Gotta agree with you KrisG ! The landline phone may be a God send if we have real trouble down the road some day. A Lot can be said for the old hard wired phones who's circuits travel through old dependable copper wires mostly. Our system of cell towers and microwave links with all the sophisticated digital hardware could be our downfall if we have a massive disabling event like a proposed Solar EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) event. Certainly the Landline circuits have been upgraded with digital circuitry and fiber optic trunk lines and are some what vulnerable, but the wires remain as they have for a hundred years or more. Any large scale disabling event would "Kill" the cell system quicker and take much longer to repair and bring it back up. The old parts of the analog phone systems are more robust than the finicky cell circuits, and would be quicker to bring back into service following such an event...................cell systems haven't had their "trial by fire" yet. It WILL go down hard and for a very long time......keep the old wall hung and keep it on the old phone system. Cable phones will be kaput in the above mentioned scenario also.

.............and we were still using the old hand-crank phones as late as 1968 in the little rural town I was from. That's when the operator knew everyone's business in town. Edna would ring Mable through the operator in town and the operator would tell Edna that Mable is babysitting over to her daughter's and won't be back until after dinner. How do ya like that for service? And that's a fact!

Landline phones corded phones and older typewriters don't require power to work. Without electricity modern devices are just as useless as these devices that the writer of the article thinks are obsolete.

It's amazing how people think something is useless or obsolete just because they don't use them.

And considering the unreliability of hard drives and re-download limits I will never choose downloadable content over physical media

Just because it doesn't plug into an electrical outlet doesn't mean that landline phone isn't electric. They are just as vulnerable to a power outage on the phone company's end.

Author apparently doesn't realize that there are still large areas of the country, particularly in rural and/or mountainous areas, where cell coverage is absent or spotty. There are also many areas where the only way to access high-speed internet service is through costly, satellite-based installations.

Talk to Emergency Preparedness experts about the potential value of "old school" radio-wave communication systems during disasters and in the event of a widespread falure of our power grid.

I appreciate and use the digital and wireless technology - but always be wary of relying on one type of technology - if it fails - I'm heading straight to my "old head" friends who have H.A.M. radios and still know MORSE code!

I think it's clear that the author is an idiot that has no idea what he's talking about...

Half the stuff discussed as hanging on is as extinct as anything could ever be, such as typewriters and telegraphs.

Then the other half of the things discussed the author clearly doesn't know the first damn thing about... like substituting push to talk for CB's? Push to talk phones require the person doing the talking to know the person's phone number that's doing the listening. Now how the hell is some trucker supposed to know the phone number of another trucker that's about to run over a car he can't see if he merges into another lane?

"insert a cassette into an 8-track" ??? WTF?

A CARTRIDGE was inserted into 8-tracks. If you inserted a cassette, and you would probably have to fish the cassette out of the machine if it didn't destroy it.

That "Insert a cassette" comment shows how knowledgeable the author is (not very, if any), and how much thinking and research he/she/it does (none at all).

As an example, when I began working in 1973, the office had a fax machine that had been purchased sometime in the 1960s. So the fax machine is NOT 1980s technology, but much earlier. In fact, the very first facsimile machine was invented in 1843 by Alexander Bain of Scotland. Just because a lot of businesses didn't use it until the 1980s doesn't mean it was not invented until the 1980s.

To Mike in Bmore: Yeah, I saw that comment about the cassette into the 8 track and I thought to myself..... whaaaaaaaaat??? Glad I'm not the only one who picked that up. I didn't know fax machines had been around for that long - when I started working in an office in the 70's, we had a telex machine. Back then, I thought that was pretty cool lol

I think he was refering to the adapter that went into an 8 track player that would play cassettes. Put the cassette in the adapter-adapter into the 8 track player. I have one that I use in my 73 Mercury, which has the original 8 track.

Couldn't agree more, Kris! When cell phones are as reliable and functional as a landline, then maybe I'll ditch the landline. Until then, though, landline gives me the ability to call during power outages (whereas the cell coverage here is so bad you need to stand on one foot, wiggle your ears, and sing the National Anthem just to get two bars....in a bad storm you can forget about any coverage at all....) and on landline I can dial 911 and KNOW they will be able to pinpoint my location. Don't even need long distance on the landline service. Companies out there like Pingo buy up long distance time in bulk and sell it at a discount. I can talk all I want long distance for about $25.00 per year. Landline with local and 1-800 access only. That's the ticket!

I to have a land-line, and I grew up with cell phones, so it is more strange for my age to have one, even though we are fully aware of the power outage scenario, etc. The fact is that I have small toddlers at home when I work, and if there is ever an emergency I want to know there is a guaranteed connection with them. Look at 9/11, New York's cell signals were jammed and crowded for hours. On top of that, if I didn't have a land line I would be assuming my babysitter has a cell phone, and wants to use her minutes for communication with me to my children and her. Unless I am paying for her phone to, that is ridiculous.

