5 Great Gadgets That People Still Use Today

Some gadgets come and go in the blink of an eye. Other gadgets have staying power that enable people to use them year after year, even if they have become totally obsolete. Here are a few of the oldie but goodie gadgets that just will not die:

Fax machines
Fax machines were valuable office devices when they first became popular in the 1970s. The machine was capable of processing scanned paper as a fixed graphic image. It then would convert the image into a bitmap that was transferred through the phone system. The image was reconverted by the receiving machine before it printed out a copy. You can still find these machines being used by offices all over the world, even though email is roughly 15 years old. This might have to do with the fact that many documents still need to be signed.

VHS tapes
While millions of people stream videos on the Internet every day, VHS tapes have still maintained their popularity as a cheap and reliable way for families to record and save their special moments. It is a simple matter for VHS tapes to be converted to digital files, if a person wants to make sure certain videos are not lost due to tape degradation.

Windows 98 and 2000
It may seem hard to believe, buy you can still find many people browsing the Internet on computers that are using ancient operating systems like Windows 98 and 2000. The reasons for this can vary. Some people simply don't like to change. Other people may be too cheap to upgrade. The bottom line is that these Windows version are seemingly not going anywhere.

Dot matrix printers
These gadgets go back a good 20 years. That doesn't stop people from using them. This is because warehouse inventory, point of sale and various other business systems require multipart forms and carbon copies that only work with the hard impact that is provided by a dot matrix printhead. Speaking of gadgets, zoom stereo microscopes provide the user with the most extended zoom range of any microscope on the market. It also has ultra-high-performance microscope optics, comfort and modularity.

Pagers
A pager was a great status symbol in the early 1990s. Wearing a pager showed that you were important enough to be reachable all the time, just like a CEO or a surgeon. Even though every person on the planet seemingly has a cell phone, the pager will not die. In fact, pagers are considered more reliable by many hospitals and doctors. The is especially true during periods of time when cell phone networks are down.