Wasted $200 on a "revolutionary" pocket modem that still needs a landline

I got suckered by one of those old 1990s predictions that portable internet was just around the corner. There was this gadget called the PocketNet modem I dropped $200 on back in 1996. The ads showed a guy emailing from a beach, but in real life you had to plug it into a phone jack at a motel. I tried using it at a bus station payphone once and got yelled at by some lady waiting to call her mom. The thing worked maybe two times before I gave up and sold it for twenty bucks at a garage sale. Anyone else fall for those pre-smartphone portable internet dreams?

2 comments

2 Comments

nora_wells5817d ago

People really expected dial-up to work on a beach, huh?

the_robin17d ago

I used to roll my eyes at people complaining about old tech promises, thinking they just didn't know how to use stuff right. But then I remembered I actually bought one of those early Palm modems for my Pilot in 1998, the one with the little flip antenna. It was supposed to download email from anywhere, but it needed a nearby phone jack AND you had to manually dial a number every time. I sat in a McDonald's parking lot for an hour trying to get it to work, and a kid on a bike asked if I was using a calculator to hack the FBI. That thing went straight into a drawer and I never touched it again. So yeah, I was wrong, those old portable internet gadgets were basically overpriced bricks.