Anyone that experienced the blackout of 2003 knows that the only technology that worked for several day was the land-line telephone.

As other posters have pointed out, newer technology has it's flaws. I've lived in my house for 8yrs and there's something wrong with Sprint's tower near my house as I cannot get a signal or have conversation on my cell for the past 5months. I've always had Sprint and it only happens at home to our 3 phones. I can travel 4 miles and have a perfect signal and phone conversation with a different cell tower. I'm glad we kept our land line so people can contact us while we wait for Sprint to fix this (and keep paying for 3 cell phone lines we cannot use.)

I feel the same way. When they make a cell phone that is just a phone, I'll buy one. Dump all the extra junk I don't want or need. Remember the cell phone Nash Bridges used? Thin enough to fit in a pocket, wide enough to feel comfortable in a man's hand. Why isn't a modern, lighter version of that phone available?

And obviously I still have a land line and one corded phone for when the power goes out. I'm an amateur radio operator. When Katrina hit it was two weeks later before portable cell phone transmitters in semitrailers showed up in parts of Mississippi. Ham radio operators volunteering their time and equipment assisted in relief efforts.

I still listen to my old LPs too. And I'm only 48.

I have the best reason in the world to keep my landline. I live in a mountainous rural area with no cell service! If they ever phase out landlines, I'll be living in the dark ages.

Same thing with CD's that this article claims should be obsolete. My rural dial-up internet connection is so slow at 26.4K, it takes me 20 minutes to download a 3-minute digital song, let alone a DVD movie, and I need my landline for that!

I think CD's and DVD's should stay around for a long time. Some of you will tell me to get satellite internet service for digital downloads, but from what my neighbors say, it's not much better than dial-up.

Get yourself a Jitterbug if you want a phone you can see. They are made for senior citizens. Large buttons and a large screen that just shows the number you are dialing.

Not to mention that the audio quality of digital cell phones cannot even come close to that of most land-line phones. Also, why would I want RF at 800 mhz to 2 ghz penetrating my brain for the hours I'm on the phone? For home use, I'll take the land-line phone.

I CAN'T give up my landline. I live in a city of 75,000+ people, but still have NO cell signal where I live. I've had 3 people with other carriers who also couldn't get a signal here.

I use cordless phones for my land line phone but I keep one that doesn't need electricity for when the power goes out. Also land lines are great for calling 911 because your address comes up on the dispatchers computer screen unlike a cell phone. Cell phone 911 calls get routed to the state CHP and then to your local area 911 dispatchers. That takes more time in an emergency.

Also, why would I want RF at 800 mhz to 2 ghz penetrating my brain for the hours I'm on the phone?

So are you saying you use a wired phone plugged in to that land line? Most people these days (under 65, anyway) have cordless phones at home. If you're one of them, this argument is flawed.

Most cordless phones output is in the millawatts unlike cell phones. Less risk.

The author's snarky remarks about old folks suggest that he thinks that only seniors ever need to call 911, which is rather short-sighted.

As for VOIP, I would be crazy to rely on that considering how often my cable internet goes out.

I agree with all of you. During the Midwest power outage in 2003 (?) the only electrical based appliance that did work was the landline phone. I was able to keep tabs on friends and family easily. My brother drove for miles with his cellphone trying to get a signal.

Ianomaly, I definitely agree with you. The subject of this article is fine but the author chooses to take unkind jabs at anyone or anything that disagrees with his premise. Older people, Abe Vigoda- they are just archaic things he wants to see die off as he snickers.

List articles are fine and can be informative and thought provoking when written in a fun manner. There are alot of them on the net. But often you run into some that are written as if the author looks down his noses at everyone, including his readers because he thinks it's cool to be snide and cynical. Like the kids in the school lunchroom whose main pleasure is taking jabs at other students while they try to feel superior sitting alone at their table.

Why don't you get a Jitterbug then. It's made for old people that can't see and are afraid of cell phones.

http://www.jitterbug.com/

There are simple cell phones out there, but demand is modest (no kids, teenagers want these) and the service fees are low so don't look for any of the big three, over-priced, no customer service providers to provide a basic cell phone. Yes, you do have to get out of your chair to find one...

VoIP: 8 years and counting. Kiss off, MaBell. Wonderful.

Cell phones are cell phones; being locked to single provider is tantamount to monopoly and a good reason to pass on ownership for now. The providers should have to compete for your business.

How does your land line work in a power outage? We has one last weekend and my land line was dead.

As for obsoleye technology...watch space cowboys...being obsolete is fine your service may come in handy when the new technlogy fails or they need someone around who still has the ability of critical thinking...or adding without a caculator just an example.

Lore3- Some "cordless" landline models wont work if the power goes out. We keep a corded model, actually we have 2, my teen found an old ROTARY DIAL phone at a thrift store and HAD to have it for her room! My two older kids remember me having an old black desk model but the youngest had never used one. Seems none of her friends have either. It's pretty funny when they need to make a call from our house- they all want to use her rotary dial!

