Who else rocks an old Android device and loves it?

[mikedt]

If I remember right, the Lightscribe feature used the same laser to burn (print) the label on the other side. Even the last editions of such disc drives took something like 40 minutes per disc if you wanted something with detail, and about a minute for text that was still not as easy to read as the old sharpie method.

After some digging on the interwebs, apparently LightScribe was a HP feature, and it needed special LightScribe CD-R/DVD-Rs to work. I'd never heard of it until I got this drive. And like everyone else back in the day I just used a marker pen to write my CD/DVD labels.

I originally bought a CD/DVD drive last year, really because of some things that I wanted were not available via streaming.

I can understand wanting to get rid of a printer (because seriously, eff the business model around those things); I just don't think this was the best way to go about that.

I absolutely still need a printer, mainly for the homework handouts for my students. And two years ago, I needed to print my own boarding passes for Ryanair, otherwise I'd be charged €/£55 at the check-in. Same with Ukraine Airlines, I had to print my own board passes. Although I'm not likely to be flying with that airline again. Cheap flights Beijing to London via Kiev.

Chinese airlines, I can have an app on my smart-phone as the boarding pass. That's another reason why I don't rock old Android phone for daily use.

 

[nickdalzell]

My 2008 eMachines (the one running Vista SP2) has a similar feature with its CD-writer, called LabelFlash. Never used it since I think it depended on specific disks that stopped being available when K-Mart died. I kinda miss our K-mart. It never got any updates at all so walking into it circa ~2014 was like walking back into the early 1980s. You could still see Nintendo 64 displays (broken, sadly) and dual-tape answering machines appeared to be in stock--likely never sold!

I know a few businesses in town that still rely on Dot-matrix printers. Where I work still depends on outdated fax machines. Our digital check reader is from the 1970s--it literally takes a check, whisks it around some type of IR lamp or something, and spits it back out. The PC it's attached to still runs Windows 7.

There's quite a few rural gas stations whose PoS terminals appear to be running some variant of Windows XP, and many bank ATMs I've come across them booting Windows XP Embedded; I've caught a few with the BSoD screen.

 

[mikedt]

My 2008 eMachines (the one running Vista SP2) has a similar feature with its CD-writer, called LabelFlash. Never used it since I think it depended on specific disks that stopped being available when K-Mart died. I kinda miss our K-mart. It never got any updates at all so walking into it circa ~2014 was like walking back into the early 1980s. You could still see Nintendo 64 displays (broken, sadly) and dual-tape answering machines appeared to be in stock--likely never sold!

I suspect that was completely incompatible with HP's LightScribe. And I bet both HP LightScribe and LabelFlash charged a real premium for their proprietary blank discs.

I know a few businesses in town that still rely on Dot-matrix printers. Where I work still depends on outdated fax machines. Our digital check reader is from the 1970s--it literally takes a check, whisks it around some type of IR lamp or something, and spits it back out. The PC it's attached to still runs Windows 7.

There's quite a few rural gas stations whose PoS terminals appear to be running some variant of Windows XP, and many bank ATMs I've come across them booting Windows XP Embedded; I've caught a few with the BSoD screen.

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I've not seen a crashed Windows XP for a while now. But on the other hand I've seen Android Recovery screens a few times lately, like on Boeing 787 in-flight entertainments, the payphones our students use, and high speed train information kiosks.

 

[nickdalzell]

Yeah my area (Owensboro, KY) is way, way way behind the times, especially in rural areas. I mean it was 2015 when we started to see chip and pin readers. Even today, in 2022, there's only a handful of places that have LTE service, mainly only in city limits. No matter what carrier, soon as you cross the county line you're dropping to 3G, Edge (T-Mobile), or 1x/searching for service (Verizon)

I use a Samsung Galaxy SII at work because it's the ONLY phone I can actually get service with at work. Forget Verizon or T-Mobile.

 

[nickdalzell]

Yesterday I had my T-Mobile Galaxy SII go to 'searching' and no bars. I don't know what happened, but I placed the SIM into another old phone (Galaxy S3, then S4) without luck. All said either no service or 'emergency calls only' and I just went to the account and enabled auto-pay, waited 5 minutes, placed it into the S4 and it got back on LTE, so I placed the SIM back into the SII, it shows 4G so it's working now. Dunno. All these phones are unlocked, even if they all have specific carrier bloatware on them.

