I love this. 
I’ll add another vote to real telephones. Having a fluid conversation on a cell phone is damn near impossible.
I think that defines a similar gadget we used, but it went up to 9999 (4 digits), and the decimal point was up to the operator. We used it to tally kids test scores at school and for other household and tax stuff. It would add and subtract, but multiplying was not practical.
It wasn’t any faster than an abacus, but the abacus/soroban required more training, because the math is actually done in the brain; the abacus is just a storage device (think RAM). The plastic calc did the work, not the brain.
I can’t say I am wistful for it, however. I was glad when the first 4-banger calcs came out (Bowman?) and could be purchased for $65.
I won’t say I don’t TRUST mechanical pens, but wood pencils are tied with ballpoint pens for being the best damn writing implement ever devised. Mechanicals are lacking in heft somehow.
I keep a phone book and a paper atlas in the truck.
People who claim they never need anything more than their GPS and/or a cellphone to look up stuff away from home must never leave the city. 
There’s no need for me to be cruel, I suppose. Yes, I was making a (feeble) joke.
I have a knob for volume on my car stereo, but it’s not a real knob. I can turn the volume up or down, but only through predetermined values. I usually have the volume at 4 or 5, but sometimes I’d like it somewhere around 4.5. That’s not possible.
Video game cartridges. Damn discs get scratched or beaten up so easily. Plus you can’t write to them! Need a memory card to save games.
cool… yes!
But, GAD, they’re uncomfortable, difficult to maneuver, and hard to work. Sure, it’s a bragging right to have been underwater in one; but I’m not gonna do it again!.
You can add me to the list with the phones. I don’t like talking on the phone at all, and I can only call my dad on his cell. And the landline is no better. I remember when phones were crystal clear.
Pencils: You CAN find mechanical pencils that have the heft and the weight of a good wooden pencil. I use pencils a lot because I am taking a Discrete Math class. Traditional mechanical pencils - the lead was too thin and I was breaking them every third or fourth press. (I like to press hard). #2 pencils never sharpen enough, and the lead often falls out of the wood bit while you’re sharpening. Incredibly frustrating when you’re trying to do homework.
I found some 7mm mechanical pencils that don’t break, stay sharp, and they are nice and heavy, too. I highly recommend. And I found them in the grocery store!
My vote for things I miss? I still miss cassette tapes. Oh, I love mp3s and I love the convenience of having hundreds of songs on my nano, but I just liked having that feel, and the sound of rewinding, forwarding.
JohnT I leave my city all the time and I still use GPS way more than I use an atlas. For one thing, an atlas is inconvenient. For another, it really doesn’t have the detail I need, nor does it update by itself.
Paper maps are horrible and I don’t ever want to use them again. Who wants to open up those huge things? Remember that, and you literally had to pull over because it would take up the whole car, practically? Ugh.
After the Cormac Apocalypse, when you and the mister and that little kid from across the street (whom you picked up 'cause he looked so pathetic and you’re softhearted) are making your away from the Northlands to somewhere warmer, dodging cannibals and slavers and liberatarians all the while, you will mightily regret having thrown out all your gas station maps, 'cause that GPS ain’t gonna be working no more.
And if you think I’m going to send somebody from Rhymer Enterprises to save your ass from your own folly –
Okay, I will. But I will also be all shirty about it and not let you have any pudding.
I have tried these. They are pieces of crap. Both you and the caller sound like you are talking to each other inside barrels. 
78 rpm records. You can’t play CDs or iGadgets with a fingernail.
I have one of these spiral bound map books in my car and one for my city. They are awesome. All the mappage you need without the unweildiness.
http://store.randmcnally.com/2014-rand-mcnally-easy-to-read-midsize-deluxe-road-atlas.html
Yes, this is what I was talking about.
And paper maps can be easily folded. You just have to know how.
Lest everyone think I will be completely lost, I still have maps in my car. Up until this year, I had a full size atlas, but finally got rid of it as all the pages were falling apart. I have a plastic-y map of my city and a paper map of the surrounding environs.
BUT, that doesn’t change the fact that I haven’t used them in years!
