Nick Martin 
Technology really leaped forward in the past couple of decades. In fact, it develops so fast that we could hardly catch up. Older generations find it difficult to cope with the new tech gadgets, while today’s kids would never know the struggle of our youth. The millennials witnessed the rapid technological development in communications, computers and everything related, and the following examples show just how much things have changed in a relatively short period of time. If you are under 14 years of age, chances are that you haven’t seen some of these things before.
1. Text messages required work
Believe it or not, it took a lot more time and effort to create a simple text message. The old mobile phones with a classic keyboard were much harder to operate than the intuitive modern smartphones. We almost miss the old feeling of pressing those keys hundreds of times for a single text message.
2. We had dozens of CD holders
CD holders were everywhere, and there was even a model designed for your car’s sun visors. Burning CD’s was almost an everyday activity, and finding a certain CD with songs or other files written on it sometimes took more than an hour.
3. There was a time we had to carry more than one device
At one point mobile phones began to support .mp3 files and their storage capacity was slowly increasing, but it was not enough. The solution was to carry around an iPod except for your phone, which was not the most convenient thing to do, but we had no choice.
4. Titanic was something epic in more ways than one
When the movie premiered more than 20 years ago, it was released on VHS, Video cassettes were limited in duration and this was the reason that the movie had to be split in two, and the set came in the package you see on the photo.
5. Long before car navigations came as standard equipment
There were times when the route had to be planned, and you were not able to just make a list in some application or let the satellite navigation guide you. At one point there were websites from which you could easily print out the list with the instructions and directions.
6. Power options in a car were not always available
Remember how a lot of 80’s cars were not fitted with power options like electrically operated sunroof, windows and other things? Well, we were used to rolling the window down by hand, which was no easy task sometimes. Today’s options like remote engine start were unthinkable.
7. Old cameras were very cool
However, they were very limited in terms of taking photos. In most cases you had a couple of spare films with you, and after returning from a trip you had to take them to a photo studio for development, and only a week later you ended up with photos that were absolute rubbish.
8. Walkmans needed a lot of energy
One of the tricks we used to do in order to save some of the battery capacity was to play around with the equalizer and kill the base. This actually worked every time and we enjoyed our favorite tunes a bit longer.
9. Finding the right song was not easy
Most MP3 players back then had limited control options, and you couldn’t just randomly select any song; you had to skip dozens of songs to get to the one you want. It was a real pain in the neck, but it was not that bad – we were happy anyway.
10. Download speeds were more than low
Sometimes the download window used to show mind-blowing figures, like the example here suggests. The slow Internet connection and the even slower computer processors caused a simple download to take forever to be completed.
11. There was a special kind of tapes for old car stereos
Most vehicles were equipped with cassette players from the factory, and when iPods became a thing, these tapes became widely popular; they allowed you to connect your iPod to your car and enjoy the music compilation you uploaded earlier.
12. The older Windows versions were cool
And by ‘cool’ we mean annoying! The frequent malfunctions of the system resulted in detecting errors, after which an error report appeared on the screen, but it was very hard to get rid of it without restarting the whole system.
13. A little over than a decade ago mobile Internet was different
Mobile data exchange was rather expensive back in the days, and we used to be careful not to go online via a phone, because it was a rather expensive pleasure, not to mention the limited options and the ridiculously slow speed.
14. You had to be protective over your VHS tapes
It was a common practice for people to overwrite a movie or a TV show on a random tape, and if it happened to be a tape that was valuable to you, it had to be labeled properly; otherwise it was a matter of time before someone ruined it.
15. Older phones had a different type of space issues
While you may complain about the fact that you only have 64 gigabytes of free space for music and photos, keep in mind that 15 years ago mobile phones used to run out of memory only after a couple of dozen text messages. Stop acting spoiled and appreciate what you have.
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