What older technology have you used?

[danjuno]

I handled a cheque as payment while working in a super market one time

 

[Cutlass]

All but 3 of them.

 

[Zardnaar]

I handled a cheque as payment while working in a super market one time

Ever write one? Think I did it once or twice and ripped the book up.

 

[Arwon]

Nah I'm only in my late 30s. I worked in a supermarket in the early 2000s, someone trying to pay with a cheque generally meant the duty manager had to come over and help out because nobody remembered how to process it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Slightly older. I remember owning a chequebook and mum giving me them.

Not sure if I wrote one. I kinda remember doing it once but might be a Mandela effect.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I still write checks because the condo association that I pay shut down their online payment portal because it kept not working and they just gave up. It’s annoying.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It is a bit of a niche item.

Reel to reel was all there was really in the 50s and 60s if you wanted to record music. My dad recorded Saturday afternoon operas off the radio. I still have at least one reel of early 60s music in a box somewhere.

Passbook savings accounts; my bother and sisters each had a passbook savings account. It was a passport sized booklet which kept a record of each entry of transactions in a savings account. When I went to the bank to add $2.00 to my account the teller would record the transaction in the book. That way I could look at the book and know how much I had saved with a quick look.

 

[IglooDame]

Ever write one? Think I did it once or twice and ripped the book up.

I've written one monthly for the past few, to my apartment co-renter who actually pays the landlord.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've written one monthly for the past few, to my apartment co-renter who actually pays the landlord.

Seems odd to me it's all automated here. Direct deposit 1/week for rent and that was in 2010.

 

[amadeus]

Reel to reel was all there was really in the 50s and 60s if you wanted to record music. My dad recorded Saturday afternoon operas off the radio. I still have at least one reel of early 60s music in a box somewhere.

If you like hearing about old and obscure audio formats I recommend Techmoan on YouTube.

 

[r16]

banks here still use the transaction book thing . Go to bank every two years or whatever to add some more and they will add 40 or so lines , showing the interest income and taxes paid and so on .

 

[Kyriakos]

Checks were what allowed the recent-ish economic fraud with people pretending they stood to inherit royalty etc.

 

[amadeus]

Bankbooks that are written onto by the bank’s printers are ubiquitous here. I have never seen anyone pay with a typical checkbook.

Apartment rent is through bank transfer, phone payment automated bank transfer, and the light and gas bills I pay in cash.

 

[r16]

checks still exist . Write them today to be paid 3 months latrr kind of thing . Usually many of them will bounce but anyhow . Apparently still a mafia thing too , where you either sign or they break your fingers .

 

[dusters]

Ok, guys, hear me out. I once drew this beautiful piece of technology. Can you guess, what is it?

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Best Buy announced they're dropping physical disc sales for movies and TV next year. Not exactly stoked for physical media disappearing from the market entirely, since streaming services can pull stuff you already paid for form circulation at any time.

That's party the reason why I left netflix many years ago. Almost finished streaming a movie and *poof* gone the next day.
But Best Buy seems to be having a lot of...problems. Like my local store is completely gutted with a good portion of the old floor space devoted to warehouse for picking up online sales. Good gravy, are there going to be any electronic stores left? Radio Shack gone, etc...

 

[lymond]

Ok, guys, hear me out. I once drew this beautiful piece of technology. Can you guess, what is it?

kerosene lamp

 

[Core Imposter]

Ok, guys, hear me out. I once drew this beautiful piece of technology. Can you guess, what is it?

I have two of these oil lamps sitting on the mantle, one was wife's mothers, and the other was mine. So, they are functional keepsakes, handy when the power is down. Wife still has candles but there are better options these days.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Passbook savings accounts; my bother and sisters each had a passbook savings account. It was a passport sized booklet which kept a record of each entry of transactions in a savings account. When I went to the bank to add $2.00 to my account the teller would record the transaction in the book. That way I could look at the book and know how much I had saved with a quick look.

Had one as a kid in the 80's. Teller hand writes the changes in your book. Seems silly now, but I imagine they had their own records so one couldn't falsify transactions in it.

Seems odd to me it's all automated here. Direct deposit 1/week for rent and that was in 2010.

Larger companies and landlords, yes. Landlord that only rents out a couple of places, no, they will expect cash or check.

It really depends on the company. If they expect payment through the mail, you can't mail cash, so they have to be more willing to accept checks unless they are set up to accept credit/debit then they can simply refuse to accept checks if they want to. If I hire a plumber, most don't have $100 or whatever in cash lying around to pay him, and most plumbers don't carry a card reader with them. Almost no stores accept checks anymore, the ones that do are very local (don't get many customers 'just passing through town'), so they pretty much only take checks if they know you (they will only take local checks and check your ID and write your drivers license # on the check if it's not already printed on there). I can still use a check at an Amish Grocery store (they don't take credit/debit cards).

I'm down to writing one check a month. And for that one, I could set up for electronic payments, but they've made it unnecessarily complicated to set up.

 

[uppi]

Nope. I just did a quick review (for a decade I was a network engineer at a cellular reseller so this was adjacent to my day job), and same as the voice network up through 4G but for 5G it's over cellular data; in either case it's the same towers/freqs. See below for the helpful diagram, I can try to remember enough to explain most of the components.

The medical centers may well still have usage because as I said SMS is more reliable and will continue to function even when one can't get a voice call through. But worth noting that, while it's more reliable, it's far more difficult to do end-to-end encryption.

Pagers are not necessarily SMS protocol though. Pagers are much older than that and have their own protocols, frequencies, and infrastructure.