Indeed.
If you carry your little paper notebook w you everywhere, so you never ever find yourself at the store w the precious list at home.
And if you’re single so there’s nobody else you have joint shared grocery needs with.
Flip phone, which I use mainly as a pocket watch, occasionally as a telephone, and rarely to receive e-mails from my wife. I usually put it on charge when I want to use it and find out that the battery is dead or about to become so. And once it’s on charge it may be a few days before I remember to put it back in my pocket.
I have both a laptop for internet use and a camera for taking pictures, so I can’t justify the expense of buying anything fancier.
Ought-something-or-other.
They are frequently better that Google Maps. If your looking for the fastest way to go GM will suffice but if you want to take the fun way or if you don’t want to get raked over the coals on tolls (I can save $10 for about 90 seconds or two minutes longer but can’t get GM to suggest that way unless I add an intermediate point to force me to go there; something one wouldn’t know unless they are a local) GM absolutely sucks! If you zoom out, you loose the detail of the little roads & if you zoom in enough to see them, you can only see maybe one mile down the road, which isn’t nearly far enough to see where you want to go.
Google Maps has a simple touch option for “No tolls”. No need to try to pull the route away from the tolls, you just pick “No tolls”.
I used to use a map book. If anything, I was a little map obsessed as I had a job that required me to route multiple delivery crews and give all of THEM maps for their routes. So I’m no stranger to the six county road atlas. But, after I realized it had been probably a decade since I actually needed the one in my car, I got rid of it and haven’t missed it since.
I suspect a lot of the people who are saying, “I ain’t never needed a smart phone and I never will!” have a spouse or partner with a smartphone picking up all the slack and taking care of all the things that require them these days.
I live in a building where I literally couldn’t do my laundry without a smartphone. You need an app to activate the washer and dryer. This change may have even been what inspired my OP last year., I don’t remember now but the timing seems right. Our board was even considering creating a key system that required an app but so far this hasn’t happened yet.
I don’t like these developments but I am taking about the world we live in and not the one I wish it to be. And it’s a world that requires a smartphone more and more every day.
Grocery list is a thing I use my smart phone for. And calls and txt.
I rarely use it for web searches and certainly not surfing. It does bug me that some companies I’ve called assume I’m doing everything on a smart phone (interfaces are different). One fellow had a hard time realizing that I was on a desk top computer. The horror. But that’s my go to. Then a small lap top.
Do people not have desktops and laptops anymore? I’m a recently retired programmer, I have both. No choice in that job.
I’ve never understood the need to mock someone who does things differently than me. I guess that’s why it doesn’t bother me to live in foreign countries for so long.
How does one get worked up if a grocery list is written on paper, in a laptop, or carved with a chisel on stone tablets? What is it to anyone else?
Completely.
My wife will surf the net on her phone. To each their own. I was way to immersed in desktop/thin clients and such to ever do that. I’ll keep my desktop.
As a programmer I often had to to have multiple applications open at once. I know you can do that on a smart phone, but for myself it’s a giant pain that would be full of errors and mistakes when checking/moving data.
There’s a kernel of truth there, but not much more. Requiring a smartphone is a steep claim.
I have a smartphone, but I only use it for calling and texting and Whatsapp (which was the only reason to get one, for me). I hate the tiny screen, the even tinier touch keyboard, the interfaces altogether, and the fact that you need one hand to hold the phone. So I use my ultrabook for all my device needs, which is mostly browsing and lots of typing. A typewriter would fill maybe 40% of my device needs.
I never have a list when grocery shopping. I memorize what we need and play by ear the rest.
When I need to drive somewhere, I look at a map beforehand and visualize the birds-eye-route.
I use my action digital camera to take photos, and often have that in my pocket, but not when I’m not expecting something to document.
I never need or want to listen to music, or podcasts, or what have you, when I’m out and about. I want to hear my surroundings, 100% of the time.
My wife, an IT engineer, does most everything outside of work with her expensive, company-provided smartphone. When we’re out together, I have no doubt there’s some trickle-down benefit from it for me, too. Never have I been in a situation which required a smartphone, though, be it abroad or else, I always have options. Environs vary, sure, but needing an app to do laundry would have me up in arms.
Were I single, I would keep on keeping on, and it would work just fine, the same way everyone did it 20 years ago. A substantial percentage of every developed country’s population lives without smartphones.
