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The Real Deal 132: Gadget inventory

Tom and Rafe discuss the gadgets they own, what they use them for, or in the case of the really old stuff, why they keep them.

Tom Merritt Former CNET executive editor
3 min read

Tom and Rafe discuss the gadgets they own, what they use them for, or in the case of the really old stuff, why they keep them.


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Rafe

Inventory

OLD IN USE
Slimp3
LaserJet 1100
Moto cameras still up
X10 light controller
Siemens Gigasys 8825
Thinkpad T42
sort of: Sidewinder Force Feedback joystick
Tannoy 611 speakers - 1995?
IBM spacesaver keyboard with trackpoint

Not in use
Thinkpad T60
Thinkpad Z61
homebuilt PC
WHS
HP Inkjet
TiVoHD
Working WRT54G

Old tech porn
Nakamichi Dragon
IBM Model M (clicky keyboard)

Not in use
Flight controllers
Mobiles
Computers - Osborne Model 1
Dell CSX laptop
PDAs - MicroBat
TiVo Model 1
Auto Request
Gateway P5 1.5
HiQ 386 PC
Software Toolworks MIRacle keyboard

Gave away
flight rudders
digicams

Stuff from childhood
Pong, Simon,

Site Retrothing

Don't have anymore, wish i did Apple II

Favorite old gadget
Slimp3 - just stopped using
wife - Palm V

Tom

TI99 4/A
Commodore 64
Timex Sinclair 1000
IBM PS/2 30286
Sega Genesis
Slide Rule

At home
HP 700 MHz with Win 98
Dell Windows XP 1.2 GHz
Gateway 3 GHz 1 Terabyte Windows Media Center
Mac Pro
ThinkPad T42
Dell Inspiron
MacBook
MacBook Pro
Popcorn Hour
Xbox 360
Nintendo Wii
Apple TV (hacked)
Slingbox
Roku Netflix Player
Realistic Dual Cassette
Pioneer CD player (circa 1987)
Pansonic Viera 52
Samsung 32
Bose Virtual Surround
Linksys W60
Panasonic VHS-DVD-R combo
DirecTV DVR
DirecTV TiVo
2 Motorola Razrs
LG flip phone
About a dozen Intel Digicams
Canon Digital Camera
Linksys Wireless WebCam
Canon MP500 inkjet

Comments on gadget inventory

erier2003 http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7808_102-0.html


What is considered old in the gadget universe? Is it like dog years? Well my favourite OLD gadget would probably be my Sony Clie (Palm PDA). It has a lot of great games that were freely available for the Palm OS. I still use it occasionally and my kids love it. I continue to use my Dell Axim PDA daily. It had a touch-screen long before the iPhone. I use it for spreadsheets, lists, videos... it even does copy & paste!

Loving the show, George Ajax, Ontario, Canada

Comments on syndication overload

Socialthing may be the answer to your social network overload. SocialThing aggregates your friend's activity on Delicious, Facebook, Flickr, Pownce, Twitter, Brightkite, or Seesmic. You can also interact with some of the updates. For example, you can reply to a Twitter or Pownce update or see other Pownce replies. Unlike FriendFeed the replies don't stay within SocialThing, they are posted to the actual social network. They also have a Post function, where you can enter your message and send it to Facebook, Twitter, Pownce or Ping.fm. Unfortunately they don't support a lot of services, and are fairly slow to add new ones. They were recently acquired by AOL and are invite only, but I've got 7 to give away at http://blog.pb30.com/invites/

Another option would be to use FriendFeed and create imaginary contacts for all your friends. Then FriendFeed will import all their activity and you'd have one place to read content.

-pb30

General comments

Yeah, I love TinyXP. No, you don't need a product key. It's either slipstreamed into the configuration file, or cracked. Either way, it installs with out asking and runs without nagging. I'm not sure how it handles authorization. I haven't installed Genuine "Advantage" or WMP11 or IE7. Not that I would want to. The thought of running IE7 on 64MB of RAM is pretty scary...

Tony


Next episode - Gadget disposal

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