Actually, in some areas DSL is offered without the requirement for home phone service. Not sure who your carrier is, but search for "naked" DSL.

In a big earthquake, neither land lines or cell phones will be of any use.

Going to have to be a BIG earthquake, Gumps, because the landline has kept working just fine through Northridge, Whittier Narrows, etc. Heck, my parent's landline kept working just fine after the 1971 Sylmar quake, a 7.2.

Cell phones, on the other hand... It's not that their infrastructure will come down, it's that they can't handle peak loads. When everyone calls at once, the system clogs and dies. That CAN happen to a landline, but the clogging point is at a much, much, MUCH higher volume of calls.

I was 14 miles from the Loma Prieta earthquake, and I don't recall the phone lines being out in our area. After that I was in a large hurricane in Virginia that took out large trees down the road and power to our neighborhood for 4 days, but the land line still worked while cell phones did not.

Last I heard the court system will accept a signature on a fax as a legal signature but will not accept a scanned document with a signature in standard graphic or pdf format. This is kinda illogical, paticularly when faxes are frequently saved digitally.

The difference between the fax and scanned is that the scanned one could be more easily edited, since it uses your computer. Obviously, with the right tech skills someone could use a computer to send something that the recipient would be unable to tell was not a fax, but it would be much harder.

besides hookers don't take plastic.

Skip, this made me laugh out loud! It's true and it introduces one of the biggest issues with electronic communications, their lack of security.

It was reported all over the news in 2006 that, seven months before 9/11, the Bush administration via the NSA approached five telecommunications giants with a proposal to tap into and collect data from ALL of their communications streams (cells, Internet, telephone, whatever). All of them acquiesced except for Quest, which soon lost all of its federal contracts. His insider knowledge of the impending loss of earnings led CEO Joseph Naccio to sell off his stock. He was convicted of insider trading in 2007.

The NSA started secretly collecting data from the electronic communications of tens of millions of Americans during the Bush administration, and forwarding the data to the FBI for data analystics and data mining. This was without review from FISC or warrants from FISA. Spying an Americans without a warrant is specifically prohibited by the Constitution.

People don't understand that information that is stored in a database and can be retrieved is far more powerful than paper-based records of transactions. Trillions of records are available for analysis. The data can be looked at in the aggregate and examined for patterns or they can drill down to all of the records of a single individual. Changed numbers can still be linked to the individual using relational mathematics. An NSA whistle blower said that satellite based transactions were also being recorded for analysis.

Something to consider is that the US Supreme Court recently upheld the principle that a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy when they turn information over to a third party. Every time you engage in an electronic transaction, you and the party you are communicating with MUST use a third party, the telecommunications companies. It is uncertain if or when telecommunications privacy laws override that principle.

Under Bush, the Supreme Court gave blanket immunity to all of the principles involved in the warrant-less program, and FISA issued a warrant to the NSA so they could continue. It is still in place today.

All of these nifty Web-based communications make it even easier to keep communications data including content in a database for analytics and retrieval.

chipperdave

LOL, ok they may not take plastic, but I hear they demand latex!

The piece above about the government now having the mechanical structure and right to listen to all communications kept harping on which particular administration was in power when this came to pass. The action was a response to various threats and actions of war that had cause many Americans' deaths. Many self-proclaimed civil libertarians seem to see any such kind of policing as a personal threat. They know what their private lives are like better than me.

Now to the substance of the forum:

Landlines are much more durable than cells, etc. They also cost the phone companies much more. In a huge disaster, all would go, yes. But in something less, the landlines would work. And they'd work even if commercial power fails unless the phone companies have abandoned the huge batteries central offices used to have.

Some processes are analog in nature; at least the digital clone produces products a little less of quality than the original.Many musicians (not me, my hearing is not what it was) claim that digital music missed the boat because it was rushed to market too soon using too small a word size. Most professional photographers agree that the medium and large format film cameras produce a better product than the digital ones.

Typewriters are less convenient because they lack 'spell', storage, etc., but more convenient because they work anywhere. Some things that provide the same results as previous things supplement rather than replace.

Radios, whether CB or otherwise, provide a means to allow many to hear, rather than just a few. This provides emergency warnings, speed trap notices, and just gossip to the users. Cell phones do not do that job for most normal people although the authorities can do broadcasts. Besides, for all you conspiracy freaks and would-be civil rights defenders. It is extremely hard to kill radio.

I agree that cash will never go away, and I don't think it should. Without cash, it would be much harder to give your friend a few dollars to go buy some lunch, and it is probably much easier to teach kids the value of money using a tangible object rather than something that looks the same whether you have $5 or $5,000,000. But something that I do think should happen is using a credit or check card should always be an option. In most cases it already is, but there are some things that have been slow to join. For example, an ATM usually forces you to make withdrawals in multiples of 20. But when I get something from a vending machine, it usually only accepts $1 or $5 bills and change. How am I supposed to get my soda now? When I get on the bus and want to buy a bus pass, I doubt the people behind me want to wait while I either count out my cash or the driver gives me my change. I think that things such as these (and everything else) should have ways to let you use a credit or check card (not to mention I don't like walking around with a pocket full of change).

