Old Isn't Always Bad - Why I Still Own and Use Dinosaurs

I've already established that I'm a dinosaur - I don't mind that. I'm old and so are dinosaurs, and I've always loved them since I was a small child. I'm a bit of a dinosaur electronically too. Although I operate a lot of different computers for work and for home, nothing is more recent than Windows 8, several are still Windows 7, and I'm still working with Win98 at the shop because that's what our semi-broken inventory program requires. 

The computers that run my shop are Win98 and I have 
two of them. They're chugging along, not as well 
as they used to, but still there. The inventory program 
itself has developed quirks over the years, and we have 
various work-arounds that we do. But it still functions, and 
the thought of re-entering 50,000+ items into a new 
program? No. No way. Not going to happen! 

My Email is also a bit of a dinosaur. Although I use Gmail on my Android phone, on my computers I run AOL. Yes, the same AOL that sent discs through the mail for each update for years and years. Billions and billions of them, more than likely. But I like AOL because it has some features I haven't found on any other email program yet. Primary of these features is the ability to delete mail, but get it back if needed. That's been a real life saver sometimes. I get hundreds of emails in an average week, and every once in a while I'll hit DELETE when I don't mean to. That single feature has more than paid for itself over the years. 

DH still uses the stock photos for Windows 7 as his 
splash screen for his home computer. I, on the other 
hand, have a file of photographs - Egyptian monuments, 
glaciers, Hubble photos, etc - that I use as a rotating 
background splash screen on mine. 

I love old fashioned crafts - although I'm not doing any beading right now, I have done a lot of it over the years. I also sew, and lately I've been getting back into my fiber arts - weaving, spinning and now (with my new knitting machine), knitting. I'm having a lot of fun with my crafts, and that's really the important thing because if you have spare time, you want to spend it doing something you consider worth the time. 

My laptop runs Windows 8 which has this screen 
as a default. I like it, but I only see it long enough 
to get to my next screens and start work.

The thing is - all of these dinosaur computers I operate
are on and operational every single day. (Except I
don't turn on the shop computers on Sunday.) They
might be old, but they still work and they're still
something we depend on daily. 

And of course, there are books - hundreds and thousands of books that I've read or that I have on my electronic TBR list. I stopped buying physical books, with a very short list of exceptions, several years ago. I buy my books electronically, usually on Barnes & Noble's Nook format, very rarely on Amazon's Kindle format. My preference for B&N also makes me a dinosaur, but with 1900+ ebooks in my NookBook library, I'm not switching over to a different format now. . 

My phone is also a bit of a dinosaur, 
although not quite as much as my 
computers are. I use a Google 
Pixel 2. It's paid off, and I've been thinking 
about upgrading, but it still seems to 
work fine, and I'd rather save the 
money for a bit longer. So I'll stay 
with it at least until next year. 
I use a standard splash screen 
choice on it. 

To wrap this exploration into prehistory down, there's room for dinosaurs in this world. Not everything needs to be cutting edge, it just needs to work well and work properly. My computers might be old, but they do exactly what I need them to do. My Email program and my ebooks format are old, but they work exactly the way I want them to. My crafts might be old fashioned, but I can make beautiful things and make myself and other people happy with them. My phone still manages to connect me with the people I want to talk to and disconnect the spam. It's also a wonderfully entertaining device with my puzzle games and my ebooks at my fingertips. 

All things considered, being a dinosaur really isn't too bad. Have an excellent Monday and I'll be back tomorrow.