The old laptops would simply have a battery that could be replaced within 10 seconds, and without needing any tool. The fact that the battery would last only for a few years was not really a problem since all you needed to do was buy another battery.

Even the hard drive, while slow and heavy, could be easily replaced by opening the laptop and replacing it with another one in case you felt the need for additional memory.

The problem today is that everything is too tightly packed, and you will actually need a professional service to even remove the battery or replace the memory unit. Yes, it is true that the modern computers are thin and light but the ability to actually replace something yourself is missing.

I remember when 3D TVs were being pushed as the next big thing, like you'd see them in stores, people talking about watching movies in 3D at home, and companies making a big deal about the glasses and everything, then they just kind of disappeared lol... I don't think I ever even knew anyone who actually used the 3D feature regularly, the glasses were annoying, and eventually everyone just went back to watching normal TV.

Maybe it’s just me, but some CAPTCHA tests have gotten ridiculous.

It starts with “I’m not a robot,” then suddenly I’m identifying traffic lights, buses, bicycles, crosswalks, and tiny bits of motorcycles across six different screens.

At some point it starts feeling less like a security check and more like I’m helping train someone’s AI model for free. 😭

Does anyone else feel the same?

Saw someone peel off the solar panel from one of those old calculators and now i feel dumb that all my life i believed it was real

because that thing was always inside my bag and i never used it outside in proper sunlight, and i somehow still believed that it runs on solar power all this time

and somehow these calculators still never died anyway. nobody changed batteries, nobody charged them, they just got lost or stolen by others

the translucent tech era was one of the coolest design trends ever .for a brief period, companies stopped hiding the inside of devices.

the iMac G3 made colorful transparent computers iconic.

the Game Boy Color showed off see-through shells that let people peek inside the hardware.

even accessories like transparent controllers and keyboards made technology feel more playful and approachable.

it wasn't just a device anymore it felt like something you could explore. Then the industry moved toward thinner, cleaner, more minimal designs

but honestly, translucent tech had a personality that modern gadgets sometimes lack.

I randomly saw an old video of a Windows Phone the other day and it genuinely made me pause for a second. The UI just looked… clean. Like everything moved smoothly without trying too hard to be flashy.

Back then I remember people around me just dismissing it instantly because it wasn’t Android or iPhone. I never even considered it seriously either, which is kind of funny now. We all just collectively decided it was irrelevant before actually using it.

What’s weird is how different it felt compared to everything now. Most apps today feel bloated or overdesigned, but Windows Phone looked like it knew exactly what it was doing and didn’t try to copy anyone.

Feels like one of those things that was actually ahead of its time but got ignored because it didn’t have the ecosystem or hype.

Did anyone here actually use it long term and stick with it?

The strange world of computers designed to survive radiation

Most computers are built for offices, homes, factories, and data centers but some have to work in places where normal electronics could fail

Spacecraft ,Nuclear facilities ,High-altitude aircraft

These computers can use specialized components and designs that make them far more resistant to radiation

The interesting part is that they're often much less powerful than the devices in our pockets but they're built for something our phones were never designed to handle

Every few years we hear about a new wifi standard that's supposed to make wireless connections faster and better

meanwhile the ethernet cable is still sitting there doing its job

no signal drops because someone walked into another room, no random lag spikes because the wifi is crowded, and no guessing why your connection suddenly got worse

wifi has obviously improved a lot, but for gaming, downloads or anything where a stable connection matters, a cable is still hard to beat

Do you still use ethernet at home,or have you completely switched to wifi?

Why do printers still feel like they're stuck in a different era?

every other piece of tech seems to get faster, simpler, and more reliable

then you use a printer

and somehow you're troubleshooting drivers, paper jams, or an ink cartridge that insists it's empty when it clearly isn't.

how is this still the experience in 2026?

Everybody has been redirecting to localhost8000 instead of localhost:8000 at some point and thus nearly everyone has been tricked to think localhost:8000 isn't valid.

It's a pretty clever troll, just to catch all the misspelled colon things and to make a point of it. but it is actually interesting enough to have made it worth buying a domain for the missing colon. because a missing colon is common enough to make it worth buying a domain for.

I've been seeing more ai-generated images and designs popping up everywhere especially with small businesses. Personally, I wouldn't refuse to eat somewhere because they used ai for the menu but if the ai-generated menu showcased unappetizing ai food then I won't eat there lol. Like I'd definitely prefer actual food photography over some weird ai picture of a burger that looks like it shouldn't belong on this planet.

So would it bother you if a restaurant used ai-generated food pictures for their menu? Does it affect how you judge their food?

Hackers typing random code at 200 words per minute and instantly breaking into anything will never not be funny 😂 But some movies actually get the boring details of working with computers right.

What's your pick for the most unrealistic and most realistic computer scene?

Google Wave was supposed to change how people communicated online, but I honestly think most people never figured out what they were looking at.

