In tight times, older technologies still deliver

Sony's PlayStation 2 debuted in Japan eight years ago. (Toshiyuki Aizawa/Reuters/File 2000)

Here comes a Christmas of disappointment. There's not much cash in the bank or headroom on the credit cards, and even those who are employed wonder when their good fortune will end.

Some people derive holiday cheer from limitless sources - worship, perhaps, or helping out at a homeless shelter. For the rest of us, it's time to cut back on the merriment and the technology spending.

If you're in the market for a new TV set, you're likely thinking plasma or LCD. They're gorgeous and get cheaper by the day, and they're about the only kind of TV available at retailers like Best Buy and Radio Shack.

But old-fashioned cathode-ray tube, CRT, sets still work fine. New CRTs come equipped with digital tuners. So even though they don't deliver true high-resolution broadcasts, they serve up a clearer picture than the old analog sets. And a new CRT will work fine when all US broadcasts go digital Feb. 17.

CRT televisions are still sold at discount stores like Wal-Mart and Target. "It's because they know their audience and they know the price point their audience is looking for," said Megan Pollock, spokeswoman for the Consumer Electronics Association.

The discounters carry 27-inch CRT sets priced between $250 and $300; by contrast, a 26-inch high-definition LCD set will run $400 to $450. Besides, by choosing a CRT you will be buying a collector's item. Pollock said that US consumers this year are expected to buy 35 percent more flat-panel TVs compared with 2007, but sales of CRT sets will drop more than 40 percent. At this rate, picture-tube TVs won't be around for many more Christmases.

Other older technologies refuse to die. Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 game console comes to mind. Created nine years ago, the PS 2 came to dominate the home videogame market, selling 140 million units.

Sony has since developed a far more powerful gaming box, the PS 3. But the company keeps on cranking out PS 2s, and people keep on buying them, with good reason.

While the base model PS 3 costs $400, you can get an entry-level PS 2 for $129. To get the most out of it, you should pay another $20 for a memory card for saving game data. That's $150, far less than the PS 3 price, $100 cheaper than the popular Nintendo Wii console, and $50 less than the basic Xbox 360 from Microsoft.

If you're a huge fan of violent games, you're better off with the Xbox. John Koller, director of hardware marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment America, said software developers no longer write the hottest shooter games for the PS 2. But it's still a fine platform for family-friendly games like Lego Batman and Guitar Hero. And every year we get new PS 2 editions of the top sports titles like the Madden pro football games and NBA Live.

While Sony this year halted production of picture-tube TV sets, it plans to keep manufacturing the PS 2. "There's no current end in sight," said Koller. And the catalog of 1,500 PS 2 games will continue to grow. The PS 2 may be old technology, but it's far from obsolete.

If you want technology that's both old and obsolete, consider the humble telephone modem, which lets computers communicate over standard phone lines. I started using modems in the 1980s, when they could move just 300 bits of data per second. These days, I use a broadband connection that's 20,000 times faster.

And yet, you can still buy telephone modems for $30 to $50. Indeed, modems are already built into millions of home computers. And people are using them. While 55 percent of America's home Internet users have broadband service, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, about 10 percent still rely on dial-up service.

Don't feel sorry for them. Today's dial-up modems can download data at about 48,000 bits per second - still slow, but good enough for e-mail and basic Internet surfing. Besides, dial-up service is cheap. A broadband connection generally costs $30 or more a month. United Online Inc.'s NetZero dial-up service costs just $10 a month, or $15 for an accelerated version that uses software gimmicks to make Web pages download faster. United Online also offers 10 hours a month of advertiser-supported dial-up service for free.

United Online's president, Mark Goldston, said "a meaningful percentage" of his customers are former broadband users hit by the economic slowdown. "There's a bunch of people in the last six to 12 months who have definitely decided to trade down," he said.

So don't feel too bad about disconnecting the cable modem to save a few bucks. Dial-up is still good enough to deliver news, job-hunting tips, and morale-boosting e-mails from friends. And it's still Christmastime, when hope counts for a lot more than bandwidth.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.