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> Desktop printers will have the same demise as cable tv and landline phones: quality will continue to go down and prices up as providers squeeze any remaining

> Desktop printers will have the same demise as cable tv and landline phones: quality will continue to go down and prices up as providers squeeze any remaining profits out of the business. Landline phone-call quality has always been and continues to be infinitely better than anything people are using today to replace it. I can't believe that in 2021 people aren't actively revolting over how useless smartphones are at actually doing phone duties.

mcpherrinm 5y ago
I guess the voice quality is fine for me. Maybe that's because of whatever "HD Voice" that my carrier claims to have. The reality is, I rarely make phone calls anymore either way. Almost everything is a video call now, whether on Zoom or Google Meet or Facetime or Whatsapp. Even if I get a "land line", it's just an expensive VOIP line from my ISP.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Landlines are VoIP in most cases now. In Europe most DSL customers' "landlines" are actually plugged into an FXS port which simulates a landline with dialtone to an analog phone but in reality it all goes over IP and SIP. Even if we assume you've got a real landline, it's most likely that your call will transit over IP anyway at some point unless you're calling your neighbor who's on the same phone exchange. The reason for the perceived higher quality is most likely because it all goes over stable wired networks and not due to the analog nature of the landline, and so can be replicated with a SIP deskphone, computer or even smartphone as long as your network is stable (most consumer-grade network gear is crap and most Wi-Fi connections often operate in a degraded mode that appears "fine" for browsing but fails for interactive latency-sensitive tasks such as calls).
NavinF 5y ago
Can not relate. If you have a good mic, decent internet, and your friends use Discord (or any other app that uses Opus), call quality is infinitely better than landline.
- ipython 5y ago
  The real difference is the old landline is natively full duplex and the latency is practically nil. Sound quality wasn’t as nice as the codecs available now, but interactive conversations were so much nicer with full duplex and low latency. Impossible to get with a cell phone. I’ll also add that the iPhone in particular makes me so angry sometimes. I’ll have a phone number plain as friggin day on the screen - in an email or a web page - and there is _no way_ to call it by just tapping it. Oh no, you have to hold down, hope you highlight at the right point, drag to select the number, then switch to the dialer, hunt around for the hidden “paste” location, and then hit dial!!! Omg it frustrates me to no end. Oh and speaking of frustrating, you can’t beat the catharsis you feel after slamming down the receiver after a particularly frustrating call

mcpherrinm 5y ago

I guess the voice quality is fine for me. Maybe that's because of whatever "HD Voice" that my carrier claims to have. The reality is, I rarely make phone calls anymore either way. Almost everything is a video call now, whether on Zoom or Google Meet or Facetime or Whatsapp. Even if I get a "land line", it's just an expensive VOIP line from my ISP.

Nextgrid 5y ago

Landlines are VoIP in most cases now. In Europe most DSL customers' "landlines" are actually plugged into an FXS port which simulates a landline with dialtone to an analog phone but in reality it all goes over IP and SIP. Even if we assume you've got a real landline, it's most likely that your call will transit over IP anyway at some point unless you're calling your neighbor who's on the same phone exchange. The reason for the perceived higher quality is most likely because it all goes over stable wired networks and not due to the analog nature of the landline, and so can be replicated with a SIP deskphone, computer or even smartphone as long as your network is stable (most consumer-grade network gear is crap and most Wi-Fi connections often operate in a degraded mode that appears "fine" for browsing but fails for interactive latency-sensitive tasks such as calls).

NavinF 5y ago

Can not relate. If you have a good mic, decent internet, and your friends use Discord (or any other app that uses Opus), call quality is infinitely better than landline.

ipython 5y ago
The real difference is the old landline is natively full duplex and the latency is practically nil. Sound quality wasn’t as nice as the codecs available now, but interactive conversations were so much nicer with full duplex and low latency. Impossible to get with a cell phone. I’ll also add that the iPhone in particular makes me so angry sometimes. I’ll have a phone number plain as friggin day on the screen - in an email or a web page - and there is _no way_ to call it by just tapping it. Oh no, you have to hold down, hope you highlight at the right point, drag to select the number, then switch to the dialer, hunt around for the hidden “paste” location, and then hit dial!!! Omg it frustrates me to no end. Oh and speaking of frustrating, you can’t beat the catharsis you feel after slamming down the receiver after a particularly frustrating call