• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Why do people feel the need to have the highest end of technology?

There are very few things I feel compelled to buy top-of-the-line. Computers and smartphones are not among them. Oh, I'm not cheap--just frugal, meaning I get the most for my money without spending a fortune. It's no longer important to me to have cutting edge computers because even low- or lower-priced computers are plenty powerful enough for my purposes. Especially since I only use Linux--they're so fast, they fly! :) I spent more on my most recent laptop than I really planned to. I had planned on buying another HP Pavilion and figured I'd spend not more than $500-ish. The System76 that I ended up with came in at just under $1,000. But I'm fine with that, and I expect it to last a good long time. My laptops typically last 5-6 years, and I'm talking low-priced HP laptops, not high end ones. The System76 has a 17.3" screen and a full-sized keyboard, including a numeric keypad. I love it.

My oldest current computer, which is humming along 24/7 running Kubuntu 5.04, is over 10 years old. It's an HP desktop. I can't recall the last time I actually used it--there's no monitor on it. I occasionally...well...RARELY...access its hard drive, but at this point I think I'm really just keeping it running to see how long it'll live!
 
IOWA said:
For me it's more of a hobby than anything else.. and the amazement of how far things have come. I mean, just smart phones alone blow my mind to this day. I still remember being an eager eyed teen with my first palm smartphone.. now with an S5 that has 1000x the processing power, storage, and connectivity options/speed.

For my PC's, again it's all about the hobby. It's just so satisfying to open up my rig throw in some new parts and boot her up to watch my new toy fly.
Click to expand...

Almost scares me what it is gonna be like in 10 more years!
 
I think this depends on who we are talking about.

Some people do need the highest end of technology to do their work. A person who works on photoshop all day will benefit from a retina display. Someone who does a lot of video editing will benefit from a $5,000 video card.

You and I, who watch cat videos on youtube, visit forums, and do email will not benefit from that.

So, yet why do we buy them?

Why do regular people buy Ferraris and Lamborghinis?
It's possible status quo. We buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like.

break the habbit, you will live hapily with old technology that just gets the job done.

this laptop that I'm using, not very fast, but it's typinng.

Did you know we went to the moon on a computer less powerful than a regular cell phone? Ya, just think of that. Every computer is as powerful as we make it.
 
sfbloodbrother said:
Did you know we went to the moon on a computer less powerful than a regular cell phone? Ya, just think of that. Every computer is as powerful as we make it.
Click to expand...

Actually went to the moon using something that was probably about as powerful as a Commodore 64, the Apollo Guidance Computer, along with a heck of a lot of people using slide-rules. :D

...and when Apollo 13 had its mishap, they had no computer at all on board, had to turn almost everything off, and then just rely on the men with the slide-rules, along with whatever computers NASA had at the time. Anything that needed to be calculated quickly and in real time, that was men with slide-rules, a human computer.
 
nickdalzell said:
They shut down their computer due to the batteries draining with everything on. They still needed to reboot them in order to make the final descent and not burn up.
Click to expand...

Presumably the movie Apollo 13 is a reasonably accurate story. In that when the thing blows up and the electrics go wonky, Lovell is doing all the calculations in his head and on paper, and relying on the men with the slide-rules to verify his calculations, and then programming the LEM computer, because that's all they had left, until re-entry. Same when they had to do the course correction burn, they had to do that manually, no power to spare for the computer.

Yuri Gagarin in 1961 didn't have a computer at all, think it was just a sequencer that done the re-entry for him. Plus hopefully manual controls and sufficient training if it didn't work.

I think China has the best approach to manned space exporation at the moment, they're basically just using everything that Russia has used for decades. Shenzhou is really just a slightly larger Soyuz, same with the spacesuits.
 
I don't see how your computer is going to impress anyone, regardless of what it is. Unless you're always taking it with you someplace, only the people who live with you are going to know what it is. Basically. My laptop is aging but I don't care; things like computers I'll use until I can't use them anymore. When it comes to stuff like phones, I like having the latest model of whatever I'm using. I justify it that I might end up keeping it longer than a year, so why not get something that won't be obsolete as fast. But I also like change and I get bored easily. If I have a device too long I'll start looking for a replacement--the newer the better. But I like gadgetry as well, and I always have. When I was a kid I loved innovative toys. I'm just a bigger kid now, and my love of "toys" hasn't changed.
 
GreenTea said:
I don't see how your computer is going to impress anyone, regardless of what it is. Unless you're always taking it with you someplace,
Click to expand...

