Jonny McCambridge: A tale of two watches and the new/ancient laptop

I've often thought my wife was trying to tell me something when she presented me with the new purchase.

Stylistically, this watch was very different. The substantial lump of black plastic and metal was conspicuous when it adorned my wrist. It was also, for the time, high-tech. I knew this must be the case because of the abundance of mysterious buttons on either side of the dial. I also knew that I would never know what function most of those buttons served.

The watch did several things. It could be set to tell the hour in different time-zones, which seemed a nice gimmick, although I never found use for being able to simultaneously know the exact time in both Belfast and Brisbane.

More particularly, this watch was designed for runners and was able to store a massive amount of data. In order to achieve this, it linked up to GPS. I was rather intimidated by this technology at first, but once I became used to the concept, it transformed my running habits. Now, I was able to tell the exact distance I had jogged, how long the run had taken and the pace I was travelling at .

In order to turn the watch to GPS mode, I had to find the correct button and then wait for it to link up with a satellite hundreds of miles above. I quickly learnt that if I stayed completely still and ensured I was outside, with no tree branches overhead, this helped the process.

Even so, it still could take up to 10 minutes before a satellite joined up to my watch. This meant I was often found in the peculiar position, early in the morning, of standing stock-still in my front garden, with my watch arm stretched high above my head as I patiently waited for an accommodating satellite to pass by.

Over a number of years, the watch was my trusty partner as I ran thousands of miles. It was on my wrist when I completed the Belfast Marathon, ensuring that I kept at the planned pace for the entire distance.

However, as I got older and my fitness suffered, my usage of the running watch diminished. After more than 10 years, it seemed to have reached the finish line and was put away to gather dust.

More recently, my son has developed an interest in running and I have been dragged along behind him. It became clear quite early that he would likely need his own way of pacing his runs because I was not able to keep up.

So, I suggested he should have a running watch. He liked this idea. I mentioned that I already had one. He seemed less enthused by this.

Undeterred, I set off to find my old timepiece, which I had not used in more than six years. After several hours of searching, it was discovered, bizarrely, in a box which had previously contained one of my wife's scented candles. It now smelt strongly of cinnamon. More time was spent locating the charger, restoring power to the old watch and then blindly hitting multiple buttons until all the data in its memory was deleted.

Then I went in to the garden, stuck my arm above my head, and after the usual 10 minutes, a GPS link was secured.

I was amazed that it still worked and ran excitedly to tell my son.

“Look what I've found for you!”

He looked at the clunky watch on my wrist and began to laugh. It was as if I had presented him a sundial once used by Nero.

“No thanks daddy, I think we'll stick with the plan to buy a new one.”

And so it was. At Christmas my son got his new running watch. I have to admit it is superior to mine in every way. It is lighter, brighter and more elegant. The GPS connection works instantly and it links up with an app on his phone to provide a dizzying amount of services and data. It more or less does everything short of getting him out of bed in the morning.

My wife saw me admiring and trying on my son's new watch. She suggested I might like one too. I thought about it for a moment before telling her that I was happy with the one I already had.

I was writing this column about the two watches on my laptop when I lost connection and (annoyingly), several hundred words which I had not yet saved. Unable to get the device working again, I messaged the IT helpdesk for the company I work for. A friendly man in England phoned me within minutes.

He seemed to be struggling at first to identify the problem. Then he asked me to tell him the serial number of the computer. When I did, he began to gasp and splutter. “But that machine is six-years-old,” he eventually expressed with obvious amazement.

I was about to respond in a positive way, thinking this was a good thing. In my worldview, the laptop had barely been broken in after being removed from the plastic. But then I realised his point was the opposite. Like my son when he saw my watch, he was remarking that the device was obsolete. He was left close to speechless that I was working on a device that had been in use for six years.

I suppose the point is that I'll stick with the old laptop and watch for as long as I'm able, even though I risk being left behind by technology. We live in a disposable society, where bin and replace has usurped repair and adapt.

Sometimes, the world moves faster than I'm able to keep up with.