How old is your computer?

[ColinEssex]

Actually, the "CD" player (DVD player) has the same resolution as an HD display on a PC. But since DVD movies became a "thing" there have been two upgrades - Blue Ray and 4K (a.k.a. Ultra). The 4K resolution is almost the same as the digital projectors in movie theaters. The TV sets now include up to 4K resolution. I have one because my "man cave" TV finally started to REALLY show its age by having image anomalies associated with LCD screens - persistent blue dots because the liquid crystals were starting to degrade. So there was a sale and I bought an LED 4K Smart TV. The nicest part about it being smart is that if I load up one of my DVDs, Blue-Rays, or 4K movie disks to the "plays everything" player, it automatically switches to that particular input. And when I turn off that player, it switches back to the cable input. Supposedly it will handle streaming services but we don't nave that at the moment.

Sorry Doc, you may as well have written that in Mongolian - didn't understand a thing. I like playing my vinyl albums on my record player, although I am quite modern in that I use Spotify to play guitar to backing tracks. My video tape recorder is a modern Panasonic one from the 1990's.
Most of the stuff in our house dates from the 1970's like crockery or saucepans that were wedding presents from 1972.
Col

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Sorry Doc, you may as well have written that in Mongolian

Col, I don't speak Mongolian. But I DO like Mongolian Stir Fry at one of the local Chinese Restaurants. Does that qualify?

The response you mentioned was

I understand you can buy films on CD nowadays but haven't got a CD player.

These days, you have a near bewildering set of choices for media. I was writing in English and yet I can see that it might be hard to follow. I'm pretty sure that if I tried to play one of the newer video-disk formats on my old PC, it wouldn't play correctly.

 

[Isaac]

My video tape recorder is a modern Panasonic one from the 1990's

I love tape recorders, recently got my parents one so they can listen to their old cassette tapes.

 

[AccessBlaster]

My computer is a six-year-old HP Laptop 17" AMD Ryzen 3 3300U, 12GB of RAM, running Win 11 home 23H2.
I have bought a few HP laptops over the years.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

AB, I had an HP Pavilion that lasted 15 years before the HDD died, and it started to throw errors early enough before its final death that I got a good backup of my files. The part of the disk that died must have contained the O/S because I got all my files. I liked HP equipment except when they started moving their printers to cartridges that are too small and too expensive. I'm now using an Epson with the Eco-tank system. The ink bottles aren't cheap but they don't die on you after a month or two of printing.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Doc, my HP came with a Toshiba 930GB HDD. I've pondered converting it to an SSD, but I'm pretty sure the SSD slot is outdated. So I'll probably wait until it gives up the ghost, a new HP will have a next-gen SSD.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Actually, my SSD went into an ATA slot, if I recall correctly. The manufacturer had several product lines including ATA, SCSI, and Fiber-channel compatible interfaces. I had ATA. No problem.

 

[GaP42]

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad - replaced a Dell laptop last year..: CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 5825U, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD with an external 2Tb HDD.

 

[jpl458]

I'm using a late 2012 27" iMac, a HP Spectre x360 i7 (I replaced the screen and battery), and an iPad model which came out 3 years ago. I'm holding out for a Mac Mini with an M4 chip which may come out late this year or early next year. Also, the new ARM based Windows PC's that will be coming out soon are interesting. Lower power consumption and faster, much like the Mac's M series chips.

Oh, and I have 3 monitors: iMac 27" screen and two 23" Dell screens either side.

I5 Processor 1.5 Terabytes of disk, 32 GB ram, 64 bit operating system, plus 1 gig internet, 3 24 inch monitors and 1 32 in curved monitor.

 

[DickyP]

Just realised I've also got an Acer Aspire 1825 laptop running Win 7 I've had since before about 2008, when I retired. Still running Office (including Access 2003) quite happily. Don't refer to it often, but when I do it works (albeit slowly) perfectly.

Was highly innovative when I bought it as it had a touch screen long before such things were mainstream.

 

[Pat Hartman]

This Gateway works better than a brand new Dell that my company sent me.

I didn't know Gateway was still in business. They were the bomb back in the 80's.

Doesn't have USB 3 though.

I was really sorry I didn't buy an external floppy drive when they switched media types. Once I noticed that desktops were not coming with internal CD players, I bought an external drive.

My oldest computer died recently. It was eleven. I removed the HD and gave it a decent burial. I have a device that you can pop in a HD and read it on another computer so if the computer died because something on the motherboard gave out, I keep the HD and use the HD holder device to copy the data and put them away in case I missed something important.

 

[murphybridget]

It's cool that you're mixing it up with Spotify for your guitar practice though!

