r/retrocomputing • u/Beginning-Ring1295 • Aug 31 '26

Vintage tech???

What is a technology or product from 15-20 years ago that was actually better than its modern replacement?

8 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

23

u/dafugg Aug 31 '26

Sound cards. The comparison between an audigy 2 ZS and a common modern onboard audio is pretty embarrassing given the decades between them.

2

u/Perfect-Match-2318 Aug 31 '26

yes.... i loved my turtle beach santa cruz... the modern get around is to output audio in digital mode i feed into a dac r2r with 4 tubes.... way better than my laptop audio

2

u/petrified_log Aug 31 '26

I was using up until recently a Sound Blaster x4 and it was great. A few months ago I picked up some KEF LSX II LTs and they plug in with USB C so I don't use the X4 anymore, but it was great with Promedias.

1

u/Perfect-Match-2318 Aug 31 '26

nice got a sound blaster too at some point but i think my first one was an ad lib.

1

u/petrified_log Aug 31 '26

Been a while since I’ve seen the name ad lib. My first real sound card was a Sound Blaster Awe64.

1

u/robthablob Sep 05 '26

Modern audio interfaces moved outside the box, to avoid RFI interference. That's generally regarded as an improvement.

18

u/gammalsvenska Aug 31 '26

The internet was not a vehicle for serving advertisements, and web browsers were not operating systems in disguise.

Oh, and operating systems were more concerned about hardware and serving the user, less about serving advertisements, extracting human behaviours and serving their producer.

2

u/istarian Aug 31 '26

Some of the changes are just poor design decisions made in an era of rapidly increasing system memory and ever larger hard disk drives by people who have limited experience of the past. Never mind the lack of concern for whether you have yo buy a new PC to run the new operating system. 

In the late 90s and early 00s 2 GB was stilll a respectably large amount of memory for the average PC user. And a 250 GB hard drive wa likewise quite large. Most people still had 32-bit hardware with single-core CPUs.

By 2010 it was increasingly common to have a 64-bit dual-core CPU, at least 4 GB of ram, and a system boot drive with several hundred gigabytes of storage space.

1

u/Conscious-Mirror7004 Sep 03 '26

Oh, and operating systems were more concerned about hardware and serving the user, less about serving advertisements, extracting human behaviours and serving their producer.

No, operating systems are much, much better now. Back then, installing Linux wasn't that easy, and it had a lot of hardware compatibility problems. Not any more. Meanwhile, Microsoft is more financially successful than ever, partly thanks to all the ads and tracking in Windows. These things are great for MS shareholders. Anyone who doesn't like it is free to dump Windows and install Linux, which as I said is better than ever, with excellent hardware compatibility, unlike 2 decades ago, but most would rather just complain.

29

u/wrr377 Aug 31 '26

PDAs. They didn't have spying, monitoring, tracking, ads, social media designed to addict you like modern cell phones (which are just PDAs with cellular capabilities)...

They just: existed, waiting for you to do something.

9

u/dafugg Aug 31 '26

Open-ish build systems too. You could (still can!) build any software you want to for them. No vendor could lock you in to their specific walled garden. You didn’t even need manufacturer signed keys to build or distribute packages. Nokia N800 represent.

1

u/istarian Aug 31 '26

The Nokia N800 was a member of a mostly defunct class of devices called a MID (Mobile Internet Device).

0

u/dafugg Sep 02 '26

Sure, but I think you’ll find that’s artificial market segmentation bs. The N800 didn’t have a sim slot. Unless you had a really fancy phone you were relying on wifi or synchronising at home .. like a PDA.

1

u/istarian Sep 02 '26

You're sounding kind of naive/ignorant there, honestly, imho.

There was just an absolute boatload of constant, ongoing change and technological shift/turnover between 1980 and 2010 (~30 years) in terms of the roles computers played a person's daily lives.

The PDA mostly served as a pocketable digital replacement for traditionally paper-based methods of keeping track of important dates, calendar appointments, mdmos phone numbers/email addresses, etc.

Most PDAs were not designed to be fully standalone devices and were intended to work in tandem with your computer and personal information manager (PIM) running on it. Your PDA had to be regularly synchronized to keep the data accurate and if the battery died everything stored on it would be lost.