It's a constant struggle forcing VoLTE hacks on phones that shouldn't support them but damn if I'm gonna live in flat UI land again.

 

[Hadron]

Yesterday I had my T-Mobile Galaxy SII go to 'searching' and no bars. I don't know what happened, but I placed the SIM into another old phone (Galaxy S3, then S4) without luck. All said either no service or 'emergency calls only' and I just went to the account and enabled auto-pay, waited 5 minutes, placed it into the S4 and it got back on LTE, so I placed the SIM back into the SII, it shows 4G so it's working now. Dunno. All these phones are unlocked, even if they all have specific carrier bloatware on them.

You are lucky: most SII models don't have LTE hardware (and it's amazing how many different SII models there were, presumably because the technology didn't allow them to put very many bands into one handset).

 

[Hadron]

I absolutely still need a printer, mainly for the homework handouts for my students. And two years ago, I needed to print my own boarding passes for Ryanair, otherwise I'd be charged €/£55 at the check-in. Same with Ukraine Airlines, I had to print my own board passes. Although I'm not likely to be flying with that airline again. Cheap flights Beijing to London via Kiev.

Chinese airlines, I can have an app on my smart-phone as the boarding pass. That's another reason why I don't rock old Android phone for daily use.

I can't remember the last time I printed a boarding pass.

Mind you I refuse to fly Ryanair on principle (the principle being that O'Leary is a dick and I refuse to give him a penny of my money).

 

[nickdalzell]

OMG I know! There's like what? 20 different SII variants that are not physically identical so finding a case was impossible in 2011 much less today.

I retired the HTC and switched to an AT&T based MVNO due to work having such atrocious Verizon service, so my current phone is a Galaxy SII "Skyrocket" running Android 2.3 (the SGH-i727) and it's LTE capable. Not officially VoLTE capable but I know the dialer codes to fool the system and allow it. Clearer calls that's for sure.

The other one is a backup that I use as a spam filter. When I sign up for anything online, I use its number for the phone number. The incoming calls are all blocked on it, and it's used mainly as an outgoing call only device (calling insurance companies, etc) and MP3 player. Or a spare since it, too is unlocked and would work with either a T-Mobile or AT&T SIM card, even though it has T-Mobile branding and software. It's a SGH-T989, similar in appearance with the i727 but different enough that a case for either wouldn't interchange.

They're still quite decent performers though. Texting is literally instant, the camera works far better than the HTC's, and I quite love pre-Nature UX TouchWiz. Never used it before. Both are in excellent shape (the Skyrocket has bits of the chrome surround missing but ok otherwise) and are quite thin for their time.


I never board Airlines. When we used to travel as a family, we had our own private airplane to take. I still trust general aviation over airlines. At least I can know the pilot, see how the plane works, and gain experience without all the headache of modern TSA security and post-9/11 restrictions.

Besides, all the planes I'd WANT to board on an Airline are all gone. No more Boeing 707's, or DC-3's, or Super Connies. All the 'good' planes are gone in favor of tour buses with wings. Why is today's future so darned boring and homogenized anyway? Even cars are boring shades of grey, white, black mostly and all look alike. Has individuality gone the way of the 707?

 

[mikedt]

I can't remember the last time I printed a boarding pass.

Mind you I refuse to fly Ryanair on principle (the principle being that O'Leary is a dick and I refuse to give him a penny of my money).

I had no choice on the day I wanted to go Bristol to Dublin. it was Ryanair or Ryanair. Fortunately O'Leary hasn't extended his business to China(yet).

 

[mikedt]

I never board Airlines. When we used to travel as a family, we had our own private airplane to take. I still trust general aviation over airlines. At least I can know the pilot, see how the plane works, and gain experience without all the headache of modern TSA security and post-9/11 restrictions.

I try to avoid that as well, and will use trains whenever I can. Like last summer I visited Hohhot, Xilinhot, Xi'an, Chongqing, Yicheng, Zhangjiajie, Hangzhou, Huzhou, and Shanghai by train. With one flight back to Jinan.

Besides, all the planes I'd WANT to board on an Airline are all gone. No more Boeing 707's, or DC-3's, or Super Connies. All the 'good' planes are gone in favor of tour buses with wings. Why is today's future so darned boring and homogenized anyway? Even cars are boring shades of grey, white, black mostly and all look alike. Has individuality gone the way of the 707?

