New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

A link which appeared in one of my mailing lists might be of interest to some here.
http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/busines ... hva22.html

Stuff.co.nz copy and pasted it on to their site too

But there is some I would have added (or merged with the list - replacing things like PDA (which are still around - we just call them phones now)):

10) Luggables
You'll be pressed to ever see a business executive dragging around 5kg of AC powered goodness with a handle anymore. It's either a laptop or a desktop - not a desktop with a handle.

11) Green and Amber
It's fairly standard for anything to be colour these days, but there was a time you'd likely have a preference as to what colour you preferred at work.

12) Dialup Internet
Even if it's still available, I haven't heard the negotiation chime in years - even our fax at work doesn't make it audible anymore. We still have internet, but it's a different experience, no more asking your sister to not pick up the phone while you use the interwebs.

SpidersWeb wrote:12) Dialup Internet
Even if it's still available, I haven't heard the negotiation chime in years - even our fax at work doesn't make it audible anymore. We still have internet, but it's a different experience, no more asking your sister to not pick up the phone while you use the interwebs.

My home internet still comes through the telephone network - it's 3.5G though. And you don't have to disconnect to take a voice call. (But talking while leaving the mobile hotspot activated drains my phone battery in about 15 min.)

I saw a guy walking downtown the other day wearing a belt mounted pager. Was wondering if it was a fashion statement or if he was actually using it.

I'd have omitted #10 on that list. I can't tell if they're talking about DOS specifically or command lines in general (or if whoever wrote the article doesn't know the difference between the two - sadly likely...) I still see DOS itself all over the place embedded in scientific gear & I know lots of Linux/Unix IT types who do most of their work from the console on servers that don't have X11 installed. There is definitely still a place for both.

SpidersWeb wrote:12) Dialup Internet
Even if it's still available, I haven't heard the negotiation chime in years...

lol! My parents are still on Dialup, way down south in the middle of nowhere (Duntroon). I've been trying to get them to consider broadband for years. That way my mum won't have to complain about how "slow" her emails are to download because I attached a 1Mb attachment to it.

xjas wrote:

SpidersWeb wrote:12) Dialup Internet
Even if it's still available, I haven't heard the negotiation chime in years - even our fax at work doesn't make it audible anymore. We still have internet, but it's a different experience, no more asking your sister to not pick up the phone while you use the interwebs.

I saw a guy walking downtown the other day wearing a belt mounted pager. Was wondering if it was a fashion statement or if he was actually using it.

We still use multiple pagers at work for on-call engineers etc.
While some of that is just "it works, why change", the paging network does seem to have excellent coverage/reliability (particularly for rural areas or if you use TXT as an alternative) and there is also a "symbolic" thing with a pager and the act of physically passing it on to someone is like a handing over of responsibilities etc. (the pager gets passed to the next on-call person).