Awesome tech you have owned

[Dos_Box]

years ago I was told to get myself a laptop with 'money (almost) no object' as a price point. So I got myself one of there: Evesham Voyager 64 Athlon 64 notebook

The Evesham Voyager x64. The first 64 bit Windows laptop to be released, and all the way back in 2003 - When we didn't have a (standard) x64 OS to put on it!

It was a beast with the following specs:

 

 

• Athlon 64 3200+ CPU
  
• 512MB RAM (PC133 IRRC)
  
• ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
  
• 60GB Hard drive
  
• 15.1 inch 1400x1050 display
  

 

And all for £1399! The only drawback it had was the weight. At 3.6 Kg if you had it on your lap you'd have to get someone to lift it off you first before you stood up! It was an utter beast and lasted me a good few years.

I only mention this as a topic as I came across one on eBay the other week going for about £50. It's this kind of thing that always makes me think twice about technology. If I'm not anticipating using it for a good number of years then I can't really justify buying it. Remember about 14-15 years back when we all had to upgrade about every 18 months as the technology advanced so quickly?

Anyway, this brings me to my question. What have you owned in the past that is now worth, well, nothing now. Points awarded for swift obsolescence such as for those who brought Voodoo 5 cards and for the shiny factor at the time of purchase

[Danp]

My Macbook Air, got a good deal on it at under £250 of list price inc delivery and 3 year warranty just over 2 years ago and it still looks and behaves like it's brand new. Normally by now I would have reinstalled any MS based machine at least once within that time.

[hardtailstar]

I spent about a grand on a P4 desktop,

 

a year later the same desktop was less then half the price.

 

other than that Id have to say my Nexus 7 which I still use is awesome

[AMLinington]

A minidisc player - does that count? At a time when people were still toting around chunky portable CD players and MP3 players were limited to 10 songs I had a minidisc player and it was really special to me - I'd saved up and bought it with the proceeds of my saturday job and I spent hours making lengthy mix-discs and it was brilliant. I even got one for my car. It was awesome for about 6 months until the iPod became viable. Now it is worthless and gathering dust.

[featured_spectre]

About 10 years ago, I spent nearly £2000 on a custom build PC. Had an Nvidia 8800GTX graphics card, a Dolby 5.1 surround sound card and kit, 2x 250GB HDD, 2GB RAM, and a 17in flatscreen TFT.

 

*edit*

 

Exact spec from 2004, hurray for hotmail storing ancient emails!

 

Athlon 64 4800+ X2

Nvidia 6800GT

2GB Corsair XMS DDR ram

2x 250GB Western Digital HDD

Thermaltake Tsunami Case

Antec 650w Power Supply

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard

Viewsonic VX926 17" 3ms LCD

Logitech G7 (Blue)

Logitech G15v1

Logitech Z-2300 5.1 THX speakers

Edited February 13, 2014 by featured_spectre

[Danp]

A minidisc player - does that count? At a time when people were still toting around chunky portable CD players and MP3 players were limited to 10 songs I had a minidisc player and it was really special to me - I'd saved up and bought it with the proceeds of my saturday job and I spent hours making lengthy mix-discs and it was brilliant. I even got one for my car. It was awesome for about 6 months until the iPod became viable. Now it is worthless and gathering dust.

 

Yes! I had one too with some free minidisks from Live '94, a trade show that was on in Earls Court

[foofighterjim]

Nokia 3210, a phone that only needed charging once a week! How I miss those days.

[jinnantonnixx]

A 386/SX 20Mhz PC

2 Meg (not Gig) memory

40 Meg (not Gig) hard disk

1024x768 SVGA card

Adlib soundcard.

 

All that for £1299 in 1992.

[jinnantonnixx]

Minidiscs were pretty good in their day. I've got two MD recorders at home.

Sony really missed a trick then they refused to allow them to store music-as-files. Even when they went half way with NetMD, they insisted on their crummy software to perform conversions and crippled the operation of otherwise excellent hardware. Apple came along and slaughtered them.

[Trojan]

Realmagic Hollywood Plus DVD decoder card that saw sterling service playing back dvd's on an early celeron (the ones without L2 cache) without it I'd have been lucky to get 4 pixels that occasionally changed colour. Completely obsolete as soon as CPU's started to get reasonably powerful.

[d0pefish]

Alienware laptop, came in at about £1900 in the end. Lasted years and could play just about any game at the time, including Half Life 2 when it came out.

ended up having it perched on the sofa arm with additional mouse and used every night. same as @Dos_Box it was a beast though, when i moved it off the sofa, there was a massive dent in the fabric!

[abillybob]

I had a portable mini disc player the same way LightFoot did! Great bit of kit cost a fortune aswell as it was sony's top of the range. A year later I bought a 64MB MP3 Player which could hold a whole album on it and had no screen and 1aa battery would power it forever! This cost me £60 though I loved it. Though the two best things I've ever bought was my Alienware Laptop and a HP MicroServer N40L.

