Gallery: 9 (More) Gadgets That Prove You're a Hard-Core Early Adopter
01sony-minidisc
Following our last round-up of gear that profiled the unapologetic early adopter, Wired readers took to our comments board and Facebook wall with suggestions for items we missed. Well, you spoke and we listened. As promised, here are nine more dubious technologies that only the most devout technophile would have jumped on. Functionality be damned. Give us hot newness! __Sony MiniDisc__ The MiniDisc, Sony’s proprietary music format, was uncomfortably wedged between audio CD players and hard drive-based MP3 players, and thus sat in limbo as the future of portable consumer audio unfolded. MiniDisc was a proprietary format (almost always a negative in the big scheme of consumer adoption), yet some people still bought in. Sony sold the MiniDisc Walkman right up until July 2011, and, yes, Sony is still producing MiniDiscs for simple data storage. It's not a bad run considering the MiniDisc debuted in 1992. Hardcore advocates have somehow kept the format relevant, and the discs have grown more capacious over the years (you can fit up to a gigabyte of music on a Hi-MD disc). As Matthew Moulton points out, the MiniDisc was much more popular in Japan than in the United States, which accounts for inexplicably solid sales figures right up until this year. It seems that everyone who bought MiniDisc systems wanted to get their money's worth.
02sharp-wizard-oz-7000
__Sharp Wizard OZ-7000__ Reader Gunnar Miller gets credit for pointing us to the *original* PDA, a device that, as Morty Seinfeld put it, wasn’t much more than a tip calculator. Lacking a QWERTY keyboard, entering phone numbers and calendaring events into the Sharp Wizard was a pain, and the narrow portrait orientation of the device could accommodate only the tiniest of screens. Not even an expansion card for a thesaurus could save this thing from the onslaught of true, full-featured PDAs. *Photo: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oz-7000_open.jpg)*
03apple-newton-2
__Apple Newton__ R P Bird remembered the *Simpsons* episode in which Dolph brandishes his Newton MessagePad. With the stylus, he writes, “Beat up Martin,” which the device interprets as “eat up Martha.” In a frustration felt by anyone who actually used Apple’s PDA, Kearney throws the thing at Springfield's most bully-worthy pawn. The $800 Newton MessagePad of 1993 may have been a failure, but it still deserves credit for being a pioneer in the PDA category. The $300 PalmPilot, released in 1997, learned from the Newton's mistakes, and succeeded thanks to a reasonable battery life, accurate handwriting recognition, and fluid syncing with a PC. *Photo: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Newton.jpg)*
04quadraphonic-music
__Quad-Sound Audio__ Back during the Nixon era, having four channels of independent sound seemed like an aural dream, the next step up from stereo. Record companies put out specially formatted (and expensive) 8-track tapes to accommodate Quad, the first commercially available iteration of surround sound. Vinyl quad-sound followed shortly thereafter. But if they wanted to experience Blue Öyster Cult in full quad glory, early adopters needed to buy special amps, speakers, and, of course, source material. As each manufacturer fought to keep others from snagging the title of "industry standard," consumers got frustrated and quad-channel content development plummeted. By 1976, all but die-hard holdouts reverted back to stereo.
05palmpilot
__PalmPilot__ They had their reign, sure, but the personal digital assistant will ultimately be remembered as a transition device preceding the era of do-all smartphones. Indeed, the first smartphones pushed PDAs into obsolescence for all but the most loyal Palm fanatics. Back in 1999, when desktop towers were the primary platform for online access, 3Com's Palm VII could browse E-Trade or espn.com without a phone jack. Of course, you had to pony up $600 and live in one of the major cities covered by BellSouth's wireless data network. Still, any early adopter worth his salt had one on his belt loop.
06virtual-i-o-iglasses
__Virtual i-O iglasses__ Using a stereoscopic display and a system that tracked head movement, people willing to don the glasses and accompanying glove could experience virtual reality at home -- assuming that "reality" was a mass of large polygons moving at a molasses-slow frame rate. The glasses’ two 0.7-inch LCD screens produced a resolution of around 320 x 200, which, when released in 1995, was enough to make the EF 2000 flight simulator slightly more exciting. However, at the price of a quality monitor ($600), only the most faithful virtual reality geeks were plunking down the coin for these spectacles.
07300-baud-modems-2
__300 Baud Modems__ Think your Netscape and Geocities experience gives you early adopter cred? Reader ChuckDarwin rocked a 300-baud modem on his Commodore 64. These devices connected to the Internet before there was a name for the Internet, sending text snippets over an RJ11 phone jack. To get a sense of how speedy an online connection circa 1964 could be, blogger phreakmonkey connected to Wikipedia using a Livermore Data Systems Model A modem. Predating an integrated phone jack socket, the Livermore uses two transducers, into which one placed the telephone reciever. Sorry, it didn't deliver racy pictures of Grace Kelly -- graphics at 300 baud were out of the question. *Photo: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Acoustic_coupler_20041015_175456_1.jpg)*
ASSOCIATED PRESS08web-tv
__WebTV__ In 1997, it seemed like the next logical step to integrate the web with television. Everything looks better on a big screen, right? A WebTV unit could be had for under $200, a fraction of the cost of a modest PC, not including the $20 monthly subscription. Problem was, even with Microsoft's deep pockets for hardware development and marketing, WebTV's timing made success impossible. At a time when most of the Internet was still text-based, reading from the couch was unappealingly difficult. The lack of a CD-ROM drive meant no *Quake II* or Quicken, and there was no option to actually save any information found online. Above, Steve Perlman, chief executive officer of WebTV Networks, Inc., introduces his company's new product at a news conference in New York on July 10, 1996. *Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP*
09nintendo-virtual-boy
__Nintendo Virtual Boy__ Circa 1994, this was Nintendo's bizarre attempt at 3-D graphics. No, not the kind that uses polygons. The Virtual Boy used parallax barrier technology to deliver a bizarre interpretation of stereoscopic 3-D. Instead of full color graphics, everything was rendered in mono-color red LED. It gets worse. The software library was exceedingly meager. You had to position your face against the headset, and this led to neck strain. And Nintendo even included an option for the console to automatically pause every 30 minutes in the service of reducing eyestrain and other medical issues. Wow, *that* sounds fun!
