Massassachusetts to Chilliwack, BC travel help.

[Ron in BC]

Originally Posted by dfandrews

What, no Loran?

Actually a couple of years ago I threw out a never opened, new in box, Loran C. It was a spare and never used. Gotta love ever changing technology. Oh well, it was only a couple of hundred dollars. The first one that I bought was about $1500. That's the good part about technology, at least the price usually comes down over time.

Ron

[gbaglo]

The first digital camera I used at the paper cost US $18,000. Rest of the kit, lenses, MacBook, Photoshop cost thousands more.
The camera captured two meg files. You could shoot 2 1/2 frames a second and after three frames you had to wait 30 seconds for the buffer to move pix to the hard drive.

I'm currently messing with my new MacBook Air 256 SSD, retina display and all the other bells and whistles. Only problem is there is no Canon iP5000 printer driver for this OS and all the ink tanks in my Pixma iP5000 were recently replaced ( not cheap ).

Panasonic cordless phone batteries have died. I can buy a set of four new phones for the price of batteries for the old phones.

Damn technology.

[Donna D.]

Originally Posted by gbaglo

Damn technology.

The average person will never be able to keep up with technology. Not even if you have all the funds of a Kardashian. Sometimes you just have to say... good enough... and let the rest go. What exactly do you wish to accomplish? Shoot, I'm still running a laptop with Microsoft Vista software because I OWN Microsoft Word. Good enough for my Christmas letters and I'm not paying a monthly subscription or learning anything new... just to put out a letter. I don't take photographs, I take pictures.....

[gbaglo]

I'm with you Donna. I'm a RETIRED photographer.
I didn't buy this new Mac. It was a 70 birthday/Christmas present from my wife and daughter/son-in-law.

I don't even have Photoshop any more.

I just use the keyboard and I touch type, so it didn't matter that a dozen keys on the old one were worn through.

[Ron in BC]

Originally Posted by Donna D.

Sometimes you just have to say... good enough... and let the rest go.

Or wait. I was looking at 42" flatscreens when they first came out and were selling for well over $2000. The salesguy was pestering me so to get rid of him I said "just looking, I won't buy one until they're under $1000." He said, "oh, they'll never be that low."

Ron

[Tam2004]

Originally Posted by mizterwizard

That is what I actually have. Not nearly the data allowance or throughput of the T-Mobile plan but it is solid and I kept the DSL. We added a third phone for only $15/month more.

About 15 years ago they wanted to put a cell tower on my property. I didn't know who they were. Turns out it was AT&T. I turned them down because I wanted to subdivide. Still no subdivision and I could have had free cell service and $550/month rent. Oh, well. It's not the worst mistake I ever made but it is surely one of the most obvious ones.

Well, personally you might want to be glad as it might not be that good for you to live near a tower. https://www.safespaceprotection.com/...s/power-lines/

[cpaharley2008]

Originally Posted by Tam2004

Well, personally you might want to be glad as it might not be that good for you to live near a tower. https://www.safespaceprotection.com/...s/power-lines/

I agree that high tension wires have EMF issues, but the poster was referring to a cell phone tower repeater, not sure the same issue exists. But wow, I did not know that the effects were that large over a mile away.

[mizterwizard]

Once again the voice of reason, Donna D, hits the nail on the head. I have a son who is an IT technician at a major international company. He is one of their best guys and he keeps me pretty well up to date computer wise. It's funny because when he was 12, I was the computer tech in the family. It's nice to be surpassed by my children. It's what we all hope for, isn't it?

About 5 years ago I decided that for what I do, what I have is good enough. I replace things as they go bad or really big improvements come along. For instance, I was the first in the family to have a solid state drive (SSD). Boy was that an improvement.

Generally speaking though I don't need the fastest CPU, mother board or video card.

When we go to Costco, the TV display is right there at the entrance so we often stroll through it. We have a 47 inch TV but boy those 65s are tempting. I grew up with a black and white tube type (of course) that took 3 minutes to warm up. It was something like 15 inches and was one of the bigger TVs in the neighborhood. Yes, I'm that old.

I don't see much need for smart appliances that offer a bit of convenience for the price of a lot of privacy. I have a smart phone that is 3 generations old but works just fine and isn't so big it won't fit into my pocket. Remember when the latest phone was smaller than its predecessor?

There are a lot of ways to look at tech but I'm with Donna D. on this one. Did you know that a smart phone takes pretty good movies, or do I mean video? No, I mean movies. And that it can hold a lot of movies with the installed memory. Also that you can expand the memory easily with SD cards? Ya, I know that it is no big news but I just got into selfies and movies last year on a cruise. I add tech to my life when it does something for me. I don't care if I'm not at the leading edge anymore.

PC magazine used to be the size of a large city phone book. I used to read it from cover to cover. Not for the last 10 years though.

I still think a GPS is a near essential these days though.