You know how some people are desperate to show their new tech off? It used to be the placing of mobile phones on the table in the pub, now it's the slight shift of a cuff to reveal a piece of rubber replete with lights that signal to other people that you know precisely how many calories you have burned / miles you have cycled / breaths you took as you slept.
Well I should like to offer you an alternative. With each acquisition of a new piece of tech, something else is pushed aside; stuffed into a draw writhing with black and white cables twisted like serpents around their now defunct devices.
So if you're bored of people wearing their Fitbit or Apple Watch like an Olympic medal, why not take advantage of the fact that I am disgusted by the amount of gadgets I've held on to and have a trawl through all the crappy old stuff still lingering around my house instead:
1: iPod Shuffle - 2Gb, 4th Generation
Uncharged and unloved, I found this in a Cath Kidston tin that used to house a mug, but now looks after screws, coins and other detritus that is fished out of the pockets of clothes before they go into the washing machine (never mine though, mine are always emptied out before they go in the basket!). The iPod came out of a donkey pinata on a sales floor having been hit very hard by a man in an ill-fitting suit. Dropped from the arse of a paper ass. Useless. The mug, however, gets used on a daily basis.
2. iPod Nano - c.2010
This used to be good. Then it went through the washing machine in the pocket of a pair of my running tights (if only I had thought to put it in the Cath Kidston tin!!). Horrified by my failure to save it from a good soaking in Fairy Non-Bio, I put the iPod on top of the log burner to dry it out. To my amazement it came back to life, except that it will only work if plugged into a docking station, thus removing the only thing I liked about it: I could take it on a run.
3. iPod classic 80Gb - c.2007
This is good. It lives in a docking station in my kitchen and stores an awful lot of music that is mostly unsuitable for my children to listen to (what can I say, I bought an awful lot of hip-hop in my teens and it all got transferred across - and I do quite like the fact that sometimes Ice Cube will randomly pop up on my playlist, oh the panic!). It did however go missing for about three months, which made my husband cross because he bought it as a present for me. This means that I also have....
4. iPod 80Gb - c.2006
This was bought second-hand from a colleague to replace my 'missing' iPod and gets used on car journeys. One week after buying it, I found my old one (see point 3) hidden on a shelf after one of those crazy pre-holiday "let's hide everything valuable" sessions. This made my husband frustrated at the dip in my usual powers of detection - were these powers to disappear, no one would ever have a matching pair of socks.
5. Nokia Lumia Smartphone with a smashed screen
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| That's one big ol' stack of tech crap |
Dropped over a year ago because I failed to observe what I thought was the hilarious instruction "Please remove your phone from the back pocket of your *pants* before sitting down". Ha-ha! It said "pants" instead of "trousers". How the phone mocked me back as it leapt from my clothing onto the hard, unforgiving, bathroom floor. It was going to cost more to repair than it would to buy a new phone which is why I've also got...
6. Another Nokia Lumia Smartphone
Technically good but aesthetically terrible thanks to the alarmingly cheap tomato-red plastic casing. I only had it for 8 months before I was due a new one on the contract for my (smashed) original phone. This one I found today in the compartment of an old handbag. Why? Because that's where I store stuff of course! At least it Iooks like it should belong in the handbag, unlike the Lego Ninja Turtle complete with nun-chucks that I found in another compartment.
7. Amazon Kindle 2GB
This was extremely good over the period of December 2012 - January 2013 when my husband bought it for me as a Christmas gift. I like the idea of having lots of books in my bag, I hate the idea of having to charge my book up. My husband loves me, but is frustrated by my lack of Kindle participation.
And finally (because even I'm getting bored now)
8. A Compaq iPAQ - oh yes!
Bought circa 2001 by my husband as a gift for me (not again!), this was the tech to end all tech as far as I was concerned. I absolutely loved it, revelled in the Tube Map app with it's little chugging sound and felt quite the business woman about town as I used it to synchronise my email and calendar. Then I was given an Orange Smartphone by work. Oh dear. The iPAQ now lives in its original box in the loft...
All of this serves to remind me that I am not a technical innovator, and unless I can operate a 'one in, one out' policy then I've just got to start saying "no". That's why when I recently received a Fitbit (courtesy of an app download, not my husband this time!), it went straight to a place that I knew would find it a home, one of the greatest tech inventions of all time: eBay.
Like this? Then you might like my book: Reasons to be Cheerful, Part One. Available on one of those other great technical innovations: Amazon.
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