When did you first "wow" someone with a gadget?

[amdhunter]

For me it was back in *gasp* 1999 when I first got my Rio 500 MP3 player (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_500.)

I remember going onto the subway headed to work, and took it out to show it off a little. (Douchey, I know.)

When I noticed a few people staring at what I had, I whipped out my extra smart media card and changed it to start playing music off of it. The person who sat next to me tapped me on the shoulder and asked me WTF was the device I was using.

I proceeded to tell him it's an "MP3" player and all the music was stored on the tiny Smart Media card. He seemed blown away. He was even more blown away when I told him it sounded "better" than CD, and I get all the music I want for free of the "Internet."

This was at a time when cassette walkmans were the media of choice, and CD portables were still somewhat big.

Today with iPads and iPods and everything, I wonder if anyone can be "wowed" like that person was that day...lol

 

[shortylickens]

Nokie 3300.
Looks like shit but at the time it was one of the first phones that was a full media player.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Palm VIIx 1999 or so.

Followed by a Kyocera 6305

Smart phones have come a long way, those things were slow as hell. I get a kick out of people bitching about fine points of smartphones when I think back to how terrible those devices used to be

 

[TheStu]

Just yesterday, I was using my MBA at work and a woman that was there came by and was very amazed by how thin and light it is, and the price. She was the first non-Mac user I have met that thought that the $999 starting price was reasonable.

 

[Zen0]

For me it was back in *gasp* 1999 when I first got my Rio 500 MP3 player (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_500.)

I remember going onto the subway headed to work, and took it out to show it off a little. (Douchey, I know.)

When I noticed a few people staring at what I had, I whipped out my extra smart media card and changed it to start playing music off of it. The person who sat next to me tapped me on the shoulder and asked me WTF was the device I was using.

I proceeded to tell him it's an "MP3" player and all the music was stored on the tiny Smart Media card. He seemed blown away. He was even more blown away when I told him it sounded "better" than CD, and I get all the music I want for free of the "Internet."

This was at a time when cassette walkmans were the media of choice, and CD portables were still somewhat big.

Today with iPads and iPods and everything, I wonder if anyone can be "wowed" like that person was that day...lol

I was about 10 years old when I ripped my own Mp3s, so it would have hardly been wowed by your Rio.

 

[DivideBYZero]

For me it was back in *gasp* 1999 when I first got my Rio 500 MP3 player (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_500.)


This was at a time when cassette walkmans were the media of choice, and CD portables were still somewhat big.

Today with iPads and iPods and everything, I wonder if anyone can be "wowed" like that person was that day...lol

LOL WUT?! I had this bad boy in 1990:

Only about the size of two CDs stacked, nine years before your 'huge' players.

 

[HeXen]

He was even more blown away when I told him it sounded "better" than CD

lmao. now i'm blown away. :whiste:
just...wow

 

[Oyeve]

1986 when i bought my firstcd player and a cd. My gf was shocked.

 

[Spoooon]

I was about 10 years old when I ripped my own Mp3s, so it would have hardly been wowed by your Rio.

Wow.

 

[amdhunter]

lmao. now i'm blown away. :whiste:
just...wow

It was 1999! Back then they sounded the same to me.

 

[amdhunter]

1986 when i bought my firstcd player and a cd. My gf was shocked.

I was a retard back then. I remember someone bought a custom mixtape on CD, and I couldn't understand how the CD still had the "dust noise" from the records they used to make it.

I thought the CD would remove the dust noise and increase the fidelity or something. LOL

 

[WelshBloke]

I don't think I've ever given a shit about what peoples attitudes to my gadgets were.

I generally get them for my own amusement.

 

[pm]

I remember I bought one of the very first iPhones - right after that first price reduction - and I had it and I showed my wife all the stuff that it could do and the reaction was pretty much "yeah, whatever". And then I bought the TV video out cable for the iPhone and for a ski trip I loaded up like 8 ripped DVD's worth of movies and we were in a hotel and I said to her "so what do you want to watch?" and she was absolutely stunned that you could put movies onto an iPhone and watch them on a TV. She kept saying "I can't believe that a device that small can fit even one movie... but 8... that's amazing". The fact that it's got speech recognition, and you can access the internet from anywhere and it had Google Maps that could show realtime travel conditions was not that big a deal... but if you can play movies on a TV with it... now that's impressive.

 

[poofyhairguy]

At the end of 2000, my HP Jordana 545:

With its color screen (in the days of black and white palms), emulator and MP3 capability, and awesome for the day sync dock that was the first device I grew to love and show off.

 

[amdhunter]

At the end of 2000, my HP Jordana 545:

With its color screen (in the days of black and white palms), emulator and MP3 capability, and awesome for the day sync dock that was the first device I grew to love and show off.

My first color handheld was a Palm IIIc. I couldn't believe it was only $99. Handhelds really lost their appeal quickly.

 

[arrfep]

About five years back, my uncle was getting married. He's from my mom's side; she and all her siblings were born and raised in Poland. It was a semi-casual affair, and I photographed it. At the time, I was shooting with a 30D.

We had a cousin in from Poland, and he was leaving like the very next night. So the entire family gathers again at my grandpa's house for dinner and whatnot. My uncle tells me to bring my laptop over so my cousin could see some of the pics.

My grandpa was, at the time, probably 80...crusty old former farmer, a cliche of all the awesome things you hear about old European immigrants. He didn't understand how we got the pictures back so quickly, and how they were on the "TV." Well, after trying to explain digital photography, he kept asking about what kind of film it used. So I pulled the CF card out of the camera and showed it to him.

"No film. 1000 pictures on here," I told him. It blew his mind, and he basically told me to GTFO and proceeded to laugh for about ten minutes. Obviously this was more about the audience than the gadget, but it was still funny, even kind of humbling.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Sony Ericsson K750i - Dumb Americans were like WTF 2.0 MP cameraphone?? WITH FLASH???

Nokia N82 - Tethering. This was over a year after I got it and my friend from Google was like "whoah how do you do that?" and he kept touting his Nexus One as the shit. He had pre-release too, and didn't know much about modding.

Google Sky Map - My exgf was like whoah. A couple friends were like you should totally do this with a girl and get laid... lol.

My Fenix L2D flashlight - People had giant flashights but all crappy stuff at camping. When I turned my flashlight to 180 lumens, it was like crazy.... heh. I'm not even a flashlight geek like the guys on candlepowerforums.

 

[shortylickens]

I was a retard back then. I remember someone bought a custom mixtape on CD, and I couldn't understand how the CD still had the "dust noise" from the records they used to make it.

I thought the CD would remove the dust noise and increase the fidelity or something. LOL

Dont feel bad. They marketed those things as magic.
Of course, compared to magnetic tape they WERE magic, but still.