Dating myself

The BBC made some poor kid cart around a vintage Walkman instead of his usual iPod, and describe his experiences. If you, like me, remember the Walkman, the entire article is an exercise in making yourself feel old.

Some choice quotes:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape.

I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

there were a number of buttons protruding from the top and sides of this device to provide functions such as "rewinding" and "fast-forwarding" (remember those?)

I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly

it is clearly evident that the music sounds significantly different than when played on an MP3 player, mainly because of the hissy backtrack and odd warbly noises on the Walkman

it's not all a one-way street when you line up a Walkman against an iPod. The Walkman actually has two headphone sockets, labelled A and B, meaning the little music that I have, I can share with friends.

[BBC via Slashdot]