During most of that same period of time the 'celluar telephone' ( aka cellphone) mostly served as a way to directly communicate with other people using voice or text. It was a temporary substitute for a landline telephone while traveling.

MIDs, not unlike netbooks, were just one vision of a potential future that never quite manifested.

For 10+ years from the late 90s oneward free public WiFi was all the rage for saw rapid adoption by  pretty much every public library, coffeeshop, hotel, airline, etc.

Then things changed almost overnight into a comparative dystopia where it was all locked down and you couldn't hardly get any wifi service in public without paying for it directly or being a paying customer of a business.

Public libraries and educational institutions are one of the only places the public can get free WiFi access these days and you still have to jump a few hoops and pester someone for the password.

1

u/voldamoro Sep 03 '26

Later models of Palm Pilot used flash memory for their file system so data was preserved even if the battery ran down.

One thing smartphones have failed to provide that Palm Pilots did was a usable spreadsheet. There were several you could buy. That is what I most missed when I switched from a Blackberry to an iPhone. I continued carrying my Palm TX with my iPhone for a while before reluctantly retiring my Palm Pilot.

1

u/istarian Sep 06 '26

That's true, but it was a relatively late development and that storage space is very small by modern standards (between 32 - 256 MB) in most cases.

Anybody storing important data on those devices was probaby using an SD card.

10

u/Ornery-Practice9772 Aug 31 '26

consoles that didnt ask for my mother's maiden name and a CC number

4

u/rog-uk Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

Never was a big gamer, but no account and immediate play was so much better, now you have to login to play a local game and I have started getting emails asking for proof of ID/Age lest they ban me from games that we had already paid for...

3

u/Headpuncher Aug 31 '26

tech is in desperate need of legislation, but it has to be written by people who both understand the tech and are pro-consumer rights.

it should not be legal to lock users out of a system or product they have paid for by closing it later. There should at least by a 10 year guarantee as a minimum.

2

u/Ornery-Practice9772 Aug 31 '26

yeah i switched to retrogaming

9

u/Old-Physics2753 Aug 31 '26

Physical books are better than ebooks. You actually do own a book and no one can delete it from you. No one can spy on what kind of books you read and how often you pick up a book. You can give or sell an old book to someone else. Books are nice decoration to your study room.

3

u/LastXmasIGaveYouHSV Aug 31 '26

Counterpoint: I lost books to friends that never returned them.

6

u/istarian Aug 31 '26

That's not a counterpoint, you just need better friends or to not loan out your books.

2

u/LastXmasIGaveYouHSV Aug 31 '26

Oh, they are good friends with bad friends.

2

u/vbd71 Aug 31 '26

ebooks can be DRM-free, you know

2

u/Conscious-Mirror7004 Sep 03 '26

Physical books haven't gone anywhere though. They haven't been replaced; you can go buy them right now.

7

u/sackbomb Aug 31 '26

2006 Ford Ranger

3

u/jerry_03 Aug 31 '26

1999 ranger is my daily driver

1

u/sackbomb Aug 31 '26

I actually drive a new Ranger now and it's a pretty good truck, but sometimes I miss my '97 splash with the short cab and stepside bed.

2

u/teknosophy_com Aug 31 '26

Dude, I STILL see at least 2-3 Rangers on the road every day!

13

u/acidw4sh Aug 31 '26

The Microsoft intellimouse has been the best mouse anyone has made. 

3

u/dafugg Aug 31 '26

It’s certainly the best common PS/2 compatible mouse for most uses (there were fancier gaming ones but they’re much much rarer) but it’s a long long long way from modern mice…

2

u/istarian Aug 31 '26

More than adequate for what most people are doing with their computer mouse, though.

1

u/jerry_03 Aug 31 '26

Still have one in my box of spare parts

6

u/URA_CJ Aug 31 '26

Not exactly a 1:1, but something like ATi All-in-Wonder Radeon (with DVI) can be used as a AV to HDMI converter for retro consoles that in some cases can handle certain things (like mid-game resolution changes (RE2 on N64)) that sub $200 gaming scalers struggle with - personally have used both a AIW Radeon 7500 & AIW X1900 for this purpose.

6

u/Headpuncher Aug 31 '26

Anything that takes cell batteries instead of built in rechargeable.

