Remember when you had to wait for a magazine to see a new phone review?

I was cleaning out my old room at my parents' place last month and found a stack of tech magazines from like 2008. I used to read every single word of those phone reviews, looking at the tiny pictures and the spec charts they printed. You'd get maybe one big review a month, and that was it. Now, if a new phone comes out, I can watch five different video reviews before lunch, see real photos people took with it, and read a hundred comments about the battery life. The change happened for me around 2012 when I got a better internet plan and could actually stream video. It's wild how much more you know before you even touch a gadget now. But sometimes I miss the surprise of finally holding something after waiting for the magazine to show up. Does anyone else feel like we have too much info before we even buy something?

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sethh586mo ago

Found an old PC Gamer from 1999 in my attic last week. The big news was a preview for some graphics card called a GeForce 256. They had like two blurry screenshots and a paragraph saying it would change everything. I saved my allowance for months based on that one article. Now you'd just watch a benchmark video that same day.

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andrew7786mo ago

Remember buying a 3dfx Voodoo card after reading a single magazine review. @maryh96 is right, they sold us on pure hype back then.

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maryh966mo ago

Man, the hype back then was so strong it could sell you on two pixels and a dream.

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