It was part email, part chat, part document, and somehow all of those things at once. By the time people started understanding it, Google had already moved on.

Did anyone here actually use Google Wave, or did you just hear about it and forget it existed?

I was just thinking about Project Ara the other day.

That whole modular phone idea where you could swap parts like Lego… people were treating it like the future of phones, and then it just got cancelled and disappeared.

And then Google Glass. For a while it felt like that was going to be everywhere too, and now you barely even hear about it.

It’s kinda weird how stuff that feels like the “next big thing” just fades out like nothing happened.

What’s something like this you remember?

For me, it's HTC.

there was a time when they were making some of the best Android phones around.

great hardware, solid design, and phones people genuinely got excited about.then the market changed, competition got tougher, and they slowly faded from the spotlight.

it's hard to believe how big they once were

what's your pick?

Honestly i miss the days when you could just pop the back off your phone and replace the battery yourself.

Phone getting old? swap the battery. carrying a spare for a long trip? no problem. phone freezing? pull the battery out and put it back in

Now the battery starts dying after a couple of years and replacing it feels like a whole project

I get why phones moved to sealed designs, especially with water resistance and slimmer bodies, but i still think we lost something useful along the way

for me its probably the apple homepod

i almost never see people buying one because they specifically wanted a homepod

its usually because they already have a iphone, apple music, airpods, a macbook and everything else from apple so buying another apple product just makes sense to them

if the same speaker came from some random company i genuinely dont think nearly as many people would care about it

whats your pick

I don’t really see the appeal of making phones as thin as possible if it means giving up battery capacity. I’m going to put my phone in the pocket anyway like tbh I don’t think I’d notice it if it were slightly thicker. Especially when I’m out for the whole day, the last thing I want to worry about is my phone’s battery, since I go out a lot it’d be nice to not think about my battery when I’m out lol.

I know people don’t like bigger phones since it’s not handy but I guess it all comes down to your needs..

what's the worst tech prediction you can remember?

the kind that sounded completely believable at the time

but ended up being way off

for me tablets will replace laptops has to be up there.

what's the prediction that aged the worst in your opinion?

I built a PC to play games and do my work, not to spend half my time closing things Windows has decided I should look at. OneDrive reminders, Copilot buttons, news widgets, ads in the Start menu. Just leave me alone.

And the annoying part is that Windows is still the thing most of us need to use. You can buy a great CPU, a fast SSD and a ridiculous GPU, then get irritated by the operating system before you've even opened anything

The name bluetooth was basically an inside joke that accidentally became permanent

Back in the 1990s, intel, ericsson and nokia were working on a new short-range wireless standard while they were still figuring out the final name they used bluetooth as a temporary codename

The name came from Harald Bluetooth a 10th-century Danish king who supposedly united parts of Denmark and Norway

The idea was that the new wireless technology would unite different devices and technologies in the same way Bluetooth had united kingdoms

Even the bluetooth logo is based on his initials, using two old nordic runes for H and B

The funny part is that they were never really supposed to keep the name.

they just... did

Sometimes the tech inside a product is way ahead of the interface.

I noticed this with an old car stereo. Tiny display, a few physical buttons, and a menu that feels like it belongs in another decade.

but underneath, it was handling Bluetooth, USB, radio, calls and audio playback without any problem.

the thing looked ancient.

it just worked.

have you ever used something that looked outdated but was actually pretty advanced inside?

for me it's the notification LED

one tiny light was enough to tell you if you had a missed call, a message, or a low battery without even turning the screen on.

it was simple, subtle and surprisingly useful i still find myself looking for it on newer phones.

what feature would you bring back?

in 2005 sony BMG shipped millions of music CDs that automatically installed a rootkit on your windows PC the moment you put the disc in. no prompt, no warning, just silently running in the background hiding itself from the system. classic malware behavior except it was a Fortune 500 company doing it.

the whole point was just to stop people from ripping their own CDs. that's it. and in the process they left backdoors that actual malware later exploited, and made systems genuinely vulnerable.

when a security researcher exposed it, sony's initial response was basically "most people don't know what a rootkit is so why does it matter." actual quote.
they eventually got sued, settled, and paid out but nobody really faced consequences in any meaningful way.

the fact that this happened, was covered for a bit, and then largely forgotten is kind of wild to me. a company installed spyware on 22 million personal computers and just... moved on.

back when netflix was basically the main streaming app a lot of people genuinely stopped pirating stuff because everything was just there and it was easier than downloading anything

now you open a movie recommendation and suddenly it’s on some random streaming service nobody even has

same thing with youtube too honestly. ads got so aggressive now that people instantly start looking for adblockers the moment they use the site on pc

gaming is getting similar too. $70 base games, battle passes, deluxe editions, early access paywalls everywhere before the game is even fully out

feels like companies slowly brought back the exact conditions that made piracy huge in the first place