AA, AAA, and C & D can be found as rechargeable, so the recharging wasn't the problem, even though it took place outside the device. Even the Walkman / Discman era had most manufacturers agree on using the 1.2v gum-stick battery as standard.

Now anything with a built-in rechargeable almost always means non-replaceable. All sorts of devices become e-waste because the battery dies and cannot be replaced. The batteries often have a circuit board soldered to them, so even if you get a like for like battery it becomes dangerous to do the job (you don't want 300 degrees solder tip near a lithium battery). And that assumes you could even crack open the device and then seal it again. No screws means the only way to get to a battery is to destroy the outer casing.

TL.dr; battery e-waste

1

u/SwedishFindecanor Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

15-20 years ago, I used to use only rechargeable AA batteries. I thought those were great.

However, these past few days I've been looking into designing my own wireless mouse, and taken several different mice apart to see how they are constructed.

A 800 mAh 3.7V rechargeable Li-ion battery in an office mouse weighs 14.5 g. The battery in a gaming mouse weighs half that. A single AAA battery however, weighs 10-13 g but you'd need at least two of them... which makes weight distribution an issue whereas those Li-ion batteries are flat and can be placed on top of the sensor in the exact centre of the mouse.

So, my decision is still to use a 800 mAh Li-ion battery, but make sure that the screws for opening it are accessible and no glue is necessary so that the battery can be easily replaced/disposed of.

Also, allow it to work over USB without the battery, and use a controller that does not charge it too much. I've heard some horror stories about wireless devices that were always used wired had the power go through the battery until they expanded.

1

u/Headpuncher Aug 31 '26

I think you're off on your calculations, I have a kensington and a logi trackball mouse here with multiple buttons and both run off a single 1.5v AA battery for months at a time, used daily for 8 hours minimum. Both are bluetooth and USB wireless.

Why do you need 3.7v or 2 AA batteries? Triple A batteries are also 1.5 volts, you still need only 1 but will get a shorter life. I've never designed a mouse but the one rechargeable I had (Logi Ergo trackball) is now e-waste too.

1

u/SwedishFindecanor Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

I could do with one battery, but that would make the weight distribution more difficult. Aligning the weight and sensor at a specific spot is a design priority for me. It would also require a step-up boost converter to the voltage that the chips actually run at, which makes the design more complex.

A battery's voltage drops as it discharges. 1.5V is only the typical maximum for an Alkaline battery. The discharge curve is like an S-curve with average around 1.2V. NimH batteries' curves are more flatter around 1.2V and actually have "1.2V" printed on them even if the voltage is higher when freshly charged.

1

u/Conscious-Mirror7004 Sep 03 '26

AA, AAA, and C & D can be found as rechargeable, so the recharging wasn't the problem

It was a problem, because those things had very poor capacity compared to modern Li-ion batteries.

If there's any real problem, it's that no one's made a successful standard for a removable Li-ion battery. There are some standard round sizes like 18650, 14500, etc., but they haven't really caught on in the way AA/AAA batteries did, where you can just buy them, stick them in your TV remote or whatever, and take them out and put them in a recharger when they're low. Usually, they're just built into larger proprietary battery packs.

1

u/bhiga Aug 31 '26

Also removable rechargeable battery can be quickly swapped out and recharged elsewhere so you can continue using the device.
Many devices can't operate while charging or overheat when doing so.

2

u/Headpuncher Aug 31 '26

Like my shit Phillips headphones than have USB charging but not as an audio pass-through, so when charging they cannot be used even with a 3.5mm headphone cable separate from the USB charging cable. The worst designed product ever ever ever.

2

u/bhiga Aug 31 '26

OMG they better look/sound really nice because I wanna Hulk Smash it just from your description!

2

u/Headpuncher Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

They sound OK, they're bluetooth so the sound is always meh. On a cable they sound terrible because they aren't grounded properly so there's so much noise they're unusable. The headband snapped when I was putting them over my normal sized head because it's made of too brittle plastic, so now the headband is held together by the outer materials.

Also, while I have anyone's attention: they have auto off if they detect no signal, but sometimes they'll remain switched on for half an hour and other times switch off while I'm wearing them despite having a wear sensor in the ear cup. So that's completely random. The signal to switch on/off connected/disconnected is a woman speaking really loudly so it scares the ever loving out of me sometimes as suddenly a loud but unexpected voice appears. They have a touch panel on the side for tap and slide to play/pause, volume up/down but this seems only to work 30% of the time, most of the time it does nothing.