Landline phones allow you to program 1-button dialing so 911 = one button on a landline. 911 operators can't easily locate you on a cell phone -- another reason to keep a landline, locating the caller is instantaneous. And if the power goes out, you can plug in a $10 tethered phone (available at most drug stores) and still be in touch. I keep one for just that reason and was the only person on my block who could make calls last winter when the power went out for 3 days because of a snow storm. And guess what, someone needed to call 911.

I keep a rotary landline phone for when the power goes out. Just like in Day After Tomorrow....most older phones draw power directly from the telephone line. If its a rotary...there is not electronics in it at all.

Shane, I often wish I had kept a rotary and landline for that reason. Just too expensive after a while to keep all options open.

For everyone's information there are still places in the United Sates that so not have cell phone coverage.... I happen to live in one of those places. That is why I have a landline. I live an hour and 1/2 from NYC and I have to go 3 miles from my house to get a cell signal and that signal doesn't always work either. Thise of you posting that landlines are antiquated are probably some of the same peoople who come to the Delaware River with your cell phones and constantly ask the locals why can't I find a signal!

Also 911 = one button on a cell phone

But 911 on a cell phone also = cops not being able to know where you are (sucks if you are in your own house, doesn't it...) because MOST places don't have tracking equipment to track cellphone calls in the 911 dispatch office.

So when your grandparents fall over and break a hip, and call 911 on the cellphone but pass out from the pain before it connects, they get to lay there until they gain consciousness or die?

And you probably didn't check Dollar General... They STILL have the old school plug in phones with the gigantic buttons.

Saffron77: why should I get laser surgery when I can use my landline? Because YOU don't like 'em???

Loribiz #6.4 -

I'm right there with ya! I think most of the well-meaning people here live in highly populated areas with complete coverage, and its probably just ignorance that they don't realize that cell service doesn't exist everywhere.

The only times I am able to use my cell phone is when I drive to the city (about 6 times a year). That's why I bought a pay-as-you-go phone. I look forward to the day when they put a cell tower on the Continental Divide and I will finally get cell service at my house! Until then, I'm keeping my landline! :o)

There are starting to be areas that no longer accept rotary-dialing. Southern California is one of them. I have an old phone that dials in rotary mode, even though it's pushbutton. Kept it around for the same reasons others have - in an emergency (brush fire, earthquake, etc.) cell phones become useless because everyone is calling their loved-ones and clog the system.

I have a landline socket in which to plug it because I need a genuine fax machine for my business - many of my clients won't send documents any other way. And at $8 per month, there's no reason not to have it. For 'regular' calls, I've been wireless for nearly ten years.

Now I've actually got to go pick up a tone-dialing landline phone. I'm not even sure where to look... :-0

911 operators can't easily locate you on a cell phone

Absolutely not true. If you are using a modern day cell phone and you live near a police station that stays current with technology the second you call 911 the GPS in your phone puts your location right on the map. You could be in the back of a kidnappers van driving out to the middle of nowhere and the cops will know right where you are.

I still have a "normal" phone stored away. It's old but it works. Too bad I disconnected my landline. Just to keep the basic line connected with no phone attached to it was $25 a month.

I actually haven't used a landline in 5 years. To be honest, I can't afford both a landline ($75 a month just to make calls) and a cellular family plan with unlimited everything...hey, you gotta have it when you have teenagers.

My TV is 20 years old. I'll use it till it dies, then I'll buy an HD.

Our kids think we lived in the Stone Age. Give them something analog and they have no idea what to do with it. I'll never forget the time my oldest daughter--now 17--tried to make a phone call from my grandmother's ROTARY phone. She had no clue how to use it. "I don't get it, how do I dial the number?"

Our local 911 uses GPS for cell phone users, too.

Now, if we can just get wireless electric, we'll be all set. Where's Tesla when you need him?

Yeah one button, and how do they find you, landlines are linked via a preset system, cells aren't. Wanna wait while they spend time scoping out just which cell tower carried your call, then try to find you while you lay bleeding to death. Good luck.

RedWizard, That's absolutely not true. Most 911 systems are not upgraded enough to be able to find someone's exact location from a cell phone. SOME are, but most are not. Hopefully it won't be very long before that's sorted out, but I don't think we're looking at full coverage for something like that throughout the country for a long time yet.

Try ebay. We have kept and collected all our "old" dinosaur phones. They work great.

If you need a cheap old style plug in land line phone, look no further than walmart, they have some great ones for under $10, plug one in and keep one for a spare.

Phones don't stop working during a power failure, cell phone chargers do.

