PDAs
I've tried six or seven different kinds of PDA over the years. I've had Palm Pilots, IPAQs, iPod touches, and Blackberries of all flavours. I even had a Newton once. In my years of needing to be reminded of meetings I reckon I've done a pretty good survey of the state of the art of these things.

So what do I use today, in the bright, sunlit, multi-touch, wireless sync future that we live in? That's right, a Filofax. It's perfect. I can write in it instantly, on any page, at any time, for any purpose. Mix to-do, appointments, doodles and reminders from the wife on the same page? Fine. Take a longer note? Flip to the Notes section. Need to know if I'm free second week of December? Riffle the pages forward until I'm there, takes a second. Forgotten how to get from the station to that random pub I'm meeting in, it's late and I don't want to stand on a street corner fiddling with an expensive mobile while it 'acquires GPS'? Flick to the printed map *while I'm still on the train.*

It's so incredibly easy and fast to use and it never needs charging. It even has a place for cards, receipts and bank notes. I love it. Everyone laughs at me, until I challenge them to tell me, using their phone, what they were doing 10 days ago. Tap tap tap tap tap tap they go, endlessly paging back through some hellish, rigidly divided, digital time-space, like insane prisoners of a binary jail.

Red-Porsche-driving, wine-bar-frequenting cocktards they may have been, but those yuppies were on to something. I love my Filofax and lots of other people must do as well, or they wouldn't still be in selling refills every stationery shop the world.
( Scrumper, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 15:29, 12 replies)

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This is offically a rant.

That thing where someone laughed, and you asked them what they were doing 10 days ago, and they feverishly searched for the information in their phone, only to despairingly fail and have to bitterly admit that they are wrong, and that you PWNED their sorry arse?

Never happened.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 15:34, closed)

You're right
It never happened. I also didn't say it happened either; merely that I can find stuff quicker. I think you may have missed the point slightly.

To be honest I'd have expected a brasserie-soaking broker-fingerer like yourself to be more of a fan of the Filofax.
( Scrumper, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 16:58, closed)

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Heh. I would never have anything like that, I'm a fuckwit, I'd have lost in in 2 days.

I am misunderstnding your original post then. Looks like you're describing someone tap tap tapping on their phone.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 17:01, closed)

No no
The tap tap happened, but only in a friendly, bored-at-work, idle challenge to demonstrate the superior speed of paper-based random date retrieval over computerised diaries.

The bit that didn't happen (the bit you made up) was all the nonsense about people getting 'pwned', and being desperate and bitter about it. I mean we're all adults, not kids on a bus.

Aaaanyway, I really am explaining far too much here!
( Scrumper, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 20:26, closed)

yeah
annoying when some idiot starts reimaging something you did.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 10:30, closed)

Why the hell would you want to know, would I want to know, and why in God's own teeth would I want to tell you
What I was doing 10 days ago?
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 15:47, closed)

When the rozzers show up at your door and ask you where you were in the night in question

(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Tue 9 Nov 2010, 15:56, closed)

... which is why my house features a back door, and several windows.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 16:13, closed)

and what if they show up in the middle of the night, and kick your back doors in?

(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Wed 10 Nov 2010, 10:44, closed)

Beg them to be gentle
even though it's nowhere near his first time.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 11:21, closed)

That's your fantasy.
It actually is.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 13:58, closed)

Yup.
Nothing would make me happier than if you got bummed by several large rozzers. Every day I pray for it.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 15:17, closed)

I got a Filofax when I graduated. I use it (not as often as I should) for trip planning and keeping my passport safe. My friends call it my File-a-gay. I have such nice friends.
(RJWEcology is just sharpening his axe on, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 16:01, closed)

File a gay
Hahahahahahaha
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 16:13, closed)

^ Ditto

(Operation Interference, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 11:18, closed)

I used to use one
But I left it in a phone box in Paddington when I was late for a train. I still haven't properly managed to get back in touch with all the contact I kept in it, though FB has been useful.
These days I keep all that stuff in my smartphone, but I wouldn't be nearly as fucked if I lost that because I synch it to my PC and to the servers of my phone manufacturer.
So I'd have to lose my phone, have my PC nicked/blow up, AND have all of Nokia's servers get fritzed to be in the same boat as I was by simply losing my Filofax.
The kind of cataclysm required for all that to happen at the same time would probably mean losing touch with Dave from Accounts in the company I worked for three jobs ago would be the least of my worries.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 11:40, closed)