No more Hawker Siddely HS748s or Fokker Friendships ether. But I do like current Embraer ERJs though, like the 190.

 

[Hadron]

Besides, all the planes I'd WANT to board on an Airline are all gone. No more Boeing 707's, or DC-3's, or Super Connies. All the 'good' planes are gone in favor of tour buses with wings. Why is today's future so darned boring and homogenized anyway? Even cars are boring shades of grey, white, black mostly and all look alike. Has individuality gone the way of the 707?

The clue is in the name "Airbus" .
It's all economics: a DC-3 is slow and carries very few passengers. One of those little Embraer regional jets will take twice as many people in half the time.

As for car shapes and colours, the shapes are increasingly driven by engineering constraints, which frankly I have no problem with: a transport system based on moving 1-3 tonnes of metal around in order to carry one person is an absurdity in itself, but if we're going to do such a silly thing we should at least attempt to minimise the harm it does, and reducing drag coefficients is a part of that (reducing the size of vehicles would be the single biggest help with a range of harms, but there's no sign of any will to do that). But the colours thing is just fashion: I've noticed over the decades that they'd been getting more toned-down, though you do see a decent number of red cars in UK cars still. And that's not all bad: if you've seen one orange car you've seen one more than you ever want to (disclosure: my family had an orange car with a black vinyl roof - I'm sure I don't need to tell you what decade that was ). But I've always assumed that fashions by their nature change, and so it's likely to swing round at some point.

The thing that always gets me is that it always seems to be the people driving dark grey cars who are slowest to turn on their headlights when the visibility gets bad...

 

[nickdalzell]

Orange aint' an issue for me. What I term "Banana Boat Yellow" (started in the 1990s with the infamous Ford Ranger "Splash Edition") is a far more annoying colour.



Then there's the pink cars with fake eyelashes and surprisingly, mostly driven by men. I'm guessing they're beta males?

People told me during my gripes re: Windows 10/iOS7/Mac OS Yosemite that trends swing back and forth, yet, here we are, 9 years after Flat UI took over, and there's zero sign it's coming back to skeuomorphism. Sure, we get hints of it in Windows 11 but that's like a tease, saying 'hey we can DO it, we just won't do it ENOUGH'. It's like a joke. Soon as I get a glimmer of hope it's coming back, they either never follow through (Windows 10 stopped at transparency and 'fluent', Android doesn't even know what the hell it's doing re: Android 12, aka "1970s edition") or they backturn back to flat in a later 'update'

So in modern tech, the future's pretty bland, bleak, homogenized. You don't even see phones under 6" anymore, almost all have multiple cameras (solution in search of a problem), and there's zero OS variety (only Android and iOS now), and zero variety in hardware unless you're into sketchy, one-off startups like the FXTEC slider. Folding phones have been done before, so that's nothing new (Kyocera Echo in 2012). Desktop docks (like DEX) have been done before (See Motorola Atrix) so we are just rehashing not only past UI from the 90s-earlier, but we're also rehashing concepts that were gimmicks in the past and are no different today (is there a single Galaxy Fold that doesn't have a crease after a few open/close cycles?).

I just went to a flea market and got a few 2010's tech that I'm starting to collect to replace 'modern' stuff. a LCD TV made in 2009, along with an HP Pavilion with 2006 monitor that I just put WinXP on (and yes, to prove a point, it's online and nope, not getting hacked)

One of my Google Nest Hubs died yesterday, and that leaves the 'smart home' platform's days numbered. Perhaps I'll find an old X10 setup the next visit? not exactly 2010 but was there even such a thing as a 'smart home platform' in 2010? My Nest still conforms to my theme (2013 Thermostat) but my end goal is to have everything with the exception of one laptop and my gaming PC in the 2006-13 eras. I just miss that time, those designs, and that UI.

Hey, if they make a modern phone or tablet with a skeuo UI, that has front firing stereo speakers, I'll buy it. Until then all modern tech feels like a downgrade.

 

[Davdi]

Indeed, for audio it's the same - I still use (And love) CDs and minidiscs, not so sure about cassettes though, they quite often got chewed up in the car player. And I prefer FM to DAB - some of the DAB stations in the UK are broadcasting at 32KBPS, an a couple (voice only) at 16 or 8K. dreadful sound even with halfway decent headphones or speakers.