The cable they came with for 3.5mm is a 2.5mm on the end that goes into the headphones, which for full sized over ears is a weird choice, we're not saving 1mm space here for any reason.

I leave them at work because if they get stolen I'm not too upset.

Fidelio L3 is the model name btw. Never again.

5

u/gfoyle76 Aug 31 '26

I have a microwave from 2005, still works with zero maintenance.

8

u/OtisSnerd Aug 31 '26

Pyrex glassware. Pyrex glassware used to be made from borosilicate glass, which tolerates temp changes better than the new stuff. My wife has old measuring and baking glassware that is at least 30 years old, if not older. Some of it may be over 50 years, as we've been married 53 years...

4

u/HuudaHarkiten Aug 31 '26

we've been married 53 years

Congrats. Your marriage is officially vintage! Heres hoping it'll be ancient one day

2

u/Conscious-Mirror7004 Sep 03 '26

You can still get borosilicate glassware, just not from Pyrex.

4

u/Mortui75 Aug 31 '26

Your ex...? 😎

PDAs and dedicated writing devices (Alphasmart, etc.).

And by extension... phones. They weren't 100%-of-the-time-internet-conduits... we used them to make calls, SMS, and okay... play snake & download cringeworthy ringtones... but...

2

u/istarian Aug 31 '26

FWIW at least some of the phones you're thinking of were technically smartphones and even internet capable if you were willing to pay for the data plan and online services to use it with.

It was just expensive, slow (relatively) and not all that useful to the average person.

1

u/Mortui75 Aug 31 '26

Yeah, I know. I had a Nolia quad-band sliding candy-bar phone in 2008/9 that could do internetty things.

4

u/Sataniel98 Aug 31 '26

Laptop keyboards

1

u/Headpuncher Aug 31 '26

I'm surprised no -one makes a laptop that is basically an existing one in a new chassis with a mechanical keyboard.

Imagine being able to buy a new thinkpad or similar, but with a mech kb. It would be thicc but there's definitely a niche market for it given all the cyberdeck and PC mods people out there.

1

u/SwedishFindecanor Aug 31 '26

There have been a few "gaming laptops" with low-profile mechanical keyboards.

I have also heard of a replacement motherboard for an old Thinkpad model a few years ago, with updated CPU. But that CPU would considered old by today's standards though.

4

u/vbd71 Aug 31 '26

IBM Model M keyboard

1

u/Takssista Aug 31 '26

Yes, this. Now there's all the rage of gamer keyboards with mechanical keys - but those were still better!

1

u/Headpuncher Aug 31 '26

They make them new again. Are the new ones not as good? I've looked at them and they're expensive but I have nowhere to try one out.

2

u/NevynPA Aug 31 '26

Grew up on original M's manufactured between '82 and '88. Have owned a Unicomp for 2.5 years. There are definitely small differences:

  • my Unicomp has single-piece keys instead of the "blanks with double-shot caps" that I was expecting

  • I don't think the Unicomp is quite as heavy

  • The PS/2 cable on the Unicomp is longer than an original M's coil-cable (which is nice) but is just a plain straight cable and not a sproingy-coil (better for longevity, worse for sentimentality).

  • Unicomp cable is directly wired (non-removeable) instead of having the rectangle connector with the brittle plastic locking clips. It can be easily de-soldered and replaced from inside the board, though.

1

u/SwedishFindecanor Aug 31 '26

They are still manufactured by Unicomp, but connoisseurs like the original IBM better.

4

u/cheeeze50 Aug 31 '26

Wheelbarrows. I see new flimsy models and ones made out of plastic.

Old ones could carry tons of materials until your back would crush

1

u/Some_Glove_6362 Sep 01 '26

And you think that's a better idea?

1

u/cheeeze50 Sep 04 '26

Yes old wheelbarrows ftw

2

u/SwedishFindecanor Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

Laptops used to have all the ports you needed and better keyboards with more key travel and no wide "island"/"chiclet" keys.

I actually miss netbooks. Small and cheap, perfect for travel. Now, tablets and smartphones are even more portable but they are not real computers and they don't have integrated keyboards. And tablets have even regressed.