Certainly can do here, especially when it's showing a glowing Apple logo, that's a status symbol, it says "I've got more money than you." :D ...and when your Macbook has a Windows key, or you're putting a big Apple logo sticker on your cheap Lenovo Ideapad, that's when you haven't made the big time and are not a baller. ....see also fake iPhones.

And a frequent thing to with Macs, is to wipe OS X and install pirated XP Pro and Office 2003 instead, because things like QQ are not very well done and are poorly supported on OS X.

I got a white Macbook, that's six years old that my father gave me, that gets admiring glances, especially from students. I even put a GB/EU car sticker over the glowing Apple logo.
GB-Sticker.bmp


And sometimes they ask, why I bought a Chinese Oppo phone and not an Apple iPhone. Because I'm English and a foreigner to them, they often assume I'm rich.
 
mikedt said:
Certainly can do here, especially when it's showing a glowing Apple logo, that's a status symbol, it says "I've got more money than you." :D ...and when your Macbook has a Windows key, or you're putting a big Apple logo sticker on your cheap Lenovo Ideapad, that's when you haven't made the big time and are not a baller. ....see also fake iPhones.

And a frequent thing to with Macs, is to wipe OS X and install pirated XP Pro and Office 2003 instead, because things like QQ are not very well done and are poorly supported on OS X.
Click to expand...

It honestly blows my mind that a Mac is considered a status symbol! I have one, but it was a gift, and something I wouldn't have been willing (oh, who are we kidding, wouldn't have been able) to purchase on my own. Anyone thinking I could "afford" it would be really surprised! It's aging, and I will use it until I'm gifted another, LOL. The opposite of "status."

Would have never imagined, either, that folks are putting pirated Windows software on Macs. If anyone ever got a hold of mine it would be like a dream come true for whoever wanted to wipe it and install XP or any other OS or software, because I'm running Parallels and several versions of Windows are already on it.

Learn something new every day, LOL.
 
GreenTea said:
It honestly blows my mind that a Mac is considered a status symbol! I have one, but it was a gift, and something I wouldn't have been willing (oh, who are we kidding, wouldn't have been able) to purchase on my own. Anyone thinking I could "afford" it would be really surprised! It's aging, and I will use it until I'm gifted another, LOL. The opposite of "status."

Would have never imagined, either, that folks are putting pirated Windows software on Macs. If anyone ever got a hold of mine it would be like a dream come true for whoever wanted to wipe it and install XP or any other OS or software, because I'm running Parallels and several versions of Windows are already on it.

Learn something new every day, LOL.
Click to expand...

Welcome to China! :thumbup: :rolleyes: :D

Here Apple can carry the same sort of prestige and perceived cachet as wearing a gold Rolex or a $700 t-shirt that has "GUCCI" written on it in huge letters.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/08/business/china-bans-luxury-product-ads/index.html
...no Apple ads on state television(CCTV) these days, used to be loads of them a couple of years ago. Thank you Xi Jinping for trying to drive out extravagance and corruption.
220px-Xi_Jinping_Sept._19%2C_2012.jpg
 
This is still my favourite Chinese fake Apple iPhone story from a couple of years ago...
There's literally no app for this: KIRF iPhone-branded gas stoves seized by Chinese authorities

Apple iPhone gas stoves! LOL ...made by Apple China Ltd, apparently.
iphone-gas-stove.jpg


Saw a young girl yesterday, probably about 8 years old, had a t-shirt with a huge Apple logo along with the word "iPhone", done in rhinestones. Not authorised by Apple of course.

There's a well regarded camera app on Google Play called Camera360, comes from a company called "PingGuo Inc", which is actually Chinese for "Apple Inc". Probably can't use the English name, otherwise they'd probably be sued by the other Apple Inc.
 
Around here a MacBook will get you called names like 'yuppie' and 'pretty boy'. This is a very blue collar town. I still cringe at folks who still use a StarTAC. The only iPhones you see are 3GS or older. The only Androids seen run FroYo or Gingerbread
 
10 years ago, Athlon XP running Win XP, along with a Nokia Symbian phone of some description.
20 years ago, 486DX running Win 3.11 and I used CompuServe, phone was a rather large NEC 9a, could make and receive phone calls and was quite expensive.
30 years ago, BBC Micro model B and a Commodore 64, no mobile phones available.