As to not having a map at all, well a) there’s no guarantee in that scenario I’ll even have time to get the maps out of my car, and b) if I have my mister with me, the man has unerring directional sense and I’ll rely on him. If he is dead I am fucked in more ways than just not knowing which direction to go!
I thought of another thing I really miss, but it’s not a technology. I hope it’s OK to mention…heavy car doors. I watch the show Supernatural a lot and while I don’t love the Impala (nice car but not my style) I do love the creak as the heavy metal doors shut. Now all the doors are crumply and safer but they don’t have that lovely sound.
Cars that were actually comfortable and rode smoothly.
Modern cars have sacrificed ride comfort for some nebulous aspect called “handling”. If I wanted something with tight reactions and road feel, I’d buy a race car.
I miss my old '73 Duece and a quarter (Buick Electra). I prefer gliding down the road with little or no awareness of the road’s surface or condition. I like wondering whether that muffled “crunch” under my tires was a beer can or a Camry.
I loath modern cars with their road feel transmitted via the wheel. I have no interest in the road or its condition, the car’s job is to isolate me from it. And while I’m on about it, I miss having 7+ liters under the hood. Nothing like that sound…
And also… Crap. There are kids on my lawn. Back in a second.
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In my 20s and between jobs, I decided to write a novel. Being a young romantic, I had to use a real typewriter like my heroes, so I went to a thrift shop that was swimming in them, bought a very nice portablefor $20 and off I went. Here’s what your rose-colored glasses don’t tell you - typewriters are LOUD. The keys clacking, that bell dinging at the end of every line, that zipping sound when I hit the carriage return - drove my neighbors nuts, and hampered my writing as well since when inspriation struck at 2 a.m. I didn’t want to start up with that racket. I bought a laptop about 100 pages in.
I’ve got one in the apt right now. Again, the issue is noise - it has ringer on and off, no volume setting, and you can hear my phone ringing 2 floors away. I live with it because it’s not worth getting a new, electric phone, but every time it rings I think “Damn, I’d forgotten how loud these are.”
Big time. I don’t get why every single car made has to be tested at the Nurburgring. I had an old 1966 and it was a freaking cloud on the road. Sure, I had to slow to a walking pace for turns, but in that car I didn’t mind as it let me keep wafting.
Following on, mine is car-related - I miss tires with actual sidewalls. Not just for the softer ride, but not worrying about curbing my alloys whenever I park because my wheels have an inch of rubber to work with.
Slide rules are a good tool. I learned to use one in high school by asking my physics teacher to show me how to use the one he kept on his desk - it had not actually been part of the curriculum for some time. Slide rules give you a respect for real-life precision and why the correct answer is not 5.3578854423232323 meters. They also teach you a very important lesson in the meaning of logarithms. Too many kids go through school doing functions involving base 10 logs and natural logs but fail to understand how such equations might occur in real life.
I have a slide rule sitting about three feet away from me. I haven’t used it recently, but it’s there, and I can use it. No batteries required, works great in a storm or the wilderness, and never needs to be rebooted.
Heavy smooth luxurious paper and a fountain pen with that really solid inky black ink and a really great nib. There is nothing like writing anything from a poem to a shopping list like that. Also that ink has a very specific smell to it that always brings back really great memories.
I also always loved prepping my own canvases from stretching them to laying the perfect coat of gesso over the sizing. The wait until it was dried perfectly was agonizing in a great way [if you are into that sort of thing, and have this incredible idea for a painting… ]
Playing around with both hands in a bin of tesserae and spending hours laying them out to get the perfect set for a mosaic, and even messing around with clay, glazes and a kiln making your own tesserae.
The smell of machine oil and that unique smell of hot metal shavings. I really miss my old machine shop and am seriously bummed that the chemicals developed into migraine triggers. It was worth going down into Machinery 1 on the various subs mrAru was on to get a part of that smell…
Automobile engines that a shade-tree mechanic (or teenager) has a chance of repairing himself.
I did plenty of repairs on my first vehicle, an early 70s Ford. Easy to identify parts, plenty of room to maneuver. Lifting the hood of my current car makes me feel as though I’m gazing upon an aircraft engine.
mmm