Yeah, you can keep your phone charged and it'll be fine - unless the power is out for multiple days as happens in rural areas still. And as a 911 dispatcher, I can tell you that I have no idea where the h@#k you are when you call me on a cell phone - and as a 911 dispatcher in a tourist town where we have less than 16k res and the majority of our 911 calls come from people who also have NO IDEA WHERE THE H@#K THEY ARE, cell phones are a PAIN.

The house we bought about 10 years ago had an old payphone on the wall, but the owners wanted to take it with them when they moved out. That left a large payphone sized indent on the wall, so we went to the "Telephone Pioneers" office and bought our own. The coin operation aspect of it was removed, but it still works as a rotary phone.

Funny to watch people try and dial a rotary phone who have never used one and have no idea how to make it work.

I still have my CB radios and LP records and players. I never got into the finicky 8 tracks, or cassettes, but I would record some LPs onto cassette from time to time. You don't pay a monthly fee on a CB radio, and it still has a useful place in daily lives of many people.

Again on another point, when I play my records, people are impressed by the sound quality from an LP, and the lack of snaps and pops they expected to hear from my LPs. If you care for them and have a good quality player/system, you get excellent sound quality.

totally agree

So, you think that older people who have trouble seeing, should pony up for glasses or LASIK....you gonna pay for that? They aren't going to text, download music, play games and all the other stuff so why pay for a phone with all that technology that they aren't going to use? Give them a phone that they can see the numbers and don't have to worry about all the other crap! And most people I know, do have a corded phone in their house, they just don't use it until they actually need it. And, just because your cell is charged, doesn't mean it's always going to work. Geez.....

Unfortunately, an EMP from a hostile nation probably wouldn't occur, at least not with any close magnitude as a solar storm. Remember the Toronto power outage a few years back? Or check the history books from way back about 1870 or so, when telegraph poles burst into flames "seemingly on their own" and fires broke out for no apparent reason...

With a solar flare like that, NO electronic device would be safe at all, regardless of age- unless, of course, it was shielded in a lead-lined box or something similar. Then again, anything that it was attached to (such as a telephone line or other transmission cable) would fry, rendering a good thing useless...

Yep, the Carrington Event. Wiped out telegraph lines all over the place.

The response by 'yeah-right' is totally wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EMP_areas.JPG

You make some great points here. I particularly appreciate your references to rural populations and the fact that Internet access and cell carriers do not want to build infrastructure for areas where the populations that pay for access are not large enough to bring them the profit they want.

I also appreciated your comments about reliable access to the Internet backbone. Because there is really not enough competition (I have two choices for Internet access - my cable company or DSL) the prices seem to stay very high. Once you pick a service you are at their mercy. I don't know about you but my company is about as responsive as a box of rocks when I don't have a signal for hours at a time or the signal is weak. 3G costs me $99 a month (their 2nd cheapest plan) and I have to monitor what I use or pay a lot of money.

Streaming does take up a lot of bandwidth and can get very expensive, as you say. I like hard copies, too. I can watch a DVD without placing demands on my Internet access or my hard drive. I always back up my electronic files on media like CDs and DVDs, as well as my hard drive.

It seems everyone is fixated on cell vs land lines on this blog. I agree with both of you and would like to a add one item to your list dpeletski. Cash register.

Has anyone ever been in a store when the power goes out? How about proverbial 'computer error' (and I'm in the IT field)? And the POS (not what you're thinking - Point Of Sale) UPC scanners? I can remember cashiers punching in the numbers faster than running the product over the scanner, then turning it and running it again over the scanner, then grabbing the hand held scanner and stillnot get a reading. Imagine the store owner that can still conduct business without any power. Wouldn't they have a advantage/monopoly (agreed limited by time) over their competitors?

Julie I am also in IT, i work for a major casino in las vegas... we use electronic POS terminals in ALL of our stores and yes they do go out from time to time (infact i have one sitting on my desk right now.) but every store has atleast 2, we have a whole shelf of replacements ready to go and I keep trying to think of an incident here where an outlet has had to shut down due to POS problems and... honestly I cant think of any.

POS terminals are way better than the old registers. People keep bringing up emergency situations like when the power goes out or things like that. How often does the power really go out? and when it does go out, how many major retailers (and casinos) dont have emergency generators? And how long does it stay out?

I used to keep a stash of old computer tech, I kept thinging you know... I cant throw this out... someday I might need this for something. The result was a storeage room full of old backup tapes, optical disk drives, 5 1\4 floppies and a few Token Ring cards. So if you want to keep your old manual cash registers and impact type writers because you might wake up tommorow and electricity will be gone forever... go ahead... personally, in a major blackout or natural disaster big enough to collapse the electrical grid for a long period of time, figuring out how i am going to keep track of store purchases with a solar powerd calculator and a pad of paper will be the least of my worries.

Oh and for the people who are talking up land line phones durring a natural disaster... Umm... telephone poles fall over, underground lines get damaged and sorry to disapoint but telephones are not magical devices that transmit your voice like a string between two cans... telephone lines are powered and are just as dependant on the electrical grid to function as everything else, emergency generators keep them online durring power outages...