 

[nickdalzell]

Modern vehicles do not even HAVE CD players. Aftermarket head units are on the way out since most modern infotainment systems are dug deep into the vehicle electronics that removing them means you no longer have instruments, climate controls, and maybe not be able to start the engine/turn on the EV.

My Saturn is from 2005, my Honda from 2006. Both sport aftermarket infotainment systems independent from the electronics. If they died I can find many replacements at a junkyard.

I don't do cassettes much, and my adoration of Discmans died in circa 2005, so my music has been DRM-free MP3s since my first iOS device. I've currently amassed upwards of 2K songs since Android came out. I still have physical media (VHS Tapes, DVDs, Blu-Rays, Vinyl, tapes, CDs) and many PC games that work offline not tied to Steam, so I'm covered in the event of an extended internet outage (happens often in mid-winter--can go out for days). It is also convenient to not have to rely on subscriptions nickel and diming you to death, and needing perfect cellular coverage to enjoy a walk in the woods while playing Yanni.

People still joke about me keeping songs on my phone when they're not joking about how old it is, but whatever. They can enjoy their ads and skipping in and out Pandora playlist of 16 songs over and over all they like. Just don't expect me to conform to that.

Since my SII is mostly for texting, calling and playing music over BT, It spends far more time in my pocket while I enjoy the scenery everyone on the trail is missing out on since they're buried face-deep into their giant phone with 4 cameras that looks just like the other group staring into their phone that's giant sized with 4 cameras, while their kid has another giant phone as large as their head with 3 cameras doing the same. In a way, having an 'outdated' smartphone is a detoxifying experience. TikTok didn't exist when Android 2.3 was around; neither did Instagram or SnapChat. Unlike a dumb phone with no real third party apps, I can still enjoy a game of Angry Birds or Asphalt 6, multitasking, and support for over 100,000+ apps that were around during the Gingerbread era, many of which work perfectly fine, so I can have Pandora 3.0 if I wanted Pandora, or Slacker Radio if I wanted whatever they call it today, and Kindle for ebooks. I really miss nothing about 'modern' life since not much has fundamentally changed anyway. I can still stream TV/Movies via Netflix or YouTube on a 2013 Samsung Blu-ray Player (did you know your Google Play Movies content is on YouTube?), enjoy music on the go on my 2011 SII, message my contacts, watch YouTube on my 2012 tablet, even do social media with old versions of Facebook if that's what I wanted to do. On a size that is practical to hold one handed, while handing off tasks to larger devices when I need to use apps intended for a larger screen.

I can also use third-party apps like MyPal to browse the modern Web on Windows XP, and check my email on Vista, read PDFs and run diagnostic software with 7. I can have my beloved UI and nothing will take it away. People seem honestly threatened by people like me, but I don't get it.

 

[puppykickr]

I had Commodore Amigas for a few years, in the late 80s and early 90s. An Amiga 500 and then upgraded to a 1200. Before that I I had a Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum.



I have to use Windows 7 every working day, because that's what's on the classroom PCs. But I'm only using Powerpoint and a media player software.



in 2008, it was Windows Vista that made me first switch to using Apple Macbooks, and have never looked back.



I've got Douyin(Chinese version of TikTok), so I can see the videos Dr Wangfu(my cardiologist) posts.

My last computer was a Commodore 64!

A few years ago, a friend gave me a modern computer, but something with the mouse (which I can't stand anyway) crapped out and the UI became unresponsive.

I never had the chance to do more than play a game or two (keyboards suck for this) and mess with a sound recording app (junk compaired to real sound equipment).

The whole thing went to the electronics recycle.

 

[nickdalzell]

I'm posting this response on a 2012 Toshiba laptop running a 2013 distro of Linux. I've also recently come across a Wii-U (was very interested in that--beautiful skeuo UI, and everyone else is on a Switch, while I'm protesting via the Wii-U) as well as an old Apple TV 2 (2010) and some old RCA Streaming box that I'm unsure the year but given how Netflix's UI is on it (works fine) I'm guessing anywhere from 2010-2013? It's got the old red UI before the black one with the annoying auto play videos. Kinda reminds me of the version that was on the original Wii console. I can't find much info on it-It runs some type of limited OS; no app store, and a handful of apps from Netflix, AccuWeather, Flickr, Picasa (never tried those), YouTube (doesn't work), Hulu Plus (no longer have account), and Vudu.

I literally found that one in the garbage. Kinda shameful that people toss out something that still works fine!