...and I was happy. :)
 
Ten years ago people around here still used AOL dial-up. Does anyone even know what a StarTAC is? It's an ancient flip phone from 1996. And some people still use them! I can accept people using more modern flip phones such as the RAZR V3, or Samsung Rugby but a StarTAC?

I am so used to flat panel TVs replacing inefficient, horrid picture CRTs with their headache inducing flyback whine that I find it hard to see anyone still watching an old 1978 Magnavox Star System TV in this day and age with a degrading picture tube. Some tech from the old needs recycling. Improvements have been made.

Is there some luddite cult somewhere still using an IBM 5150 and floppy disks?
 
nickdalzell said:
Is there some luddite cult somewhere still using an IBM 5150 and floppy disks?
Click to expand...

Well, lets see here, I still have my Tandy 600 notebook and matching Desktop from 1985 and they still work! :eek:

newold-1a.jpg


newold-3a.jpg


Probably older than most of you youngsters here! :D
 
10 years ago: Assorted laptops and desktops [one of which is still humming along], all running Linux of course. [:hmmmm2: trying to remember what I was using immediately before Kubuntu 5.04 made its debut...Red Hat? Caldera? I can't remember :eek:]

20 years ago: Various Pentium and 386 desktops, running Coherent [a UNIX clone], with one dual booting windows. [Shocking, I know!] I used CompuServe, mostly from a UNIX command line, but also later with its GUI. My ID was one of the 7xxxx, but I can't remember now if it was 7xxxx,xxx or 7xxxx,xxxx.

30-ish years ago: At home: Commodore 64! :D With a tape drive attached to it. And hooked up to the living room TV. At work: UNIX server with Wyse 60 and 150 dumb terminals. AND I WAS HAPPY!
 
Ten years ago, I'd just reluctantly ditched my Palm based Samsung SPH-i300 for a Sanyo flip phone--the Sanyo was my first camera phone and I thought it was so great and amazing. I cringe now thinking about the pictures it took but back then I thought it was everything. My computer was a Presario desktop model that was aging even then--it had a ZIP drive (which I also, in the beginning, thought was soooo great).

Twenty years ago I was using a Macintosh Performa 460. No multi-tasking! I kept a journal in Claris Works and wrote an entry every day after school (and wrote a few stories as well); I was completely oblivious both to and of the Internet in 1994 and had never even heard of a blog--and I wouldn't get my first cell phone until a couple years later.

I wasn't using a computer in 1984. It wasn't until the late 80s that I had one to use. I remember some of my friends having weird computing contraptions that they hooked up to their televisions in the mid 80s, though...
 
Ten years ago a pet deer drooled onto my fancy Nokia Communicator causing it to do some weird things such as show emails that didn't exist yet couldn't be removed, calls randomly being placed to my contacts, etc.

Twenty years ago I was just starting out on America Online version 2.x, on an IBM PS/1 running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Standard 2400 baud modem.

Thirty years ago I was still playing Alpiner on the TI-99/4A home computer.
 
mikedt said:
SIXTY years ago....
CAB1.jpg


THE FIRST CAR TELEPHONES
Click to expand...
I saw an old James Garner/Doris Day movie recently, The Thrill of it All, and there's a scene with a car phone in it. That was in 1963.

I remember as a kid here [in Los Angeles] seeing people talking on car phones, which I thought was the ultimate in amazing. Who knew that 50 years later we'd have to have laws stopping people from hurting themselves--and others--from doing stupid things like texting while driving?!
 
MoodyBlues said:
I saw an old James Garner/Doris Day movie recently, The Thrill of it All, and there's a scene with a car phone in it. That was in 1963.
Click to expand...
Ah... James Garner died a few weeks ago. I miss him as I've seen ALL of his many movies, many several times. He will be missed.
 
jack58 said:
Ah... James Garner died a few weeks ago. I miss him as I've seen ALL of his many movies, many several times. He will be missed.
Click to expand...
Indeed. He was one of those rare stars who no one had a bad word to say about, and he truly seemed like a nice, friendly, average Joe. I fell in love with his old TV series, Maverick, back in the '70s; its whole premise was just so amusing and different from other Westerns of its era (the '50s). And The Rockford Files! Every time I drive past Paradise Cove [on Pacific Coast Hwy in Malibu], I think about that show and how much I loved it. :D
 
No one remembers Maxwell Smart's 'shoe phone' in the famous Don Adams series, Get Smart which was the first to feature a mobile phone in a TV series, albeit exaggerated.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom