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I read an article last night called “Gadgets You Should Get Rid Of (or Not).”  It was about electronic items the author felt were obsolete, and electronic items he felt were old but still useful.  I took issue with several of the author’s points, and proclaimed the article one of the stupidest I have ever read.  Here’s a link to it on Yahoo.

I will go through and refute some of the author’s points.

Desktop computer.  The writer says you should ditch it.  As someone who built a $1600 beast of a desktop, I will disagree.  Laptops cost more than desktops, when performance is equal.  Laptops also make hardware upgrades difficult.  My desktop has six slots available for RAM.  I can install up to 24GB of RAM.  Laptops often only have two slots for RAM.  I can upgrade my graphics card if I want.  In fact, I can run two graphics cards, maybe even 3.  I have eight SATA connectors on my motherboard.  I can install all the hard drives and optical drives I want.  With a laptop, you’re limited to one of each drive.  If you run out of hard drive space on your laptop, you have to remove the old drive and copy everything over to your new bigger drive.  With a desktop, you just add another drive.  My motherboard has several PCIe and PCI slots.  If I decide I want to add an expansion card for USB3 or Thunderbolt, I can.  With a laptop, you’re out of luck.  I have four USB2 and two USB3 ports on my mobo, with one header connecting to two more USB2 ports on my case, with another header that can support two more.  I have eight USB ports at my disposal.  Laptops will have only two to four.

Granted, I cannot carry my desktop, monitor, keyboard, and mouse onto a train to do some work.  When I need mobility, I use my Samsung NC10 netbook.  It’s good for doing Office work, web browsing, some gaming, and light GIS work.  It is best to use the right tool for the job.  I need power, so I do most of my computing on desktops.  When I need mobility, I go with the 10.1″ 2.8lb netbook.  Smaller and lighter than most laptops.  The right tool for the job.  I bet if you ask laptop owners how often they use their computer away from home, 80% will say never.  Unless they purchase a separate keyboard, mouse, and monitor, they are missing out on a full-sized powerful computing experience.  I should note that I edit photos and video, work with very large databases and aerial photos, and play a few games.  I actually do need a powerful desktop.  Someone who only surfs the web could get away with using a $500 laptop.

High speed internet at home.  The author says keep it.  I agree with the author.  I guess some people are moving to MiFi or tethering their smartphone to their computer.  My AT&T DSL account has a 150GB monthly bandwidth cap.  I have averaged 7GB of bandwidth usage during each of the last three months.  I’m in no danger of hitting the cap.  On the other hand, the mobile hotspot and tethering plans have much lower bandwidth caps.  Wireless broadband is expensive, to begin with.  I spend $28/mo for 1.5Mb DSL.  These wireless plans start around $50.

Cable TV.  The author says it depends.  I kind of agree.  Sports fans cannot ditch cable for Hulu/Netflix/Antenna.  Coverage of some sports is offered through online streaming, but not many sports allow streaming.  I looked at the cost of buying episodes of shows online, and it was not cheap.  Some shows were like $2/episode, but there were some shows that were charging $60 for a season.  I’m not paying $60 to watch one season of MythBusters.  As someone who watches a lot of TV, I would have to buy a lot of episodes of shows.  If you’re someone who only watches five shows, you may be able to get away with watching online.  You should also have good bandwidth if you’re going to rely on online video.  My 1.5Mb connection is barely adequate.  Sometimes I have to watch a show online because my VCR was busy taping something else.  I hate commercials in online TV because they don’t buffer.  The ad is jerky and takes a long time to load, so a 30 second commercial break could stretch into a minute.  I wish the networks would sense the bandwidth and give us people with slow internet fewer or shorter commercials.

Point and shoot camera.  The author says to lose it.  Man, oh man.  Where do I begin?  Let’s start with this ridiculous quote: “Yes, a dedicated camera will probably take a better picture than the small lens and image sensor of a smartphone, but it will not be that much better.”  Not that much better?  Wow.  Every photo I have ever taken with a cell phone was either blurry or had awful white balance.  I did a test today, comparing the camera on my iPod touch 4G, BlackBerry Curve 8530, and my Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS.  I didn’t have my big kahuna PowerShot S5 IS with me and I forgot to test the camera on my Samsung Stride SCH-R330 (it’s awful).

