It’s been an emotional journey, friends, but I think we’ve found that our attachment to these gadgets of yore is not merely a sentimental one. Indeed, many commenters have chimed in to let us know that some of these devices are still in use in their households. Admirable! We’ll be adding to the series as time goes on and more of our tech lapses into “nostalgia” status, but here’s a little summary of our memories so far. → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. I was always a Sega kid. Not exclusively, mind you — I never saw fit to swear my loyalty to plumber nor hedgehog. Still, I was always that kid. The one who swore that Lion King was better on the Genesis than it was on the SNES, even if the former did sort of look like over-dithered garbage. The one who told all his friends how awesome the Sega Mega Mouse would be, even when there wasn’t really any reason for it to exist. The one who waited in line for a Sega CD. When they announced the Sega Nomad — a handheld, battery-powered Sega Genesis — I just about flipped my lid. → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. Back in 2001, I got a surprise Christmas present from my parents: a Sony MiniDisc recorder. It was a device I had barely even heard of, and certainly hadn’t asked for. But within a matter of weeks I was pleasantly surprised with how much use I would get out of the little device. → Read More
10. Master Rob the Video Robot This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. In no particular order except I present to you some of the greatest examples of game advertising in existence. → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. My Grandma Sadie bought me my Nintendo Game Boy in the summer of 1990 at Deluxe Novelty on Hanover Street in Martins Ferry, Ohio. I was fifteen and I spent most of those summer months playing the NES and watching TV. Those, my friends, were the days. If there’s one thing I want you youngsters to take away from this series, if that’s at all possible, understand that technology appears around us as if by magic. Considering that the closest our generation got to handheld gaming was the Game and Watch gaming watch in the 1980s and a Mattel Football game, when the Game Boy appeared on the scene things changed completely. Up until 1989, handheld gaming displays were amazingly simple. After 1989, they were amazingly complex. → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. I want to be clear here: I’m not just celebrating the Super Nintendo in general — I do that every day, as should you. I’m celebrating my Super Nintendo in particular. Because for almost 20 years now, this amazing piece of hardware has been my constant companion, and I want to give it the recognition it deserves. → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. Way back in the balmy summer of 2001, I made sunset time-lapse video using a Sony Mavica and a stack of 3.5mm floppy disks. I did this while working at a Boy Scout summer camp. Yes, I have always been a huge nerd. → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. In 1999, I was into photography, but not seriously. I’d had the obligatory Kodak Instamatic, a couple of cheap 35mm pocket cameras, and I had fun taking snapshots. I never really took it seriously, though, until I saw some pictures that a co-worker had taken of a sunset. Then I just had to have a digital camera. But back in ’99, your options for digital cameras were somewhat limited. → Read More
Back in the olden days, Apple tried, just like most companies, to make a set-up box. Using Motorola chips and plenty of crazy ports, the iTV was the precursor to something like WebTV and used a Macintosh Quadra 605/LC475 processor and a crazy OS. It wasn’t a really DVR or video player, per se, but it had a method to grab and send data to the TV. Anyway, one of these just sold for $46 on eBay with free shipping! Who knows where he got it – maybe someone lost it in a bar? – but it sure is nice to see it among the living. These things are classic Apple design, just at the precipice between the hard lines of the early Power Macs and the curvy lines of the iMac. → Read More
Since it’s Gadgets of Days Gone By week, I thought it would be appropriate to note that on May 5th, 1995, Nintendo announced the Nintendo 64 game console. If you were living on the planet Earth at the time, you knew that things had changed. What was more, it debuted with perhaps still the best example of 3D platforming, Mario 64. Kids and adults alike would spend the next few weeks/months/years playing it and the other excellent games for this powerhouse platform. → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. Back in college there was this guy Joel who was always working on cooler stuff than we were. He was in Scotch and Soda, the drama club at Carnegie Mellon and one day he brought out his Newton Messagepad. Man was I impressed. This was just on the cusp of the dot-com era when handheld devices coolness levels maxed out at the TI-81 calculator. To see a windowed environment on an LCD screen with a programmable OS? That was crazy town. → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia.
The Palm III was the first truly portable computing device I ever owned. Oh sure, I had a laptop at the time, but it was hardly something that could be considered “portable” in anything but the most literal interpretation of that word. The Palm III, though, slipped in my pocket, and went everywhere with me. Its clamshell design gave it its own protective case for the screen, so I didn’t need to invest in fancy third-party protective gear. The Palm III traveled with me pretty much around the world, and it never let me down. → Read More
So it’s blast from the past week or whatever here at CrunchGear, and I decided to highlight my very fancy VCR tape collection. Boy oh boy did I tape a lot of stuff as a youngster! → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. The Hewlett Packard DeskJet 500 was the first printer I bought with my own money. I spent a lot on it, but it was an investment: it was a new era of inkjet printing, and my hand-me-down Okidata dot matrix printer just wasn’t going to cut it any more. I was a freshman in college, cranking out papers for class, and marveling at the quality of the letters on the page. I have absolutely no memory of how much replacement ink cartridges cost back then, but I do know that it was a fraction of the cost of the printer itself — unlike today, where a new printer can be had for only marginally more than buying replacement ink cartridges! → Read More
This week at CrunchGear, we’re looking back at some of our favorite gadgets from the not-so-distant past — old phones, computers, media players, toys… those devices that still stand out in our memories despite their obsolescence. Feel free to contribute some of your own nostalgia. It was 2001, I think, when I got the predecessor to this brilliant piece of electronics. During high school I’d sported a tape player and later a rather nice portable CD player, picked up on a road trip to Yellowstone. I saw the iRiver CD-MP3 player on a forum, and the idea of having 800 minutes of music per CD instead of 80 prompted me to buy one of the earlier models, perhaps even a RioVolt. I had it for a short time and it made little impression because its cheap construction led to an early demise after only a couple months. And that’s when I saw this little number. → Read More
