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We're entering 2010 with all kinds of new gadgets, gizmos, and tech tools, but let's not forget that we've lost a few things this decade, too.

HuffPostTech took a look back at 12 things that became obsolete this decade.

From fax machines to landline phones check them out (and get nostalgic) in the slideshow below!

Vote for the gadgets you'll miss -- and those you think we're better off without.

Calling

Text messaging, BlackBerry Messaging, Instant Messaging, Tweeting, Google Wave-ing, and emailing have taken over communication. The popularity of text messaging is gradually edging out calling. The AP reports that Americans sent more than 110 billion text messages in December 2008, double the number in the last month of 2007.

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Comments

[MikeyG]

One more thing that became obsolete: The clunky, web 1.0, 1990's style "10 pictures of" display system that The Huffington Post uses to present multiple picture articles like this one.

The only reason to reload the whole web page to display each new picture in the series is that their web designer only read Chapter 1 of the "HTML for Idiots" book he is now using to prop up that short table leg.

That or Huffpo is using this crude technique to artificially inflate their page view stats for their advertisers. Hmmmm.....

[Sherman Yellen]

Nothing can replace the Polaroid camera or the new Fuji version. Just take a picture of a small grand-child and watch her face glow with wonder as the film develops before her eyes. Magic. No digital camera can do that. Some stuff doesn't get better - only more convenient - and not all change is great. I agree about the usefulness of land line phones.. When my battery driven phones give up the ghost - and they often do - the land-line is still there to take calls. In fact I am considering replacing all my phones with the land-line ones. There is a special joy in just picking up a phone and answering it, not having to press the on button to take the call and the off button when its over. If all this sounds like the rantings of a techno-phobe - Guilty as charged Judge.

[Carolyn Davis]

I luvv my landline.

[Carolyn Davis]

Newspapers... what's that. Oh I vaguely remember a ragsheet called the Cincinnati Enquirer is it still around.

[JBS]

My local paper abandoned me at the beginning of the decade, so by the middle of the decade I'd abandoned it. Looking at where they are today, they needed me more than I needed them.

[Carolyn Davis]

Tigertextgate has put all "Playas" back on the phone in a phone booth.

[Jeff489]

I agree with dial up and wires but I think the rest will be around a while. Next you will be saying that the Post Office is obselete. For your information this decade doesn't end till next year on Dec 31, 2010, so you have some time to think about it. Happy New Year and enjoy the last year of this decade.

[srobert]

When I was a kid I made fun of people who were my parents age who wouldn't "get with it" and move into the 1970s. They kept doing things the "old-fashioned" way. Now I'm 46. I'm still using a lot of this obsolete stuff, modem, CD's, etc. I still think of them as "new". I have become my father.

[lpeggy]

"I have become my father."

Don't feel bad, it happens to all of us. :-)

[onenvrnos]

It might be hard to believe, but we folks in the rural areas often have to keep our land lines because cell phones don't work (rural customers don't bring in the big $$$$, so thus no towers)....

[Lagrangian]

Wires?? You've got to be kidding! And the photo shows a power connector such as to be found inside a computer. Nobody since the mad Nicola Tesla has proposed anything so preposterous.

[SleepNewYork]

True, people are living now in a virtual world.

But are they virtual "local communities" like we are experimenting with on our forum?

[weatherwaxx]

Somebody's idea of what is obsolete is kind of funny. Hearing a loved one's voice is not the same as txt, thx. I'd rather have my CDs than MP3 files. And a land-line... sorry, if your power goes out for a couple of days, unless you're extremely resourceful and have a solar recharger, you're SOL. Don't they remember what happened in Katrina? Cellphones were useless.

[JBS]

Keep the gas tank full and keep the car charger in the glove box.

Land-lines fared no better in New Orleans than the cell network, although the cell network was back in service sooner.

[ChrisR]

CDs are not obsolete.
MP3s can never duplicate the CD sound. The compression software loses all the high-end. Sounds okay but is second-rate compared to the original .wav files. Until that changes realize that all the ear-bud iPod dweebs are selling themselves short and destroying their hearing - good luck with that!

p.s. LPs (marked as obsolete 20 years ago) are also still selling.

[Lagrangian]

There is FLAC and other lossless formats, which is all I would consider for serious listening. But I think the point is the paradigm shift from a piece of hardware you own, paralleled by "ebook" readers like Kindle. Some pundits think we are moving to all "virtual" media, others think there will always be hard copies around. I think it's an alarming surrender of control of media by their consumers, but ultimately it may happen. As "digital rights management" becomes more sophisticated, you may be able to buy music, movies or books but there will be no guarantee the keys to unlock them will be available tomorrow. In one stunning piece of irony I heard about the novel 1984 was marketed for Kindle but then there was a dispute over rights, so overnight the purchased copies were redacted--down a memory hole, so to speak.

I have a sizable collection of LP's and CD's I have no intention of giving up (eg. digitizing). But I'm no spring chicken.

[zenlikejen]

Well, I'm not exactly ancient, but I too won't give up my CD's entirely and will still buy them when I can...although I rip them to my portable hard drive and take them with me to work now rather than the cumbersome stack of plastic cases so I don't scratch them up. :-)

[Cynth]

I thought that first slide of obsolete things was Wolf Blitzer. Got my vote.

[ebroadcast]

writing personal checks!

[Eric M Gormley]

Landline phones obsolete? Oh, Huffington Post, as if there was ever any doubt that you didn't reside in a coastal state annually threatened by hurricanes.