A surprising amount of modern technology is almost totally useless

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I think camera phones are great. Granted, they’re still crappy quality right now, but they’re getting better. There are lots of times I wish I had a camera, but not enough to actually carry one around with me regularly. But I always have my cell phone.

In 5 years, when you can get a cheap phone with a camera equivalent to one of those $150 point and click 4 MP digital cameras right now, it’ll be great.

I’m also looking forward to future convergent devices. A phone/pda/camera/mp3 player combo might suck right now, but in a few years (when it actually does a pretty good job at each function) it’ll be fantastic to be able to carry around a single device instead of 4 or 5.

22

Most of your ideas are pretty good–but you don’t think the date rapist is going to take your phone & erase the pictures/toss it in the toilet?

23

All good arguments, but what about the increasing number of places where any kind of camera is forbidden? Strictly speaking you’re not allowed to carry or use such a phone there, and having a cell phone that cannot be taken everywhere rather defeats the purpose of a cell phone altogether.

24

Typically, you can send the pictures either as multimedia messages to another phone, or as email attachments to any email address; the date rapist isn’t going to be able to track down and destroy copies circulated that way.

Not that I think it’s a particularly sensible justification of the existence of camera phones; it’s a dumb one “Hi Mom! Here’s a picture of the man who might kill me tonight! Hope you’re well, bye!”

25

Why not? When I go on blind internet dates I forward the last correspondence including pix of the guy I’m meeting to a friend, I only use one specific email address when responding to internet dating sites and my mother and a trusted friend have the password to that account. Seems like a smart move to make sure somebody knows who I went to meet up with–of course it won’t help if the pix are of someone else, but then again if they are I’m going to cut that date short, tout de suite!

Sure we got along fine without cameraphones. We also got along fine without cars, washing machines, computers, indoor plumbing, regular telephones, radio, TV, elevators, elastic, water heaters, central heating, air conditioning, airplanes, weather satellites, Goretex jackets, shoes with a right and a left foot, zippers, stoves, electricity, refrigeration, antibiotics and about fifty million nifty things we’ve managed to come up with in the last couple hundred years. Anybody lining up to go without because we “got along fine” without them for millions of years? No? Maybe that’s because today’s necessity was yesterday’s ridiculous, useless luxury and the passage of time has proven the utility of these items. Cameraphones may or may not stand the test of time, but it’s silly to dismiss them purely on the basis of “having gotten along fine without them” up to now. It’s a meaningless argument.

26

Oh, I agree with you on that point. However, the only one of your listed uses I would actually find useful is the car accident situation. For my uses, a phone without a camera is better – one less thing to break, one less gizmo to add cost to the phone. For you, it sounds like you like to have it. Different strokes, and all that. Unfortunately, it must not be very profitable to offer both deluxe and simple models, judging by what’s available.

27

The trouble with a lot of technology is that it tends to have sudden break points where it goes from pretty useless to pretty handy, and it’s pretty hard to tell where they are until they’ve happened.

Camera phones were pretty crappy until they hit the megapixel mark, now they’re heading for two or even three in a pretty small handset - that’s enough to take a reasonably good picture and is very convenient.

Internet access? Pretty slow and restricted over GPRS on a small screen, but with 3G and a slightly larger screen it’s probably going to be very convenient indeed.

Bluetooth? Flaky shitty and irritating in my experience, but again, has the promise to be very handy.

28

Do they have a cell phone with a wide-angle lens?
:wink:

29

Some of these phones are getting nuts–I’ve been looking seriously at the TMobile MDA which is a small wonder–full PDA running WinBloze Mobile 5 on a 200Mhz processor, phone, 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, WiFi and Edge, full QWERTY keypad and touch screen, the thing is tiny for what’s in it, fits in a neat belt holster and is pretty much standard phone size and I can get it for as little as 200.00 as an upgrade. Thirty bucks a month for unlimited GPRS and WiFi browsing (TMo HotSpot–think Starbuck’s) and this is a serious package.

Basically, there is no market for low end phones. The two that TMo gives away for free on any activation or upgrade, the Nokia 6010 and Samsung X495 are a drug on the market–we literally can’t give the damned things away. Why should anybody bother, when you can have a stylin’ phone with all the bells and whistles for as little as fifty bucks? For those of you who just really want a basic phone, I suggest you stock up now and lay in two or three to meet your needs for the next few years because the basic phone is going bye bye. The only market for base phones is the kidphone, which is usually a fixed dial phone that looks like it was made by Fisher-Price–there are a couple of manufacturers out there that are figuring out that there’s a buck or two to be made in durable basic phones for the younger set.

30

I used to buy the “top of the line” whatever and actually use most, if not all of the features. Now, I’m an old fart, living in the middle of a dry lake in the middle nowhere (now, thats the MIDDLE!) and the tool I use the most?

A fucking shovel, to dig holes to plant trees.

31

What you need is one of those nifty little mini-backhoes on teensy tiny caterpillar tracks. And maybe a GPS, to make sure the hole is in EXACTLY the right place.
:smiley:

32

I went directly from my old “Don’t you have anything with fewer functions?” “Yes, but it’s more expensive” cellphone to a cellphone/Palm Pilot that makes most people’s eyes bug out, and I do like it a fair amount. I always liked my old Palm Pilot (RIP) and combining it with a cellphone just persuaded me to buy a new Palm. Even the features I didn’t think I’d use - like the camera - I’m finding uses for.

33

I like useful functions. I can’t live without my pda/phone/web access/24 - 7 email. But I don’t need a bar code scanner so I can get instant information on a product at Safeway. I would love for my touch screen to be able to scan in business card information. And be able to unlock my car, be the TV remote, act as a gps device and do micro transactions. For me, these functions would improve my life.