In the first test, I photographed a sculpture outside a library.  There were a lot of textures – metal, stone, tree bark.  I was under a cloudy sky.  A decent test of the cameras.  The BlackBerry was set at max resolution, 1600×1200.  It was also set for defaults with auto-white balance and no effects.  The iPod touch was set for defaults, with a max resolution of 960×720.  I did tap the screen to set the exposure.  As far as I can tell, there are no white balance or effects settings in the standard Camera app.  Lastly, I had my PowerShot SD1100 set for manual mode, which allowed me to use the Cloudy white balance setting.  All photos were taken from the same position.  The focal length of the lenses resulted in different amounts of scenery being captured.  The PowerShot was the best by far, picking up on all the textures and showing the warmest colors.

Taken with Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS

 

The iPod looked OK, but was slightly out of focus and the colors were a bit pale.  Not a camera you would want to use for a photo you have any intention of keeping.  But not bad if you had no intention of ever viewing the photo full-size.

Taken with iPod touch 4G

 

The BlackBerry was awful.  The white balance was wrong and everything looked gray.  At full-size, it looked posterized.  You’d swear I had run the photo through one of Photoshop’s Pixelate filters.  The BlackBerry photo was the same resolution as the PowerShot photo.  I guess the BlackBerry has a crappy lens and/or a crappy sensor.

Taken with BlackBerry Curve 8530

I also photographed a mural to see how well the cameras would pick up the colors.  The iPod’s short focal length kept me from capturing as much as I did with the other cameras.  The white balance was funky, but not bad.  It just looked like a photo taken with a crappy camera.  The PowerShot’s photo was excellent.  You could easily make out all the bricks on the wall, white balance was decent (set for Auto this time), and you could read the text on the mural and the cars’ license plates.  Again, the BlackBerry camera was a joke.  There’s text on the mural?  It looks more like brown lines.  That’s a brick wall?  Again, you’d think I ran the photo through some screwy Photoshop filter.

Taken with PowerShot SD1100 IS

Taken with iPod touch 4G

Taken with BlackBerry Curve 8530

The last test was a macro shot.  I photographed the power button on my Prius.  I held each camera above the turn signal stalk to ensure each camera was equidistant from the button when I took each photo.  The PowerShot was put into macro mode.  The iPod photo was slightly better than the BlackBerry photo.  The iPod camera still produced a blurry image, but you could make out some of the texture of the dashboard.  The BlackBerry camera made the dashboard’s texture look more like stripes than the ridges they are.  Of course, the PowerShot won this competition.  The photo was in focus, and you could make out the texture of the power button, which wasn’t visible at all on the other photos.

View all the photos from this test on my Flickr page.

As you can see, a cell phone camera is no replacement for a true camera.  The writer of the article said there were no apps for cameras to applying effects to the photos.  He was likely thinking of Hipstamatic and other similar apps.  Well guess what.  The author is ill-informed.  My PowerShot SD1100 has color accent, color swap, sepia, black and white, vivid, vivid blue/green/red, custom colors, neutral, positive film, light/dark skin tone, macro, portrait, night, snow, beach, fireworks, aquarium, underwater, kids and pets, indoor, sunset, and foliage modes.  Then there are the daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent, and custom white balance modes.  And did I mention I can resize and crop the images on the camera itself?  All this can be done on my little SD1100 Elph.  My S5 has a similar feature set.  Dedicated cameras are not crippled and incapable of applying neat touches to photos.

Then there is the resolution difference.  My BlackBerry is about 2MP resolution.  Both my SD1100 and S5 are 8MP.  The iPhone has a 5MP sensor.  The cameraphones just don’t have enough resolution now.  Even if they were bumped up in megapixels, it would be for naught because they have crap lenses.  Seriously, how can you have a decent lens in a camera module smaller than a pea?

