me.
Eliminating wear & tear comes close, but we've always taken better than average care of our vinyl, and offhand I can't think of one that we've had to replace for wear & tear (other reasons, yes, but not w&t).

 

[Tyro]

I, the pleb, still use ice cube trays, and I'm sure many LBYMs do too.

+1 We just bought a new refrigerator, and DW insisted on saving the $200 for an automatic icemaker + added energy cost.