Joe on technology toys

I've mentioned, in previous posts, the coolness factor of these new technology toys. I do realize that those in their twenties and younger have always had fancy computers, cell phones, CD's, and the like, but I started playing with computers when the "cutting edge" was magnetic tape drive units. I have even seen punch card readers in active use in the data processing center of a major worldwide manufacturer. SO, when I see the power in these tiny pocket devices, I am duly impressed.

I bought this Droid X phone to use on sabbatical, because I wanted the ability, at ANY time, to find things like food, gas, campgrounds, groceries, points of local interest, etc. Over the course of two months traveling around the country, I sort of integrated the device into my way of thinking. I am still staggered by the power of this thing! Time and time again, I just pick it up, hit the little microphone icon, and ask for what I want...and it just GIVES it to me! I can say, "Acme", and it pulls up the closest Acme store with address and the whole bit, along with a little touch button that will immediately dial the store! (I know, I keep using exclamation points, but this kind of power REALLY excites the kid in me)

Still, having used it over and over, I forget that I am walking around with a powerful computer in my pocket. I was looking for a glass shop in Akron, as Kristen (my elder son Cory's S.O.) had asked me to help her repair their front porch light. The guy at Home Depot, who told me that they don't cut glass (that's a story unto itself...why on EARTH would a store like that not cut glass????), sent me in the direction of the glass shop on N. Main street. I drove to the section of N. Main that he said contained the glass shop, but found none. As I was formulating a plan to cruise the other direction, all the way to the Y bridge, Kristen says to me, "why not just use your phone?" Well, duh, why not? I hit the magic microphone, said "glass shop" into it, and it spit out the exact address of the shop I was hunting. Three minutes later, I was waiting for them to cut me a little glass panel...that cost a whopping $1.51, with tax.

As I've said, I started pretty early in the wave of computers...before personal computers even existed, to be more specific. My first computer had 16KB of RAM and no hard drive. You could connect a tape drive to it or even an external floppy, but those cost more than the computer itself! It was a Texas Instruments 99/4A. It had been on the market for $1000 until TI decided to get out of the PC market and they dumped them all for $50 apiece (If it weren't for those $50 computers, I may never have sunk so deeply into programming as I have). My second computer had a whopping 640KB of RAM and included a 20 MB hard drive. It ran at the breakneck speed of 8 Megacycles. Along with a monochrome monitor, that PC cost me $1000.

This little device that I carry around in my pocket has 18 GIGA-Bytes of storage, a color screen on which I can play videos, operates at a couple of Gigacycles, plays music, translates what I say to it with staggering accuracy, stores my email and tells me when I recieve a new one, has Swype technology input, so I don't have to lift my finger off the keys....and cost me $50...the same price that I paid for that TI-99 some 30 years ago. I have a hard time believing that we have come this far, and to be honest, my device is already obsolete. There are already faster, newer, more powerful ones coming out all the time.

The other techno-toy I mentioned was my geocaching GPS. I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg for what was only going to be, in the words of Uncle Denis, "a lark" (no worries, Denis, I laughed heartily when I read the comment), but I wanted SOME bells and whistles. I bought a Garmin Venture HC. It has color screen, a USB cable that allows me to download maps, waypoints, tracks, trails and whatever to the device in literally seconds. I can also upload tracks that I have recorded TO my PC to save them in the included Mapsource software. With a couple of clicks of a button, I can pull up a list of stored waypoints, displayed in "closest-to-you" order, and either display a map with the waypoint and ME on it, or Go-To, which displays a navigation screen with an arrow pointing me toward the waypoint and distant to it, and several other little tidbits. When I get close to my intended location, it makes this little 3-note sound telling me that I have arrived.

Having purchased a monochrome Magellan Meridian many years ago for more than twice what I paid for this, I am again thoroughly impressed with the coolness factor of such modern toys...and I didn't even buy one of the expensive ones! This one can be had on Amazon.com for about $120. You can probably find it even cheaper than that.

I again thank Christopher for adding to my understanding of my own GPS. He bought a similar model a few months ago, so he had already found his way through some of the confusions...like using Map instead of GoTo. The GoTo function will take you pretty close, but then it seems to get a little confused and bounces around a bit. The Map function just shows you walking up to your intended location. You can keep zooming in until you know you have to be standing on or near what you are looking for.

One very nice benefit of this geocaching thing...it's another way to get outside and spend some time with my kids...though, I may have to buy Koen his own GPS. He keeps wanting to take mine so he can run ahead and find the cache first.