Atari 800XL System circa 1983

In honor of B&WE's 500th post (or thereabouts), we are going with our first theme week: Atari week! Though my original Atari 2600 has gone to the wayside, a colleague was cleaning out his house and asked if I wanted this bad boy Atari 800XL. He had originally used it to write his PhD thesis.  Prior to this, I had no idea that Atari's had keyboards, although I was perfectly aware a Commodore 64 had them. Despite the spouse's protests, it found a home in our basement, where it was proudly on display until it was overrun by children's toys. Nevertheless, the Atari blazed in all it's 64K RAM glory for a little while, working like 'twas just out of the box. Here's hoping it survives the next 30 years as it did the first 30.

Rio Diamond MP3 Player circa 1999

I consider myself on the cutting edge of technology, if only a few steps behind because of my cheapness. However, I thought I went all out on this gift for a girlfriend in college: A Rio PMP300 MP3 player, one of the first of its kind. It cost a pretty penny, and could hold maybe 12 songs, in other words, an album's worth. I can understand that deficiency, but what I couldn't understand was the battery cover that was possibly the worst designed battery cover in the history of battery covers. Luckily, my roommate was an EE major, and proceeded to fix it with some cork, at least temporarily. Dude was like MacGuyver, no dude was better than MacGuyver!

Keyboard with Ska Stickers

My brief flirtation with being in a band ended amicably. Not having much talent singing and having given up on cooler instruments such as the electric guitar, I was forced to rely on grade school piano lessons and play the keyboard for a college Ska band. First mistake: using a keyboard from Sears. Second mistake: using any sticker I could find to decorate the front. Third mistake: believing that Ska was coming back for good this time circa 1997. What I really should have done was get a keytair and gone solo. 

Keyboard Casio SK-60

This little keyboard has a microphone with a few second recording/playback feature. Of course, many a fart sound and funny name has been recorded and played back. I wish I could say that I am teaching my kids the important things in life, but a man has to do what a man has to do.

Telephone Headset

We are a couple of years late to the Dect 6.0 party because I enjoyed the thrill of having the battery in my old 2.4 Ghz phone run out at 50 minutes so that I was scrambling to switch to another phone. Silly me, I thought the transition would be easy. Turns out, almost no one is making phones with headphone jacks anymore!! If they think that speaker phones do the job, that are out of their cotton picking minds. Amazon failed me for the first time ever, making it very difficult to find a phone with the features I wanted, which was only two things: 1) headset jack, 2) no answering machine. You would have thought I was looking for the fountain of youth. There should be check boxes, people, so that you can punch it what you need. Instead, I had to scan reviews that, surprise, surprise, conflicted each other. So I was forced to go to a brick and mortar store for the first time in awhile, to make sure I actually got said features. Panasonic came through in the clutch, with this model KX-TGA652 that I assure you has a headphone jack as evidence by the picture. Funny though, they put the jack pretty low, almost too low on the handset that it almost doesn't fit on the charge stand. Now that would suck, to have to take it off each time. Also, you have to use significant force to make sure the headset plug is inserted into the jack. Two times I have been talking to people without really talking to them. That is on me for user error.

Corded Phone

Corded phones are becoming things of the past. Yes, you can still buy them, and it pays to have one around the house in case the power goes out, that is if you are no on some type of digital plan. Come to think of it, the battery on my Dect 6.0 phone lasts for at least a day or two assuming no use, while the battery back-up on the digital phone line only lasts for like 6 hours. This is not the point of this post, however. It is more about how neolithic to talk on a phone with a cord anymore, using the handset of all things. That always drove me crazy about work phones when you are more likely to be on the phone, essentially crippling you by removing one arm/hand from doing anything useful unless you wanted to cradle the phone against your shoulder and look the the hunchback of Notre Dame. My phone in high school had 9 speed dial storage on it, and I used to rank my friends accordingly. The part that made me a jerk was that I told people what rank he or she was, and probably hinted at ways they could move up the list. I am proud to say that no girlfriend ever unseated my best bro. Anyhow, this phone pictured below particularly sucks because it takes 4, count 'em, 4 double AA batteries to power the stupid caller id. That would be fine if they lasted forever, but they don't.

