7 Gadgets That Won't Be Around In 2020

Yahoo News ^ | 10-19-2010 | Seth Fiegerman

[Jotmo]

Which Tech Gadgets Will Be Phased Out This Decade?

Hindsight may always be 20-20, but you don’t need particularly great foresight to know many of the gadgets on today’s market won’t be around in 2020 given how quickly the tech industry keeps changing. In the first half of the 2000s, retailers were buzzing about the prospects of MP3 players and netbooks, but by the end of the decade, those products had largely been replaced by smartphones and tablets.

As tempting as it may be to imagine otherwise, some of the gadgets you may rely on most right now will likely suffer the same fate and be killed off or made obsolete by the end of this decade. Sure, you may still be able to find these products for sale in certain niche stores, but they will no longer be produced for a mass-market audience.

“You can still find and buy VCRs and there are people still using mainframes from 1992, so it’s not like this stuff disappears forever,” says Stephen Baker, an industry analyst at the NPD Group. Baker notes that the main reason retailers continue to market and sell outdated products is to cater to shoppers who buy them for nostalgia’s sake, but for all intents and purposes the market has left these products in the dust. So which popular products today will join the likes of VCRs, cassette players and transistor radios in the next few years? MainStreet asked five tech analysts to offer their thoughts on the gadgets that will largely be phased out by the end of this decade.

[bigheadfred]

But wait, there is more!

[bigheadfred]

I’m right there with you.

My main objection to all the advances in “communication” technology is that people are losing the ability to actually communicate. And even worse: THINK

[blueunicorn6]

Teleprompters.

[9YearLurker]

Oh, please, can you add the GOP to that list too?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

We bough one of those back about 1957. A piece of junk for about $3.99 then.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

We bough one of those back about 1957. A piece of junk for about $3.99 then.

[j_tull]

Have to disagree on the comma, killer. It is way over used and getting more so every day. The semicolon is almost already dead.

[Revolting cat!]

[bigheadfred]

Yeah? How much did that “I” sold my soul “phone” cost ya?

[Revolting cat!]

[bigheadfred]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2795267/posts?page=13#13

[9YearLurker]

Ha—you got there before me!

[OneWingedShark]

>Have to disagree on the comma, killer. It is way over used and getting more so every day. The semicolon is almost already dead.

And that’s too bad; experience has shown that the semi-colon is quite useful.

[OneWingedShark]

>8. USB 3.0 will replace SATA, eSATA, what’s left of PATA and IDE, what’s left of Firewire 400 and 800, and every other internal and external interface standard that uses wires. USB 4.0 will never come out.

I hope not; USB isn’t that great of a transport-system. Sure it works fine for a keyboard and mouse, but FireWire really is worlds better (the power-supplied by the bus is more reasonable, the speeds are [in practice] better, the multiple-device communication is better, there’s even guarantees in its spec for A/V bandwidth)... it really is disappointing that the HDTV market [here] went with the HDMI connector as the Asian markets have some really nice [consumer-level] entertainment-systems which are FireWire based, as I understand it.

[Kimmers]

Do you have it stored next to your pocket protector ?

I bet you still know how to use it too.....I am not sure if it is good thing or not but it seems to me technology does a lot of thinking for students these days.....but then my son graduated with a degree in EE and in spite of technology he still had a number of long days in the lab and research in the library.....

[AlexW]

“My main objection to all the advances in “communication” technology is that people are losing the ability to actually communicate. And even worse: THINK”
___________________________________________

I have thought the same thing.
Internet communications certainly changed my life in a far
more radical way then it has for most everyone else.

Instead of a divorce, then hopping around the world, as I am now, I would probably be back on my Tennessee farm, sitting on the porch, sipping wine, overlooking my fields of cotton, or talking with other people around the world on my ham radio.

[EQAndyBuzz]

The NY Times

[gitmo]

men
marriage
manners
freedom

[SunkenCiv]

I wholeheartedly agree that FW 400 is faster and better than USB 2.0 — but the FW folks had their heads stuck quite far up their butts regarding getting products made. We can blame HP for sticking us with USB, but we are indeed stuck with it. Had anyone bothered to standardize on FW right away (this means you, Apple), for keyboards, mice, flash drives (a FW flash drive was once made, I’ve heard), printers, etc, along with the usual external hard drives and cameras, that format war would have been over in about a year.

http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3069803?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.gizmag.com/apple-hybrid-displayportusb-30-connector/18340/

[KarlInOhio]

“The point-and-shooters – and particularly the cameras that sell for under $200 – will eventually go away and be replaced by cellphones that do the same thing.”

Anyone can throw in a few megapixel sensor. The problem is getting a decent lens and flash. I bought a 12 megapixel camera with a 5x optical zoom and really close macro focus for $100 about a year ago. You might get the same sensor in a phone, but they'll put on a crappy little small aperture lens to give you enough depth of field to get away without focusing and a digial "zoom", but it won't be nearly as good as a five year old digital camera.