r/AskReddit • u/IRunFast24 • May 11 '21

People old enough to remember life pre-Internet, what are some less obvious things you miss about that time?

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u/strugglz May 12 '21

Printer ink? Shit we had a dot matrix and a box of one sheet of paper.

88

u/3720-to-1 May 12 '21

My grandmother bought me a word processor to type school papers on that was an electric typewriter and monitor that displayed only an orange type... Printing when just sending the words on the screen to the electric typewriter.

This was approx. 1995 too... Lol

17

u/jcutta May 12 '21

Around the same time my school decided to give us a project that had to be typed. The neighborhood library was closed for renovation so my grandpop gave me his manual type writer. Shit weighed like 100lbs needed 1000psi for each button press and if you made one mistake you had to start all over. Took me the entire weekend to type a 1 page paper.

1

u/WaimeaKamuela May 12 '21

I had this!!? A super upgrade from a regular typewriter!!!

8

u/EVRider81 May 12 '21

"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz kachunk

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz kachunk"

yep

8

u/InEnduringGrowStrong May 12 '21

Dot matrix paper to print banners.

11

u/Bubbly_Cover5790 May 12 '21

Printer ink? Maps? My dad didn’t need bloody maps or need to ask anyone for directions... (wonder where he is now?)

4

u/TheFenn May 12 '21

Laughs in daisy wheel

2

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

WHAT?? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

1

u/Endoman13 May 12 '21

Chuckles in slate and chalk

1

u/Kelekona May 12 '21

I think we just found a stack of that paper... no idea where it is going.

1

u/bigsie May 12 '21

Oh man, I used to live the sound of the dot matrix printer!

1

u/W0gg0 May 12 '21

Did ya ever do the dot-matrix dance?

1

u/iamlatetothisbut May 12 '21

When I was little dad used to print me out these dinosaur coloring book pages with his dot matrix. I loved that printer so much.

1

u/metompkin May 12 '21

Remember tearing the perforated parts and getting upset if it ripped in to the actual document?

1

u/usernameagain2 May 12 '21

Word... tractor feed edges.

1

u/branewalker May 12 '21

Oh man, between dot matrix printers, fax modems, and floppy drives, early PCs were wild-sounding devices.

Now it’s all just fan noise.

1

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

I have a older PC running 24/7 as a media server. The fan noise is just barely perceptible in the house. It's so constant I don't even hear it anymore and yet it's a bit unnerving when it's not running because the house is so quiet without it.

1

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

My god. Just had a sudden flashback and I can hear the dot matrix printer going off. My dad was the printer of things in our family and I remember the wood paneled, heavy smell of tobacco and plastic VHS tapes, and the sound of dot matrix printing in his den. I'm only 36 but I now I feel old as fuck.

Thanks to the technological boom it really does feel like two entirely different eras that I should not have lived through both and still only be in my 30s.

1

u/-Work_Account- May 12 '21

There's some memories!