4 Outdated Technologies Still Used By People

1.Beepers

Beepers also known as pagers are a simple telecommunications device used for short messages. These devices are set at a particular frequency in order to enable one receive messages of a few digits or even a number to which the user will call back to.

Today beepers may seem sadly unnecessary. But there are about 36 million beepers still using them regularly. Apart from the obvious clientele like drug dealers and cops pretending to be drug-dealing kingpins, many regular citizens use beepers as they could be an inexpensive alternative to costly cell phones.

For those who ignore calls or messages, the beeper isn't a good excuse. It makes sure to see whether you have received the information or not. A beepers battery life even lasts longer than a cell phones and is believed to never even die fast.

2.Floppy Disks

Floppy Disks are those plastic square shaped storage disks that people used to put inside computers to transport information. The problem was that these disks could hold a maximum of 1.44 megabytes – data as big as a one liner song.

But these disks are still being produced as many still use them. According to British company Verbatim, over 250,000 disks are sold in England alone, not to mention how many millions would be sold in Europe.

And what’s more?

Despite the constant push for technology, many people still use super old computers. They cannot afford to buy advanced machines or it’s a sense of ignorance. Dot matrix printers are still available today. They function slowly with irritable noise with not so clear information printed, but are available at low cost. Hopefully these machines will be replaced very soon to encourage a faster working environment.

3.Punch Cards

Regarded as an obsolete medium now, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in unit record machines for input, processing and data storage. It is a strip of perforated cardboard that seems ridiculous in this age where everything is stored and archived electronically saving lot of time and storage space.

However, almost 450 million punch cards are being sold every year for use. The best consumers are government offices which choose to use them, in order to keep offline records rather than storing them online as masked lunatics on the internet can’t steal them. If you have wondered why they have dusty shelves with lots of files stored on them, punch cards would be the reason.

Even small businesses cannot afford to upgrade their systems every time. So using punch cards may not necessarily mean that they hate technology, it is because they are insanely cheap.

4.Dial up

It is certain that many of us might have used the dial-up connection system in order to surf the net. It would have been a boring experience. The dial up internet service only allowed connectivity to the internet at a speed of 56Kbps.

When you wanted to download pictures of your favorite singers and actors, it would take you as long as a day to even see the whole picture downloaded. This dual connection had always given two options – you had to either be on the phone or use the internet.

But the fact lies here where almost 3 million people still use dial-up connections. For low income households and people living in remote areas, dial up is the only option. Broadband has not even reached these places.

Courtesy : Silicon India