Sorry Doc, you may as well have written that in Mongolian - didn't understand a thing. I like playing my vinyl albums on my record player, although I am quite modern in that I use Spotify to play guitar to backing tracks. My video tape recorder is a modern Panasonic one from the 1990's.
Most of the stuff in our house dates from the 1970's like crockery or saucepans that were wedding presents from 1972.
Col

 

[DickyP]

I was really sorry I didn't buy an external floppy drive when they switched media types. Once I noticed that desktops were not coming with internal CD players, I bought an external drive.

Floppy Derives are still available - there's a huge selection on Amazon.

 

[ColinEssex]

It's cool that you're mixing it up with Spotify for your guitar practice though!

Yes, Spotify is a wonderful invention, whatever your music taste - its there. It's certainly better than arguing over stupid politics.

Actually, I feel quite 'modern' using it. Having turned my back on computers and databases etc. I seem to have reverted to life of 50 years ago, it's much better for what they now call 'wellbeing'. I never listen to modern music, a friend told me about Taylor Swift, I gather she is popular at the moment, I wouldn't know her if I fell over her, I always have 60's or 70' music on radio. Even my TV has a remote control, that's cool, I don't have to get up to change channels. I do have a microwave oven, that is brilliant, so clever. I did have an electric tin opener but binned it as it broke, I now use my trusty 1960's hand held tin opener.
I just laugh at the stupid posts here about USA politics. It seems people here are having a nervous breakdown over it. Who cares? What will be will be.
Col

 

[murphybridget]

Yes, Spotify is a wonderful invention, whatever your music taste - its there. It's certainly better than arguing over stupid politics.

Actually, I feel quite 'modern' using it. Having turned my back on computers and databases etc. I seem to have reverted to life of 50 years ago, it's much better for what they now call 'wellbeing'. I never listen to modern music, a friend told me about Taylor Swift, I gather she is popular at the moment, I wouldn't know her if I fell over her, I always have 60's or 70' music on radio. Even my TV has a remote control, that's cool, I don't have to get up to change channels. I do have a microwave oven, that is brilliant, so clever. I did have an electric tin opener but binned it as it broke, I now use my trusty 1960's hand held tin opener.
I just laugh at the stupid posts here about USA politics. It seems people here are having a nervous breakdown over it. Who cares? What will be will be.
Col

I certainly believe some tools, practices are done in the old fashioned way. For me I really enjoy older guitar tunes specially 80's ones.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Since this thread started, my Dell XPS 3900 has shown its death wish. The disk controller was throwing not only controller errors but what I take to be head-touch errors. (Shows up in the error logs.) I got a good backup of my critical files because I keep them in a particular area. Had to get a new beast, which turned out to be cheaper than the Dell was 16 years ago. Yep, said that right... 2008 was the first real boot-up for my old beast. Its replacement is up now and I'm nearly done with decommissioning the old one. I'm going to give it one last try to get some game save files, more as an experiment than anything else. But the XPS shows all four symptoms of an SSD taking the plunge. No machine lasts forever, but if you take reasonable care with them, they can last a long time.

 

[ColinEssex]

I certainly believe some tools, practices are done in the old fashioned way. For me I really enjoy older guitar tunes specially 80's ones.

I'm afraid the 1980's is a bit too modern for me. I'm more the 1950's and 60's when I was a teenager.
Col

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I'm afraid the 1980's is a bit too modern for me. I'm more the 1950's and 60's when I was a teenager.
Col

I'm fairly ecumenical in my musical tastes. There are only three musical genres that I don't allow in the house. I've got no use for angry "gangsta" rap. (But Will Smith in his early years did some amusing rap that I can tolerate.) I don't allow super-heavy-metal extreme rock in the house. My ears don't tolerate that. I'm thinking of some of the stuff by the band GWAR as an example. And finally, when we get to "howlin'-dawg" country laments, if it is extreme to the point that I want to howl at the moon, it is too far over the top.

 

[Isaac]

I'm fairly ecumenical in my musical tastes. There are only three musical genres that I don't allow in the house. I've got no use for angry "gangsta" rap. (But Will Smith in his early years did some amusing rap that I can tolerate.) I don't allow super-heavy-metal extreme rock in the house. My ears don't tolerate that. I'm thinking of some of the stuff by the band GWAR as an example. And finally, when we get to "howlin'-dawg" country laments, if it is extreme to the point that I want to howl at the moon, it is too far over the top.

When I was a very young lad, and still worried about trying to be "cool", I used to listen to LL Cool J and Coolio. (thinking if Coolio's not cool, who is?)
However one group I listened to, but still actually think some of their songs are good, was Bone Thugs In Harmony. Loved their sardonic song, "First of the Month"

 

[ColinEssex]

Doc, I agree with your first two selections - to quote George Harrison 'rap is crap'. But I do like country music, to clarify, not the old 'yee-ha' stuff of Tex Ritter or Slim Whitman. I prefer 'modern' country music like Garth Brooks, Sawyer Brown, Crystal Gale, Reba McEntire or Pam Tillis etc. There have been so many good country stars over the last 50 or so years.
Col