11 signs you're no longer a hardcore tech addict

7. So Pioneer are making LCD TVs now?

When the first plasma TVs appeared in 1997 you just knew you had to have one.

Hanging that first 42-inch Fujitsu on the wall was like having all your high tech dreams come true. It was Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica all rolled into one. Didn't it made your friends' CRTs look fat and ugly?

Then those upstart LCD TVs came along. They were so lame. Really terrible pictures - all juddery and stuff. Of course, you kept upgrading every couple of years.

Now you have 8G Pioneer - arguably the best flat TV on the planet. Well, until the 9G came along. And then what happens? Pioneer off-loads plasma-making to Panasonic and starts making LCDs.

You still think plasma is the future. You're probably wrong.

8. Your son has to program the Sky+ box

Well the kids make it look so easy, don't they? Whizz, whizz through the menus. Hundreds of channels. Now and Next. You can never find anything to watch until it's too late.

The amount of times you've caught the end of something that you would have watched or recorded if you'd known it was on. But you didn't and now it's too late.

The TV listing aren't any help, and you can't be doing with Sky iPlayer or whatever it is.

Once upon a time you had four channels, a VCR and VideoPlus. And like the East Germans who want the Wall to be put back up, you'd give anything to have it back.

9. You should have bought in on vinyl

"I bought the vinyl! The original in the '70s. Then I flogged it off for the CD in the 1980s, bought the special edition with VideoCD in the 1990s, then got the Super Audio CD and the DVD-Audio versions at the turn of the century.

"Now you want me to buy it again on Blu-ray. Why? Because it finally sounds as good as the vinyl version? I had the freakin' vinyl version. It's you lot that made me want to sell it!"

10. You tried that high definition TV once


You bought the TV on the Saturday. Watched Basic Instinct 2 on the Sunday and took the TV back to the shop on Monday. Never again (shudder).

11. Wow, really, I can surf the internet on that tiny screen?

Mobile broadband is all very well, but even on the iPhone you're still squinting at tiny letters, numbers and pictures on an itsy-bitsy screen.

Don't they do a Large Print version like they do at the library? What about throwing in corrective Laser eye surgery? Mind you, that's not all it's cracked up to be either.

Now I'll tell you an itsy-bitsy I do like: The Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. That's what you call a sight for sore eyes.

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