The point about landline phones, Redwizard, is that they're on a completely separate circuit than the basic power coming into the home. Can't tell you how many times over my life the power has gone out and I've been able to call the power company to report that - because the phone system is an entirely separate set of wires.

The other nice thing about landlines in an emergency of any kind is that they're less liable to be overloaded by people being called by family members, etc. Cell towers can't handle large volumes of calls simultaneously - which is why every time there's an earthquake or a major fire somewhere, you can't get a cell call in or out of that area for a couple of hours. Landlines have a greater capacity for a given location.

Nobody needs more than 64G now? Maybe the author doesn't, but even on the netbook I'm using right now, I have over 80G of stuff on the hard drive. My desktop has a 500G drive that only has about 80G left on it, and I still like another drive for backup.

The author would probably say that I should store everything on the "cloud", but (1) that means my stuff is unavailable if the internet is out, and (2) even fast cable is a lot slower than USB.

Landline phone circuits are powered by 48 volt DC power provided by battery based power sources which is why they stay alive when utility power is gone. A tesla cage shields against EMP and most modern data centers have them incorporated in the their construction. The major problem with cell towers that are not physically damaged is that they are not designed to handle the surge in usage during a disaster - natural or manmade.

I agree with Julie. I once went to a separtment store where the power failed while I was in line at the checkout. The cashier was using a battery powered adding machine. I I had a cart full of stuff for my new appartment. I paid $5 and change for everything - I guess there was a decimal point issue....

It's a Faraday cage that protects from ECM's

Umm, they've got flash drives MUCH bigger than 10 gb... Matter of fact, in June 2009 Kingston released a 128GB flash drive...

You do realize they make 128GB flash drives now right...

DT200/128GB
128GB* USB Flash drive

Blu ray, CD's, DVD's, etc will not disappear either. They offer stand alone portability. Until they come up with a 10 gigabyte flash drive, this will remain forever true.

the biggest grip I have is the fact that by the time I buy it it is already obsolete. A few places around here absolutely no cell phone coverage. If you go there forget calling out. The CB radio in my dads farm truck is good thing to have if you want to talk to someone They might be closer to a spot that has cell phone coverage. The CD and other storage is another thing. I have to buy a new system then spend a few days transferring the data. The local Library still has VHS cassettes on the shelf. Great after you have watched all the DVDs then pull out the old VHS. It seems the tech is moving faster than we can afford to keep up with. Buy the time I got all my old stuff transferred it was time to buy another innovation. The last one I just keep the old machine and used it when I needed to look at the old files. That I am sure is what a lot of people do. I personally don't buy the latest tech until the price drops to cheap. I have been burned to many times with buying the expensive next big thing, Only to have it relegated to the useless dinosaur category a year later.

err, can we say 512GB Solid State Device (SSD)? Can we say 1 TERAbyte SSD? Simply put, they're the HDD replacement, and are essentially a flash drive and has no motors or moving parts...

Mik, try to keep up, please... LOL

They already have higher than 10 GB flash drives. They are quickly becoming as big as hard drives. If you really want portability and size get either a external hard drive or internal hard drive and an external case.Dvds have mostly killed cds thuogh the players do have legacy support. Which s the best reason to keep disk drives including floppies.

yeah-right

I think he was considering a flash-drive as that, and an external HDD as something different...

While yes, external HDD are nifty, they are still relatively size-y compared to a flash drive, and for quick, simple, small transport (comparible to a floppy or CD.)

I work in the publishing industry and use a fax regularly for contracts, etc. Not everyone has a scanner just yet.

Actually, I used the email scanner/fax option once, and my mortgage broker couldn't read it--I had to send by fax. Also, I worked in a medical office and we used the fax because we had to have signatures on medical documents. Until electronic signing is secure, people will still be using faxes for those CYA documents.

I'm another that has to send (and receive) signed contracts - manually signed contracts. I'm also in publishing and advertising. Without a signature, you've got nothing, and the 'electronic signature' technology of today is so complicated that none of my clients knows how to use it - and I can't afford to spend a bunch of billable hours teaching their IT people how it works, just to have some judge tell me later that I needed a 'real' signature if I want to collect on that unpaid debt.

:)

I work in the auto repair industry and we fax estimates all the time. Scanning is cumbersome. We email pics of damaged vehicles to adjusters, but the fax is quicker and more reliable for the estimates. Can't count how many times I've sent an email that never arrived or showed up two days later.

It's not due to bad technology, per se, but rather poor design and manufacture.

I'd wager to say that the "failing" design is intentional to maximize profits. Look up "built-in obsolescence". It's very common now-a-days. This is why most electronics just magically happen to fail within weeks or even days after the warranty period expires. It's not just coincidence.

Warrenties are based on statistical analysis and bell curves. Companies are well aware of how long their products will last. Warrenties are designed to cover those products who fail outside the bell curve. If I manufacture a product and testing shows that it consistently fails after 18 months, then you offer a warrenty that lasts 16 months or 12 months.

