technology

... this weekend, we bought a new printer.  This new printer is all wireless, can surf the net right from it, has pretty colors, and will probably cook dinner if I can figure out how to program it. 

And it brought back a flood of technology memories. 

Our first computer, the one for which we had to take out a loan, was a screaming machine - a 386 clone with 4 mb of RAM.  (megabytes not gigabytes, for the record) and an $800 printer that printed in black and white a rocking 8 pages a minute AND it printed envelopes.  We had a 28,8 baud modem. And we had advanced to 3 1/2 inch floppy discs.  Just wow. 

Fast forward a few years and this printer?  Dang, this is faster than my first machine.  I can surf on it.  Print pictures from facebook to the printer.  All wireless.  In preparing for the new printer, I sorted through some older stuff ... culling the old to make way for the new.  Throwing away a 512k SD card, a card that can't hold even ONE picture taken from any of my Nikon cameras. 

It's crazy how much technology has improved in the last few years. I love it all. But I am holding on to one piece of older technology, not quite ready to jettison my iPod Classic. 

A recent article on the relevance of the iPod classic caught my attention.  While I appreciate Apple's decision to move away from the classic, I disagree.  I love my iPod classic - I love it because I have over 60 gbs of music, a slew of audio books, and a gazillion podcasts.  Doesn't need the internet or wireless and should I happen to be somewhere without wifi, a cell signal, or Sirius XM, I have a solid backup.   Should cable go down and I lose Pandora, I have enough Brian Eno or George Winston or Joy Division to last the evening.  This is one piece of technology that I will hang on to for quite some time. 

A few steps forward and loving all the new and one toe still solidly planted in 2007.  It works.