 

The little MicroServer has saved me a fortune in TV Show Series, Movies, Software, PC Games! All legal like *cough* my Alienware is by far my best purchase I'm never off the thing, great for work too specs:

 

Intel I7 @ 2.6Ghz Quad Core

16GB DDR3 1600Mhz Ram

128GB SSD 500mbps read and write

750GB HDD 7200RPM

Nvidia 3GB GDDR5 770m

Intergrated Intel 4600 GPU

Blu-Ray Re-Writer

17" 3D 120Hz screen

[Dos_Box]

Minidiscs were pretty good in their day. I've got two MD recorders at home.

Sony really missed a trick then they refused to allow them to store music-as-files. Even when they went half way with NetMD, they insisted on their crummy software to perform conversions and crippled the operation of otherwise excellent hardware. Apple came along and slaughtered them.

 

I got 5 years out of my MiniDiscs. In fact, I was still using my MD hi-fi player until about 2004, well after my MD Walkman had given up the ghost. Good technology for the time, shame it never really took off.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

My first actual experience of windows (and DOS) came from one of these!

 

 

With 2mb ram and 40mb hdd it was incredible!

 

I had DOS 6.2.2 and windows 3.11 on there. Also had an additional 128mb hdd in the docking station and a colour monitor for when it was plugged in. It was old when my parents got it but I still love it and to this day it's sat somewhere connected to a monitor in my parents Attic.

 

I just about got it to run Command and Conquer in laptop mode, but that was as far as it went

[synaesthesia]

I think my first 3d card, a Matrox M3D. Couldn't quite stretch to a Voodoo card, but the difference in gaming was astonishing. Never, ever bought a PC off the shelf so can't really count those. Quake and Quake 2 were awesome on that thing, and one of my favourite racers Motorhead looked just the part.

 

That and my steering wheel. Logitech Formula Force. Bright red, built out of steel and absolutely solid. Beat the crappy Microsoft counterpart into submission and force feedback that could move your desk if not bolted down. Was the second most expensive part I've ever bought at £240 quid. (Most expensive was my first CDR drive at £299).

[Dos_Box]

Just had a look on eBay and people are still buying them!

[tmcd35]

I'll go for a top 5...

 

5) YouRock Guitar, MIDI adapter and Rock Band 3 - Play "real guitar" on a games console? Count me in!

4) MiniDisc player - 25 MD's full of music mixes in Long Play (the original iPod)

3) Amiga 600 - just before Commodore went bust (then upgraded to an A1200)

2) iPod 20Gb then later 80Gb (I love my music!)

1) iPhone (okay, still got, use, current - but it's the single best bit of tech I've ever owned!)

[pcstru]

My favourite piece of tech is a Heiz T1000 CNC machine.

[Nibiru]

One of my fav bits of kit was a chunky Panasonic SA-HT70 DVD & home theater system bout for about 300 quid 8 or 9 years ago. A lovely rich sound came from it so I was rather gutted when the dvd drive packed up (a common problem with these apparently)

 

However it didnt get junked - its now here in my office, and the heart of my computer sound system connected to some lovely old JVC speakers I was given a few years ago

 

I cant turn it up too loud or I get complaints from next door

 

[Dos_Box]

I think my first 3d card, a Matrox M3D. Couldn't quite stretch to a Voodoo card, but the difference in gaming was astonishing. Never, ever bought a PC off the shelf so can't really count those. Quake and Quake 2 were awesome on that thing, and one of my favourite racers Motorhead looked just the part.

 

That and my steering wheel. Logitech Formula Force. Bright red, built out of steel and absolutely solid. Beat the crappy Microsoft counterpart into submission and force feedback that could move your desk if not bolted down. Was the second most expensive part I've ever bought at £240 quid. (Most expensive was my first CDR drive at £299).

 

I'd forgotten about CDR drives when they were first launched, and before the advent of buffer underun technology! I brought one too and probably spent more on incomplete CD's than I did on the drive in the end!

[Little-Miss]

 

I had one of these years ago....it was brilliant. Creative Zen Vision:M. Weighed a ton. I dropped it one day and knackered the hard drive. Devastated.....

 

I miss it.

 

(I still have my mini disk player too)

[Boredguy]

I've still got my Zen Vision:M... The screen developed a bad case of shadows and white lines but still perfectly useable.

Also got a Zen X Fi.

Ironically neither of them get much use these days since I got a new car with USB connectivity for playback and the files run off a usb drive =/

[jinnantonnixx]

I also have this:

 

It's not really tech, it's got 2 pre-amp valves, 1 phase-split valve and 4 humungous power valves, but it's electrical, at least.

 

It was made in 1974 and I bought it in 1988 ish. It's quite loud.

Edited February 13, 2014 by jinnantonnixx

[X-13]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22875[/ATTACH]

 

I had one of these years ago....it was brilliant. Creative Zen Vision:M. Weighed a ton. I dropped it one day and knackered the hard drive. Devastated.....

 

I miss it.

 

(I still have my mini disk player too)

 

I still have my regular Creative Zen. Still works.

 

Le EDIT: one of these.

 

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/3977591/-/Product.html

Edited February 13, 2014 by X-13

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Just had a look on eBay and people are still buying them!

 

It's amazing to see my old machine at less than 10% of the cost we paid for it back in the day too!

 

COMPAQ 133659-001 LTE LITE EXPANSION BASE | eBay

Vintage Compaq LTE Lite/25C 2810C Series Laptop with Power Supply AS IS (V07) | eBay