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Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#191

Post by tluyben2 »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #181
hoof_marks wrote: post #101

Windows XP and its search feature- Win7 above does not have it. Yahoo Geocities- simply miss it. and also Yahoo in general. My current yahoo mail is chock a block with spam mails. plus their ads. Xerox Ventura desktop publishing software- that was cool when book publishing was required. Motorola T90/91 basic mobile phone. superb and handiest phone used. Current Moto is smart but not unbeatable. Most importantly old B…

What's wrong with your tap water? Don't they have the same safety standards to meet? UK tap water is great (Well, outside of Greater London where it's basically limestone slurry). I've never bought bottled or filtered aside from the brief time I was in London. At least two brands of UK bottled water were bottling northern tap water and selling it. Business idea I wish I had thought of!

Dutch tap water is great too. Joy to drink.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#192

Post by rcarmo »

jl6 wrote: post #180
rcarmo wrote: post #177

The Psion Series 3 handhelds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3 A (tiny, but) usable, physical keyboard on a device that lasted _ages_, fit into a suit pocket and was eminently practical. The age of the PDA is long gone (heck, I'm typing this on an iPad mini), but we still haven't caught up with some of its best bits.

I saw someone using a 5mx on a train a month ago. It was still fully functional and he was perfectly happy with his 96MB CompactFlash card.

I never owned a 5, much to my regret. I switched from a 3a to a PalmPilot (which by itself deserves another entry in this list), but often wished I'd stuck with Psion.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#193

Post by carlesfe »

thirdreplicator wrote: post #71

ICQ

Funny how ICQ was, what, 20 years early to the IM revolution?

Slack nowadays is a mixture of IRC and ICQ. It was wonderful to be able to talk for free (well, paying dialup minutes) with the 3 friends you might had online, plus that guy on the other side of the world who you met through an ICQ number on a website :_)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#194

Post by anexprogrammer »

rcarmo wrote: post #177

The Psion Series 3 handhelds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3 A (tiny, but) usable, physical keyboard on a device that lasted _ages_, fit into a suit pocket and was eminently practical. The age of the PDA is long gone (heck, I'm typing this on an iPad mini), but we still haven't caught up with some of its best bits.

Oh heck, you remind me of my psion 5. It was brilliant, and the tiny keyboard was good enough to touch type on. Battery life in weeks. Someone bung a modern screen on that form-factor please.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#195

Post by mrlyc »

PC Outline. It's a DOS-based outliner. In 1986, my manager said "Here, you're organised. You'll like this" and he was right - I did. So much so that I bought my own copy. I still use it every day in a DOSBox DOS emulator on Windows 7 and Linux. I use it for passwords, todo and done lists, keeping track of work done for clients, functional decomposition, shopping lists and the steps for configuring and compiling the Linux kernel.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#196

Post by geowwy »

amorphid wrote: post #162
Grue3 wrote: post #151

Google Reader. There are no replacements that a) update fast enough, and b) allow search for free. I know, I tried all of them. Firefox had an amazing plugin called "Ubiquity", which was basically like command line for your browser and you could write custom scripts for it. It was seriously better than anything that exists today. They stopped developing it for some reason. Tab Groups is another feature that's now aba…

Have you tried Digg's RSS reader? I've been using it a bit lately, and like it well enough. http://digg.com/reader .

I don't think Digg Reader does search. Digg is good though, it's what I use.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#197

Post by BjoernKW »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #181
hoof_marks wrote: post #101

Windows XP and its search feature- Win7 above does not have it. Yahoo Geocities- simply miss it. and also Yahoo in general. My current yahoo mail is chock a block with spam mails. plus their ads. Xerox Ventura desktop publishing software- that was cool when book publishing was required. Motorola T90/91 basic mobile phone. superb and handiest phone used. Current Moto is smart but not unbeatable. Most importantly old B…

What's wrong with your tap water? Don't they have the same safety standards to meet? UK tap water is great (Well, outside of Greater London where it's basically limestone slurry). I've never bought bottled or filtered aside from the brief time I was in London. At least two brands of UK bottled water were bottling northern tap water and selling it. Business idea I wish I had thought of!

If I'm not mistaken he's talking about India. It's common advice (for travellers at least) to only drink bottled water in India.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#198

Post by MindTwister »

Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan

I have no idea why they made it wireless, it ate batteries like crazy, but its still the best trackball I've ever owned.

Having the ball at your middle and ring finger gave better control than the thumb driven ones.

You can still get it on places like amazon, but at a ridiculous price, 10-20 times what it originally retailed for.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#199

Post by 4ad »

Film cameras, they certainly still exist, but very few people use them anymore. And the ones still manufactured are either marketed as jewellery, or are crazy expensive.

My 100-50 year old family photos are sharper and better than pictures taken today with phones and cheap cameras. And expensive cameras are expensive and heavy.

At first I was very happy when the so called mirrorless camera appeared, but I was just too optimistic; the good ones are more expensive than an average DSLR, and lenses are still too big. Not to mention that they are full of bullshit software that will stop working in the future and batteries last a day or less. My DSLR battery lasts weeks/months and my film cameras (the ones that need a battery, most don't) last for many years.

Laptops with 4:3 (or 5:4) screens. For large screens (over 27''), I don't care as much about the aspect ratio, but for small screens is matters a lot. I'm looking forward to the ThinkPad Retro, but it will probably be a non-interesting heavy brick. We'll see.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#200

Post by rcarmo »

Graffiti on Palm handhelds. I owned the original PalmPilot and a couple of other models up to the Vx, and can still write Graffiti faster than I can type on a touch screen.

Discounting the Newton (which I tested but didn't own), there still isn't anything else that even came close in terms of practical "handwriting", and even though there's an Android keyboard that does Graffiti, ACCESS is sitting on the IP and has done nothing with it.

I'd forego a non-critical bit of my anatomy to have Graffiti on iOS with a decent stylus. Not even the MyScript keyboards come close.

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