Yep. I've still got a CRT television (flat-tube Trinitron), mostly because the darned thing won't die! I'd like an even bigger screen and HD, but can't justify the price until I really need one (or I win the darned lotto), when I really don't use the thing that much.

I'll go LCD eventually - I have for my computer monitor and love it - but why spend $1,500 if I don't have to, and don't feel the need to "keep up with the digital Joneses"?

i agree with..everyone i know has a flat screen but i couldn't do it until it was justified...my tv finally was acting up (but not dead) and a 32" flat screen was down to $350 at BJ's so it was time for me to pull the trigger....it was worth the wait for the $1,000 i saved and now have a flat screen with tons of features for under $400----don't worry your time will come and you'll be happy you waited: Marc, I hope your tv fails soon for your sake!

About the old CRT TV's...I remember when all you had to do was go to the hardware store, buy a tube (very cheaply, too), take off the back of the TV and put the new tube in. Just like changing a light bulb. And viola, your TV worked again.

Rabbit ears are now obsolete, thanks to all signals going digital.

I have a 34" Sony WEGA flat screen, 16:9, 1080i HD TUBE TV. I bought it new back in 2006. The picture on that set is WAY better than any thin screen TV. I LOVE this set and would never trade it for anything. I was thinking of buying replacement parts for it & stockpiling them in case it breaks in the future and parts weren't available.

The downside is that weighs 200 lbs.

And Kristin,

Rabbit ears are absolutely not obsolete. They actually work better now with the digital Over The Air (OTA) signals than they did with the old analog signals.

I have a Toshiba flat-screen 1080i CRT HDTV. Bought it 5 years ago--never had a problem with it. I have it in the living room, which has 5 windows, and I got this tv specifically because no plasma or LCD performs well in that kind of light.

Besides, now you hear of kids knocking over the plasma screens and hurting themselves. I can barely move my tv.

Not everyone has their own windowless movie theater. I will keep this tv until it dies. Hopefully by then, the LED TVs will be cheap, and I will have bypassed an entire TV generation.

Smaller LCD TVs, comparable in size to CRTs, are about the same price as CRTs (under $300). Only the giant ones are $1000 and up. But saying that CRT picture quality is better than LCD? That's the nuttiest thing he says.

Nutty? Perhaps, 1anomaly, but true. As I mentioned to someone else about computer monitors, just because the LCD manufacturer turned up the color saturation control before shipping their set (and they nearly all do this - check your set's defaults and the setting will be on 'vibrant' or somesuch) does not mean the picture quality is better.

LCD TV makers love to tout the dynamic range (a word that partially described the real value, 'gamut') of their sets as being "800,000!!". "1 million!" CRT sets have always had dynamic ranges in the multiples of millions. LCD sets are certainly getting better, but they're not there yet.

Also, be sure to compare apples to apples - don't compare a 1080p LCD set to a 480i CRT. Get a good HD set of each before you make your comparison. As Christina mentions above, HD CRT sets do exist. And they look amazing.

The main reason they're dying is because it's so much easier (and carries more profit) to do a very large (50"+) screen in one of the flat-screen technologies. And from the 1990's to the start of the recession, if you didn't have as big a screen as your buddy, you were a big loser - whether that big a screen made any sense in your home or not. I've seen 60" screens crammed into appartments so tiny that the corners of the screen were dimming because they were past the off-axis viewing limit. The screen was just WAY too big for the room. Stupid.

Please go further in explaining why rabbit ears don't work with digital?

I work from home and absolutely agree, it's far more cost effective for me to have a land line. Even if I didn't, I'd still have one, though. It's $20 / month for my land line and $20 / month for my cheapo pre-paid, no-contract cell phone. I use my cell for when I'm out and about and absolutely need to make a call. Otherwise, I just use my "Free nationwide calling" landline. Saves me a bundle compared to the old cell service I used to have when I didn't have a landline. $80 / month and I was still going over my minutes!

If you use the phone a lot, a land line with unlimited calls and that doesn't ever run out of battery power make much more sense. Also if you have power failures often.

And oh yeah, land lines don't fry your brain even when used extensively. Still not so sure about cell phones on that issue.

Big Al - You are lucky! I don't even get DSL! A 26.4K dial-up is IT!

Been there too until very recently!

Try Trapster.com they not only report the "bears" but they show you right on the map where they are and how many people have reported them. Get it on your cell phone for free if you have an iphone or android phone.

I-70 is east-west; not north-south

And when you'd like to let the truck in front of you know they have a tire on fire/a loose chain/a flat/an uninvited hitchhiker/a door unlatched/smoking brakes/etc.? Which website do you use?

www.ineedaCB.com

yeah-four on the ineedaCB.com.

CB's not dead by a long shot. Many rural towns use them on a regular basis to communicate from town to town especially in an emergency.

CB's and Ham radio's were the only thing working after Catrina. Even the police radio's required repeater towers which were down.