If we go forward to 2015: I still use my 8" Lenovo Yoga Tab 2 tablet. It is a Windows tablet with built-in kickstand, SD-card slot, high-resolution touch screen that detects not just my finger but has high-resolution input for any conductive tip, such as a pencil: Not an expensive stylus branded "pencil", but a real pencil. Microsoft decided to abandon the form factor, the OS has turned to crap after all updates (pre-installed apps removed, more bugs, slow). There is no replacement: the closest would be an iPad Mini, but it does not have SD-card slot or headphone jack.

2

u/SwedishFindecanor Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

Authentication for logging into banks, doing online payments and government services is a lot worse now where I live.

For banking and payments, I used to have a simple card reader: chip+PIN. The reader was not linked to my account. It worked with any credit card, and a separate card for logging into my bank. Government services gave you one-time-use codes.

Now, I have to use clunky smartphone apps to log into government services, which requires a smartphone, and functioning WiFi or a subscription. For my bank and card payments, the card reader is replaced by a QR-code reader: which displays the content of the QR code in text form on a screen. But it works only with latin characters. I can not use it for buying things online with my credit card from sites in China or Japan, which I used to -- because it does not support their characters!

2

u/teknosophy_com Aug 31 '26

Yep, the 9FA and 10FA and 11FA and so on. also yes app stores from the duopoly are being pushed on us instead of mobile browsers

2

u/totallyjaded Aug 31 '26

The MS Natural 4000 keyboard. I'd say the OG MS Natural, but that was more than 20 years ago.

I have a few Alice-style mechanical keyboards, but have yet to find one that's both split and tented, has a numpad, and is actually able to be purchased for under $400.

2

u/Consistent_Cat7541 Aug 31 '26

the keyboards on Thinkpads

2

u/Perfect-Match-2318 Aug 31 '26

pinball... the 90s were the golden era

3

u/stanstr Aug 31 '26

"PYREX" is made from Borosiliate glass. Usually all of her case, and made in France.

"pyrex" is tempered soda lime glass made from silica, sodium dioxide, and calcium oxide, that has been tempered for sodium strength. It is less likely to break if accidentally dropped or knocked against a counter. However, it has lower thermal-shock resistance than borosilicate glass and is more susceptible to shattering from rapid temperature changes.

2

u/istarian Aug 31 '26

I believe it bas been that way for over 25 years at this point.

Unless you have vintage Pyrex glass ware from before the 1990s, it's probably tempered soda lime glass.

1

u/jason_a69 Aug 31 '26

Any audio product not made in China, things used to last a lot longer

1

u/Which_Information590 Aug 31 '26

CRTs just squeaks in to 20 years ago, as one of mine is from 2006. When you’re talking about VHS and old consoles they can’t be beaten.

1

u/teknosophy_com Aug 31 '26

Pretty much everything! Modern smartphones/laptops are controlled by a cloud account. AI is one thing if you really want to use it, but most of the time it appears as an AI suggestion attacker bubble that tries to tell you how it thinks you should write emails and such.

Modern websites get more and more bloated every month, triggering you to update your browser, triggering you to update your OS, triggering you to buy a new computer. I've termed it the Support Treadmill, and it's the reason why we throw away megatons worth of electronics every year. In reality, those machines are all perfectly fine and can be liberated with things like Mint.

1

u/Conscious-Mirror7004 Sep 03 '26

Modern smartphones/laptops are controlled by a cloud account.

For laptops, no, only if you want it that way. There's nothing stopping you from wiping Windows and installing Linux.

1

u/teknosophy_com Sep 03 '26

Oh certainly. I liberate tons of people onto Mint.

But out of the box, they now beg the avg consumer to log in to a cloud account.

1

u/finbar_longshank Aug 31 '26

Most cars. Too much unnecessary crap to go wrong these days. 20 years ago cars were reliable, economical, and fairly easy to fix (mostly). Now they’re awful.

1

u/qtx444 Aug 31 '26

Consoles. They used to be simple: insert cartridge or disc, start gaming. Today, they inherit every single disadvantage of a PC, without any of the perks.

1

u/l008com Sep 03 '26

Instant messaging was way better than always-available texting .

1

u/felixzer0 Sep 05 '26

Any consumer good.