Years from now, I think people will be in for a shock when they feel nostalgic.  A parent will want to look at Tommy’s 2nd birthday pics.  When they pull up the pics, they’ll see blurry pixelated grayish-orange images of their baby boy.  They’ll be disappointed that this occasion has nothing but a blurred mess as a reminder of the occasion.  If something is important enough to take a photo of, do the job right.  Once again, pick the right tool for the job.  My Elph is the size of a pack of playing cards.  Is it really that inconvenient to carry?  This stupid NYT article said people think it’s more convenient to use their cell phone to take pics; they only have to carry one device.  Well, I think a lot of people will be disappointed with the crappy pics they took.  They’ll look good on those little 640×960 3.5″ screens, but they’ll look like crap on a computer screen.  When it’s time to gather the family and reminisce, they’re not going to gather around mom’s Droid or iPhone.  They’re going to gather around the computer, or as my family started doing, gather around the HDTV.  Our Sony has a USB port and slideshow capability for showing photos.

So please don’t throw away your point-and-shoot camera.  It’ll take much better photos than your cell phone, and years from now you’ll be glad you carried an extra few ounces of gadgetry.  If you have an SLR camera, buy decent lenses and learn how to use the thing.  I’m not a photography snob (well, maybe a little), but you need to use the right tool for the job, and use it well.

I am not a fan of gadget convergence.  People with DVD/VCR combos say the VCR is crap.  My standalone VCR kicks butt.  Cell phone cameras are crap.  The BlackBerry isn’t an enjoyable MP3 player.  Cell phones make poor GPS receivers.  And so on.  I would much rather use a standalone device that delivers a high quality user experience and produces a high quality product.

Camcorder.  The author says to ditch the camcorder.  I’m not so sure about that.  My mom shot some decent video with her MiniDV camcorder.  I connected the camera to my PC with Firewire, sucked the video off, did some editing, and put together a nice DVD.  The camcorder has optical zoom, which cell phones and most point-and-shoot digicams don’t have.  My S5 is a high-end point-and-shoot, and is capable of zooming and has stereo microphones.  But my SD1100 cannot zoom when recording video and has a dinky pinhole microphone.  The author mentions SLRs, but not everyone can drop $1000 for a body and a decent lens.  I haven’t used a video-capable SLR, so I don’t know what that user experience or video quality are like.  Flip cameras are (were?) the rage.  Like cell phones, the grip is mediocre and I challenge anyone to hold their phone or Flip steady.  The camcorder has a molded grip, making it easier to hold steadily.  They have a tripod connector.  Maybe Flips do also, but where is the screw hole on my BlackBerry for mounting it on my tripod?  I wouldn’t give up on camcorders just yet.

USB drive.  The author says to get rid of them.  I find this laughable.  Let’s say I have a couple of GBs of music or photos to move from one computer to another.  Am I going to upload all this to “the cloud” at 320kb/s?  That would take days to upload, then hours to download.  I could move it across my network from one PC to the other (if I was able to set up file sharing correctly), but that is a 100Mb/s network.  Let’s copy this stuff to a USB flash drive.  USB2 is theoretically 480Mb/s.  I know actual throughput is less, but it is still faster than 100Mb ethernet and you don’t need to have any networking experience.  Plug in, copy, unplug, plug in, paste.  Easy.  Don’t throw away your flash drives.  Almost everybody I know who has a computer has a flash drive, and they use them.  DVD drives on computers are going away (a mistake in my opinion), but you know what Apple uses as a restore medium for their MacBook Air?  A USB flash drive.

Digital music player.  The author says to get rid of it.  He claims a smartphone can take its place.  Sorry, but my iPod touch, Rio Chiba, and Sansa e260 blow away the music functions on the cell phones I have used.  The last BlackBerry I had, the Curve 8330, wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either.  A person with an iPhone would have a decent music experience, but otherwise, I suggest using your MP3 player for the best user experience and sound quality.  Again, how much is a little piece of plastic going to weigh you down or clutter your bag?