Sony Cassette Tape Player

As part of my parents "all-in" commitment to the cassette tape, we had the top-of-the-line high-end cassette player of the day, made by the premier electronics manufacturer of the day: Sony. The Cadillac of tape players, this thing had AUTO-REVERSE, meaning you didn't have the flip the flipping tape to listen to the other side. And it had analog counter, meaning you could almost get to the song you wanted, assuming you mapped the location of each song. Got to love the Dolby noise reduction (like that did anything to a cassette tape). Oh, and yes, that is Aerosmith Pump loaded in the player. Just wish it was dual cassette.

Memorex Cassette Tape

My parents had this ideology that they would "skip" a technology in order not to over-invest in any one format when it came to things such as electronics. Therefore, after using records, they bypassed the 8-track revolution and went straight to the cassette tape era. This would seem like a good idea except that this meant that they needed to skip CDs that lasted much longer than they expected. Even then, when the next technology came along, MiniDiscs, it sucked so bad that even my rents didn't use it. For sure, MP3 players (or whatever the hell format Apple uses in their crystal temple) are here to stay for until some type of media telepathy is developed. Thanks to my parents "revolutionary" idea, while I was unable to converse with friends about CDs, I still  have tapes in the original package worth absolutely nothing. The one redeeming feature of cassette tape players (aka WalkMans) was that they didn't skip when being jostled about. CDs had a hard time coming to grips with that, as I seem to recall. Too bad cassette tapes still sounded like static and it took forever to switch songs cause you had to find the exact spot by trial and error. Last but not least, there was almost no room for cover art.

Best cheap 7-inch tablet ever (Polaroid PTAB7XC)

***Sorry if you've been directed here when searching for cheap, reliable tablet. As you can see, this blog post is several years old, so while at the time this claim held water, the winds of time have dried up any chance of it still being true. Godspeed on your hunt for a good tablet.***

Original Post from June, 2012:
I like to skim the circulars every weekend, occasionally stopping to laugh at the cheap tablets that are advertised since they would probably only be good as paper weights IMHO. However, this one caught my eye in a June ad from Kohls: a Polaroid 7-inch tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), front facing camera, micro SD slot, and multi-touch screen for only $99. With a lucky 30% off coupon, it was on like Donkey Kong. Of course, the local store was out. But the next closest store had one and they held it for me. I paid them back by giving high marks on ubiquitous survey that seems to be on all store receipts now. This little bugger is quite a deal for the price. While it is no Kindle Fire or obviously $500 iPad, it does enable me to save my phone battery when I just want to fool around at home using wifi. Plus, there are several forum discussions that explain how to make the tablet fully customizable, i.e., not be locked into the Amazon app store, which is still a pretty good app store (the free app of the day gives me something to look forward to everyday; yes, my life is that exciting [Updated December 2012 that the updated Amazon app store v4.0+ is apparently not compatible with Poloroids; what you have to do is find an old version of the appstore  as an "apk" file and download it to your table; it took me a long time, but I found a 2.x version on a very sketchy site that I won't be linking to here due to culpability; just keep searching until you find it and then DO NOT UPDATE when the app store asks you if you want to). The screen resolution is horrid (only 800 x 480 pixels as compared to an iPad that is 1024 by 768 pixel), but I don't really mind since I am not looking to run any high end graphics-guzzling games on this thing. The camera could be better on the front, though it does Skype fine. Who would have thought Polaroid would make, or lend their name to, something like this: no more instant film, so why not affordable tablets? The official model number is a very non-sexy PTAB7XC. You think they could have sprung for a cool name. They should have named it after one of their old instant cameras, thus I am dubbing thee the "Impulse"...on second thought, the "Swinger," no, no, the "iZone!"  Rock on.

Updated in November 2012 to include a picture above with apps on the screen; the original picture below is a better shot of the tablet as a whole. The tablet is still going strong after months of steady use. I  highly recommend using Opera Chrome (Chrome not working on this tablet as of 28Nov2012 - I've sent a strongly worded email to Google) or another browser other than the stock, though even then the tablet will lag when surfing the internet as Opera is pretty fast on this tablet when surfing the internet. Also, looks like Kohls is now selling an 8" version of this tablet with the same general specs. 

Linkage:
Instructions for installing the Google Play Store (takes rudimentary computer skills; try at your own risk)
Case purchased for use with tablet (for everyday use and protection)
Keyboard and OTG USB Cable purchased for use with tablet (for use when you need to type at length)
What to do if you get locked out of the tablet without wi-fi on