Warming up to electronic devices

For the longest time I used one of those really old Nokia phones that could take water and hard falls and keep on working. When Mark got an upgrade, I happily updated to his "old¨¨ Nokia C3. I use my phone to talk to people, send text messages, and recently, take a million pictures.

He tried to convince me to get a smartphone a million times, but I am against wastefulness and the phone I had was still working (even though it was starting to become very slow because of software issues / being old). To lure me into it he installed whatsapp on his phone and added my sister and some close friends, and slowly I started liking the interaction. Free, instant messaging to close-ones who live across the ocean? That was difficult to resist. Even then, I just used it on his phone and kept resisting.

Same story for an e-reader. In his endless battle against my love for (keeping) books and hoarding of sentimental junk I keep in pretty tin boxes, he had been trying to convince me to get an e-reader already and stop collecting books, which take storage space and gather dust. I still love books and hanging out at bookshops is one of my favorite activities. Well, for my birthday last year he surprised me with a pretty, functional one and though I was happy with it, it took me a long long time to start using it. I would look at it, pretend I had to read the manual before using it, found reading the manual of an electronic device pretty boring and ironically... had the thing gathering dust.

To make it more "appetizing" we ordered a very pretty cover that looks like an old book (from Klevercase) and we downloaded magazines, articles, a couple of books. He made me discover Pocket, a very handy website that is like Pinterest but for reading material.

I guess it took a holiday, but when we were traveling it was the perfect way to read during long bus-rides and I have slowly come to love it.

As for the smartphone... he chose and ordered one for me and one day a little box arrived with it. I have to say it is quite easy to use (one of my reasons to persevere on using Nokia phones was that I knew the system and I am very, very lazy when it comes to learn how machines and  new systems work) and I love being connected. If only the camera would be better and faster...

Are you crazy about technology or do you like your gadgets old-school and (a bit) outdated*?

* Though I do not think, and I certainly do not hope, that printed books will ever be outdated. What about the charm of a printed newspaper, the large kind, with a morning coffee and croissant, sitting at a sunny terrace, waiting for the day to start? Or picking up a glossy magazine at the airport? Smelling old books at a library that used to be a hospital? Those are real pleasures!