Alarm clock.  Now the author comes to his senses.  He says to keep it.  The iOS alarm clock problems are well-documented.  Those ticking Baby Ben alarm clocks use no electricity, so you aren’t screwed if you lose electricity and there is no battery to deplete like on a cell phone.  I use a digital alarm clock as my primary alarm.  Most have an unreliable 9V battery backup.  The alarm setting switch wears out in a few years.  I use my wrist watch as my secondary alarm.  There are people who don’t wear watches anymore, relying on their cell phone instead.  I’d rather look at my wrist than dig into my pocket or fiddle with my belt clip to see the time on the phone.  I use my iPod touch as my tertiary alarm.

GPS receiver.  The author advocates using a smartphone for GPS navigation.  It shouldn’t have taken me this long to say this, but NOT EVERYONE HAS A SMARTPHONE!  I wouldn’t have one either, if it wasn’t for my office.  The BlackBerry is not mine.  It’s for business, and it’s not mine, so I don’t rely on it for personal stuff.  I don’t want to pay/cannot afford $75/mo for a smartphone package.  I have no problem dropping $200 on a smartphone.  It’s that monthly service I cannot swing.  So people without smartphones cannot use their phone for navigation.  They need the standalone GPSr.  Likewise, there are people who have cell phones without cameras.  If I could have chosen a phone without a camera, I would have, but my carrier didn’t offer one.  (I carry two cell phones – the BlackBerry for work and the Samsung flip phone for my whopping seven minutes of personal calls I make each month.)

With that out of the way, GPS will eat up your smartphone battery.  It has the strain of drawing and refreshing the map, as well as the additional processing of the GPS signals (probably negligible, but still measurable).  What do you do if you’re out of cellular coverage?  Those phones stream the maps over the air.  Some apps are smart enough to cache maps of the surrounding area in case of cellular signal loss, but not all apps do this.  Some carriers have a monthly fee for GPS service and driving directions.  If you buy a standalone GPS receiver, you have no monthly fees.  Garmin makes many models with free lifetime maps and/or free lifetime traffic.  I picked up a Garmin nuvi 1450LMT for $150 on Black Friday last year.  I will get free quarterly map updates and free traffic data (admittedly poor-quality) for the life of the device.  No monthly fees.  I don’t have to worry about not having a map available when I’m in the boonies and out of cellular coverage.  I don’t have to worry about dropping my phone on the parking lot and destroying my phone/MP3 player/camera/GPS receiver all in one shot.  I almost forgot to mention the teeny-weenie screen cell phones have.  The iPhone 4 has a 3.5″ screen.  Some phones have a bigger screen.  However, most new GPS receivers have a 4.3″ widescreen and my new nuvi sports a 5″ widescreen.  Easy to see, easy to enter info and interface with the device.

For the utmost in reliability and usability, get yourself a standalone GPS receiver with lifetime maps.  A colleague at work bought one last week for $130.

Books.  The author says to keep them, with one exception (cookbooks).  He writes:

Yes, e-readers are amazing, and yes, they will probably become a more dominant reading platform over time, but consider this about a book: It has a terrific, high-resolution display. It is pretty durable; you could get it a little wet and all would not be lost. It has tremendous battery life. It is often inexpensive enough that, if you misplaced it, you would not be too upset. You can even borrow them free at sites called libraries.

I’m not a fan of e-readers.  I’ve played with the Kindle and the iPad.  iPad is too heavy and has glare issues.  Kindle should have a touchscreen.  eBooks are not much cheaper than their printed brethren.  At least with a printed book, I have something to show for my money, not just some 0s and 1s reconstituted into pixels on a screen.  As stated by the author, you’re screwed if you drop your e-reader or get it wet.  And there isn’t much of an architecture for sharing books or checking them out yet.  I can easily share a printed book with a friend.  With an e-book, there is DRM and format/file type issues to contend with.  I say you should keep your books and continue buying them.  The cookbook thing is understandable.  Easy/cheaper to show color pics on an iPad than to print them on a glossy page.  I wouldn’t want to get spaghetti sauce on an iPad though.  There’s also that sharing issue.  Scan/photocopy a printed recipe.  How do you get a recipe from your iPad to your friend?

So there’s my view of current and supposedly obsolete technology.  Forgive my typos – I don’t write as well after midnight.