CB's are essential! My brother in law is a truck driver. He can't always use a hands free device or blue tooth. He uses his CB to get info for his deliveries and contact other truckers. I don't think the trucking industry wants to fork over the cash to provide the phones , fees, and accessories needed. The cost would drive up the prices on everything shipped. We would have to pay more. Truckers might get paid less. Besides, there are tons of dead zones they won't work in.

As long as there are truckers, the CB won't die. Heck our local volunteer emergency government has them as back up. When we go hunting, hiking, and camping in the north woods(no signal area's) we use hand held "walkie-talkies" that are just protable CB's.

I do not know about ya'll, but did you ever try reading the name of the album you have stored on your flash drive? Damn, they are hard to load in my car's entertainment unit.

I am nearly age 64 and even though I rely on my youngest daughter for help from time to time, I look to my smart phone for everything from communication to entertainment. However, I draw the line at this "texting" rage. I told Kinzi that in 20 years there will be a whole generation that cannot hear (thanks to earbuds, which I also use on the motorcycle) and suffer from carple-tunnel syndrome.

The problem with digital media is there's no real proof of ownership. Sure, you might have bought those hundreds of tracks. What if you lose your log-in? Or your hard drive? Do you have to buy all that media over again? Don't have to do that if you actually own the media on disc now do you?

Great points. Whenever my husband and I buy a CD, we immediately rip it to our server. Our PCs and laptops can easily stream the media (CD & DVD) by wireless and/or gigabit (yes, good old CAT6).

I download a lot of movies and music via iTunes, and the first thing I do is burn them all to CD. The last time I had iTunes, my laptop crashed on me and I lost every single song and movie I bought. Of course iTunes doesn't honor previous purchases, so I had to rebuild my library. First thing I did was burn everything to CD. It's just safer that way! I hope it's decades before CD's disappear.

I view CDs and DVDs as a hard copy of the movie or music I bought. My computer died twice, and I lost my entire itunes library. However, I had bought all of my music on CDs. It took a couple of days to reload it back on itunes, but I didn't lose anything.

I go to used CD stores and get old CDs for a couple of bucks--a new CD is just a little more expensive than an itunes download, and has a lot better quality.

The point the author seems to miss is that once you own a CD or DVD, you have it forever, and you can sell it when you don't want it anymore. A digital download is yours forever. You can't lend it out, either. Why should I pay the same price for a digital download when I can get a hard copy, lend it out to a friend, and eventually sell it? DRM rights have a long way to go before I will ditch my CDs, DVDs, and hard copy books.

Good point. Typewriters, especially the old manual ones are still excellent pieces of machinery. The ones from the 19th century would probably still outlast your average everyday computer built these days.

Yep. ELECTRIC typewriters are pretty pointless, because if you have power you might as well use a cheap computer and printer; but manual typewriters still have value in place where the power is spotty or unavailable.

baha hahaha. In the words of the great hook..."Good fawm, Peter"

Kind of a stupid situation the print media put themselves in. They complain they have no more subscribers yet they post all the crap online, or even a percentage with vital stats so there's no reason to buy the print stuff since it carries all the fluff.

Cut your websites to simply showing time, temperature and outlets or "upcoming issues" stuff and how to subscribe/pay online.

I live in a metro region and of all those #*@(in cell phone towers around, I can't get more then two reception bars in my own apartment--even at a window facing cell phone towers. Besides, I'm in my 30s, but I don't want to chat to friends and family on a square, tiny cell phone and is tough to hold (I'm larger than a 13 year old teenage girl who's not fat), and I don't want to walk around like a cyborg with a @#*@( bluetooth in my head in life.

I'm shocked the author didn't cite "analog TV waves" as obsolete. What a joke of a changeover. Everything is now so digitalized that new equipment is needed for everything, and it changes so much that it's way to easy (and a cash cow) to change equipment and "upgrade" to keep you needing something better (with all those promises of "being better"). Great. Now when a hurricane knocks out power for 1-2 weeks, they don't send out analog TV across the area when all the cable stuff is out...1 step forward, but we never gain anything since all the smaries are saying "well, that will never happen"...

Frank, you know what really is extinct? Your sense of humor. Get off the computer you disdain so much and go outside. I think there are kids on your lawn that need shouting at.

lol

Frank, I agree with you about the reliance on electricity. Living in coastal Carolina, you learn to get by a couple of weeks without electricity. You realize very quickly how dependent we are on electricity for simple things like reading mail, writing a document, or entertainment.

The only things that differentiate us from the Middle Ages are electricity and the internal combustion engine. Without these things, goodbye to the 80 mile commute, email, the web, etc. This author assumes that one always has good cell reception, electricity and a fast internet connection. Without these things, none of his gadgets would work, and we would be using a typewriter and landline.

I don't have a landline anymore, but when I did, I could make phone calls during a hurricane. Try that with your cell phone.

Well said, Christina.

Well said, Foof!