34

Sure, just look at The Sharper Image. 'Nuff said.

(by the way, I can one-up you on the cellphone. You said:)

When I had a cell phone, I never even used it for text messaging. At the least, you’re way ahead of me.

35

Living in Tokyo, there’s no way to live without a cell phone. It’s made life a lot more convenient. People live too spread out, so you meet at a central location. It used to be that if you were going to be late, there would be no way to tell each other.

Text messaging is also great. You can send messages to people from places where it would be rude to talk on the phone, such as on the train. Also, my staff can email my cell phone, without worrying if I’m in a meeting. The phone has a smart feature which recognizes phone numbers and let’s you dial directly by clicking on the number. You can also send emails by clicking on a email address in the message.

Getting messages by email makes it so much easier than by phones for most things.

I also really like my camera, and use it extensively. I take pictures of my insurance and doctor appoitment cards, and show the pic instead of having to keep all of the cards with me. If I’m shopping and see something I want to take notes of, it’s faster than writing down evertying, especially since I don’t carry pens around with me all the time. It’s come in really handy at job sites, like taking pictures of the customer’s set up. I was walking one day and happened to see a marathon race with a Nao-chan, a famous Japanese runner leading the race. While it wasn’t the best picture in the world, it was a great prop for the story around the water fountian on Monday.

Sure, you could always carry around a higher quality digital camera, a notebook, a pen and organizer, but my cell phone does this quite well.

It’s also got up to five separate alarms which you can set for once onlyy, weekdays only, weekends only, the same day each week or everyday. Since I travel for business, it’s easier to use this than to figure out the different systems in the hotels.

36

Last Christmas several Spanish cellphone carriers started offering “lite” models.

They let you call. They let you find out whose call you missed. They remember the numbers you called. That’s about it.

Oh, and they have BIG white numbers on a black background. On BIG keys. You can manage to hit only one key, and it be the key you actually wanted to hit, even if you’re an old feller with moderate Parkinson’s and large hands who used to work as a bricklayer.

My old cell broke down on Easter. I got to the store and got the cheapest model of the same brand (now I have two charger cables, yay!), using up whatever points I’d been racking. The lady at the store gave me a knitted cellphone jacket. “Which color?” The choices were bright green or black. “Black.” “That’s funny, nobody wants the green one. Why black?” “I don’t want a glow-in-the dark cell… anyway I don’t think it’s likely to catch its death if I don’t make it wear its sweater, you know.”

Mom’s using the cellphone-sweater in the kitchen as an emergency hot-pot-grabber.

37

I’m fine with extra features in and of themselves; the capability of my devices to do more than I ask of them is not inherently a bad thing. Where I begin to get annoyed, though, is at the point at which these extra features start to overshadow the primary purpose of the thing itself.

A few years ago, I was in the market for a high-quality digital audio recorder. As I do with all my (relatively) big-ticket electronics purchase, I tried to do my homework before making a selection. There were two factors, and two alone, in which I was interested: the price of the thing, and the quality of the recorded audio. The first was easy to determine for any given model. The second, if you can believe it, was virtually impossible. Review after review of these things rambled on and on about how it could record as .mp3 and upload as .wav, could be used effortlessly between Linux and Mac-based systems, accepted multiple-channel input, let you choose between 18 different file types, came with a directionalized microphone (which you could point anywhere you wanted!), and saved the world from impending nuclear holocaust. All very lovely, and yet, I give not a fuck. I desire an audio recorder, such that I might, perhaps, RECORD AUDIO with it. Does it record audio well, at consistent levels, with reliably high quality? I dunno…who cares about that? The interface lights up!

Manufacturers, take note: I purchase an Xxxx-er because I wish it to Xxxx. I would have to imagine that, in this, I am not entirely unique. So, manufacturer, does your Xxxx-er perform this function? Does it do it well? And might you review this aspect, o reviewers? It’s to the point now with this that you can’t even blindly purchase the most expensive model with the rationale that at least it’s probably competent at its core function, because you’re just as likely paying for some obscure, highly specialized, state of the art, preeminently useless feature whose mere existence enables the thing to be priced at six times the median despite the fact that, lo and behold, the thing actually sucks at what it was originally designed to do.

Feature creep? Fine. Make my dishwasher browse the internet, my stereo monitor my home for signs of invading ninjas, and my cell phone find proof of the existence of God. Just know that, when I come home from work, I’ll still want clean dishes, high-quality tunes, and the ability to call my friends. That is, after all, the whole point…no?

38

I, for one, am glad to live in a world where my DVD player can be set to prefer displaying disc menus in Esperanto, if they are available. :slight_smile:

39

One of my favorite stress-relieving activities is watching Buffy DVDs with the Spanish dubbing and French subtitles. Or vice versa. I love all the functions on my DVD player, TV, TiVo, etc. but I’m a movie/TV nut.

My cell phone is the free one that came with my Cingular plan. It mostly calls people and does text messages, but I’ve found the alarm clock function handy MANY times. I also enjoy playing Bejeweled while sitting around waiting for something, and having Europe’s “The Final Countdown” as my ringtone. It doesn’t have a camera, and I don’t know how to check my email with it.

I think cell phones, laptops and TiVo will eventually meet each other and merge on the evolutionary ladder. They’re so close already!

That said, I agree that basic models of really important tools should be available. Elderly people and others who want them definitely should have access to easy-to-use phones with large buttons and visible screens.

40

You’re right, of course. That stuff will never catch on.