Community Corner

Do You Still Use Vinyl Records, VHS and (Gasp!) Dial-up Internet?

When was the last time you printed your vacation photos from film?

Do you still use a landline phone, fax machines and VHS tapes on a daily basis?

Instead of upgrading to the latest and the newest gadgets, more than 60 percent of Americans are hanging onto technology that are considered "old-school" today, according to an article on LiveScience.com.

In a society where most commodity is available at a touch of a button, vinyl records are on the list of things that are far from extinction. 

In fact, 4.6 million LPs were sold in America in 2012, according to LiveScience.com.

A local record shop owner agrees that record vinyls are here to stay.

"The record will outlive the CD," said Peter Van Rosendael, owner of Turntable Treasures and House of Records in Tacoma. "I've been referring to that as the 21st century definition of irony."

While records convey a sense of nostalgia to music listeners, Van Rosendael said it's the quality of the sound that's driving this phenomenon.

Are you still using a camera with film, rather than a digital model? Do still view your VHS tapes? Does the sound of dial-up sooth your ears during your early-morning Internet surfing? Let us know in the comments.

"Many record enthusiasts would say that the sound on a record is better that a digital sound just because it has not been converted into any other form," he said. "The record buyer is a fan and a connoisseur of the finer things in life."

Along with the vinyl records, here are 11 more out-dated items that many Americans use today:

  • Dial-up Internet
  • Pagers 
  • Dot matrix printers
  • PDAs
  • Pay phones
  • Blank VHS and cassette tapes
  • Landline phones
  • CRT TVs
  • Camera film
  • Windows 98 and 2000
  • Fax machines
Read the full report on Live Science.


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