1) Mobile phones.

I refuse, on principle, to buy shiny, brand spanking-new up-to-date mobiles. I'm currently on my 4th phone since 2000, which is a battered, but perfectly serviceable old Nokia. The advantage of this is that I've spent precisely £40 on handsets over the last 10 years, because 3 of the phones were given to me by people willing to splurge loads of money on pointlessly shiny gadgets

2) Books

I will never, ever, ever see the point of ebooks. I like having piles of books everywhere. I like having no room in my bedroom/living room on account of such piles. I like the fact that they are tangible, and at times, inconvenient. I would like to buy an ereader about as much as I would like to spend eternity fellating Bono whilst having my testicles removed by the application of emery cloth.
(anvil, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 14:35, 9 replies)

Well said that man/woman.

( girlinthehole, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 14:48, closed)

I'm with you on phones
I've got my trusty Sony Ericsson W200i which has done me for a good few years. It's got basic GPRS internet and an MP3 player, but that's about it. It's been dropped, kicked, splashed, it's rattled around in my pocket, the call quality is fine, it very rarely drops calls, I get a good signal and even on the original battery I only have to charge it every 3 or 4 days.

I really, really like the idea of having a smartphone, but the apparent pissy battery life puts me off.
( Mike Fishcake teamfishcake.co.uk - better than your mum's face, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 14:55, closed)

Three cheers for real books!
My friends all praise their Kindles and whatnot, but no company can remotely disable any of my physical books on a whim/copyright disagreement. Also, I collect cookbooks (to the tune of a couple thousand volumes), and a good portion of my collection is comprised of manuscript cookbooks dating between the mid-1800s through the 1960s. Hard to download one of those to study when I own the only one!
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 15:12, closed)

Kindles/reader things have two purposes
1. Reading on the way to work. I've just spent the last month's commutes reading Infinite Jest, and a 4lb 1,000 page paperback was a pain in the arse every day. Many days there wasn't room to hold the monster out at a comfortable reading angle, meaning I was just lugging more dead weight around (along with laptop, hard drive, phone, notebook etc.) A Kindle would have been perfect - thin and light, no two-handed hassle trying to turn pages while holding the rail on a bouncy bit of track, read it even squashed into a tight corner...
2. Business trips. I always take a book or two if I'm away for any time at all, and the weight can really add up. You have to choose things that you can fit, not necessarily what you're dying to read. Kindle again would help.

I'm thinking seriously about asking Mrs S. for one for Christmas, but I'd still keep buying real books. I love my stacked shelves, I love real paper, and I'd never want to read a screen in bed. This does mean that I'll be paying for every book twice, but given the state of the publishing industry and how little authors make, I'll just call that charity.
( Scrumper, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 18:01, closed)

I don't find them useful at all
But that might be because my vision + small screen = eyestrain and a splitting headache. Besides, 30 years of carrying around a book hasn't done wrong by me yet, and if I leave it on the train seat by mistake it will likely be there when I go back for it!
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 22:50, closed)

Click because you have experience fellating Bono

( BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 15:25, closed)

With you on both points
And indeed one better! I'm only on my second phone since 2000, my current one now just over five years old.

Books aren't just for reading; pile them up and you've got instant no-extra expense decoration.
(Land of Green Ginger It's dreamy weather, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 15:54, closed)

My phone is still "2G" too, I think.
Not a problem because all I need to do is make calls, send texts and play Snake on an infrequent basis. I don't even have it turned on half the time. I have considered updating to one of those flashy 3G phones everyone has but I read in New Scientist this week that by 2013, there'll be so much mobile traffic, what with everyone Tweeting and watching kittens on YouTube, that all the networks will collapse under the weight and the economy will go into a panic and global mass hysteria will break out and everything will catch fire and die. Or maybe they'll find a way of shifting the traffic onto the Internet and it won't be a problem.

For a long time, my mother had one of those bricks with an extendable ariel and a screen which could only display 40 letters at a time, much like those you might find at an Austrian train station.
(User #86772, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 19:23, closed)

I'm on my 5th phone since about 2001
I'm currently using an HTC smartphone that is actually costing me less per month than my shitty three year old Nokia. It's very shiny indeed.
( wheresthefish Partly filled with wrong, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 22:29, closed)