Going retro in tech is cool!

Ready to go retro? Retro tech, I mean.

It seems many people are not ready to pay the price for the latest and greatest and tech, especially when there are so many items available that were "the latest and greatest" at one time.

Take national defense, for example.

It would seem that some of the nations in the world are investing in retro tech instead of the latest and great thing to come from Microsoft or Apple or even Google.

The Portable One website cites "The Guardian" newspaper from the United Kingdom as saying "most nuclear deterrent systems operated by the US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, are run using a variant, or several thereof, of Microsoft Windows XP as the operating system, and even older systems."

So, while Microsoft pushes us to upgrade our home computer systems to Windows 10 and while Apple pushes our company to upgrade our Macintosh computers to the latest and greatest version of the Apple operating system, "El Capitan," the world's leaders are sticking with, not the latest, not the operating system before that, but with Windows XP as the platform to run their nuclear deterrent systems on.

Long ago in tech years (probably six months ago) we were told we had to ditch Windows XP because Microsoft wouldn't support it any longer. Apparently, it runs just fine without Windows support.

Take the high cost of the new Samsung and Apple smartphones.

I wrote a column not long ago saying I wouldn't pay $30 per month for 30 months ($900) for a smartphone and it still goes.

But, I went to an AT&T retailer and found a ZTE smartphone and an Asus tablet that works on the cellular data network for about $50 total cost. For both.

No, it's not the latest and greatest but it does every bit as well as the smartphone my new phone replaced and I have a new tablet as well.

We're even going retro- tech for entertainment.

We dusted off an old Atari 2600. Guess what, "Ms. Pacman" and "Missile Defender" and the other games are just as much fun as they ever were.

Have we "advanced" so far that retro tech is cool?