I’m new to a smart phone, having gotten my first one last October. What stopped me from getting one sooner was due only to no cell service where I live. There’s still no cell service, but there’s finally decent, fast gigabit fiber, so my smart phone lives on that at home.
I’ve struggled with the learning curve. The thing can do almost everything I could possibly want or need, but none of it is intuitive. I’ve frequently made myself stop and learn new tricks. But mostly, it’s a handy phone, texting device, calculator, timer, alarm and camera. I’m sure I’ll do more with it as time goes on, but I don’t envision using it for email or browsing. I still prefer the lapper for that stuff.
ZDS: …texts from my wife.
Also he saw her with a laptop and immediately assumed “that idiot woman is using it as a grocery list!” Did he stand at her shoulder and read what she was doing? Maybe she just had her laptop with her and needed to go shopping. Maybe she had an important call or video chat but needed to buy stuff too. Or was coming straight from work. Putting it in down the baby seat makes way more sense than carrying it in a bag.
And even if she was, so what?
I use my phone app to shop and scan. But my list is writ on paper.
Yeah. I use the timer for cooking a lot, a quick calulation.
I’m a bit of a jack of all trades when it comes to working on my stuff, so I will take pictures to save to put it back together. Especially if there is weirt wireing involved.
I got rid of my last desktop around 2005.
My entire software firm ran only on laptops and servers. No desktops in sight for any of the ~30 technical staff nor any of the sales / admin staff either. Yes, the devs & sysadmins had dual monitors & a separate keyboard if they wanted one. But the computer driving them was a high-end laptop.
I got rid of my last laptop around 2015 and have run on an MS Surface tablet / PC as my sole device ever since. I’m typing on that right now. Yes, sometimes with a docking station for a larger 2nd monitor. But I’ve not really used the monitor in the last 2 years and if it failed I would not replace it.
So no, you can do IT without a desktop machine. You can do it without a laptop either. A tablet is plenty, given a separate monitor. And even that can be forgone for at least some simpler tasks.
I’m sitting here at the (wired) keyboard and mouse, looking at a 27" monitor, which is pretty much how I accessed a desktop computer when I had one. But the keyboard, mouse and monitor are connected to a notebook computer via a USB-C dock, and that’s pretty much how everyone in my company uses their computer; desktop or notebook.
IT is different than programming. I am sure that you can do it on a tablet but it would be a pain in the ass.
-Typed on my laptop. I haven’t had a desktop since I got the laptop (different one) and my ex got the desktop after the divorce in 2005.
It’s not about doing things “differently”. For example, regarding grocery lists, another poster just mentioned that they don’t make a list at all, but just remember the main items they need. Wouldn’t work for me because I’d be bound to forget something, but if it works for them, who am I to criticize?
What gets to me – perhaps somewhat irrationally – is extreme techno-geeks who are so enamoured of their technology that they use it for everything, including inappropriate use cases where the effort they put in to use the tech is greater than traditional ways of accomplishing the same task.
And it’s not just consumers that can be like that. Manufacturers and software developers love to make things with far more features than anyone needs and consequent greater complexity. Tesla makes cars with fancy recessed door handles that don’t work in freezing weather, and interior electronic door releases that won’t work in an emergency. Microsoft makes a word processor where I’d guess less than 10% of the features are ever used by the vast majority of users, but the bloated complexity introduces bugs like the entire document suddenly being reformatted for no apparent reason. And don’t get me started about service providers whose services are only available through a smartphone “app”.
These things drive me nuts. Many are a direct detriment to my quality of life. To me, the woman shopping with the laptop represented a sort of symbolic embodiment of this techno-frenzied world. Other than that, I couldn’t care less how she or anyone does their shopping.
I actually love technology, but only when it delivers a direct benefit to me when used appropriately.
I haven’t seen a desktop in the office since 2012 (and that company went under in 2015). All my employers since 2012 have been laptop/tablet only. I guess until a few years ago, we had a desktop computer in the back of the store at the receiving dock to check in vendor deliveries. But those are on tablets now. Maybe the receptionist station at corporate HQ has a desktop. But they vanishingly rare in my recent experience. Administrative/Executive Assistants were transitioned to laptops long ago.
Mini Mouse built a desktop “gaming rig” in middle school. It’s sitting in the “study” untouched for seven or eight years now.