On my first visit to Canada, I felt it was behind with technology from the UK. I thought things like telephones and answering machines looked quite 'old fashioned'....then i saw a TV and this changed my mind altogether...i had never seen a large screen here in the UK at the time......so who's ahead?

Anyone remember the good old days when if you wanted to know if something was in stock, u simply rang the store? I just called Comet to see if they have an item in stock. I had to press about 3 buttons first to get to the right person, explain, listen to classical music while they checked....they replied with a 'no' then said but we can put u thru to the store to check if u like.!!!...so i rang PC world and they said "can you call back in an hour, our systems are down" LOL

It all depends on whether the technology is appropriate. Personally I prefer Canada being behind in devices like cell phones which I find intrusive but something like GPS is a great help.

i hate mobile phones too...what a rip off!! I saw (u wont believe this) a woman jogger trip this morning and go flying thru the air.as she hit the ground..she shouted "oh my god.....me fone!!"

Interesting topic! My last Euro trip was to Prague, not to the UK so this may be off the mark but I made the follwoing observation: they are way ahead of Canada in the use of mobile phones, texting (SMS) etc..I simply did not run into a single person who didn't have a cell phone and they spend an awful lot of time sending SMS messages and staying in touch via their cell phones. OTOH, I have some friends here who still don't even have a mobile phone and if they do, it often sits in the glove compartment and they wouldn't even know what an SMS is.

While TV sizes were smaller (not as many large screens or home entertainement centres), the European picture quality is markedly better. Also, while I have just one remote here for everything, they all seemed to have five or six of them and turning the system on or off you needed a PhD

Where Canada is unquestionably ahead is in PC and broadband penetration, as well as email and VoIP technology. It's not that it's not known there but stuff that's completely normal here (broadband internet access) is expensive and out of reach for most people. Consequently, email and net browsing is something I and all my friends here do all the time but over there it's still something of a novelty (well, maybe not a novelty - just not as common)

And, strangely enough, though cell phones are highly developed, the land line system there is awful. But, as I say, this may not be pertinent to the UK - though I have a hunch it may be

GTR

Mobiles are called Cells here, they expensive to buy and run, as you pay to receive aswell as send a voice call.
Considering the terrain, reception is not bad.
There is no cell culture here with teens, as is in Europe, because it`s so expensive!

TV`s are generally cable in cities, sat` in towns and beyond.
Cable dictates your viewing more than sat`.
But storms, wind, rain and snow knock out sat` sometimes.

A lot of Canadian products are made in Canada, they are big and heavy, which means they will last longer.

That's probably because a locall cell call in Canada covers about the same territory as many European countries. So a a Canadian cell user you finish up with more roaming and long distance charges.

I think Canada has caught up a lot with Cell Phones. Bell has a 1X network in Toronto GTA area now for stuff like web browsing and the phones have the camreas and videocameras and all that stuff. Maybe not as SMS centric but that's a good thing. Don't forget the famous Blackberry is a Canadian product as well. North America was late on Cell PHones I think because of the extent of their networks and the sheer scale of upgrading from analog to digital, especially in rural areas that are still analog because of the sheer size and number of cells you'd need for coverage. They were way ahead with the internet though, my wife got a cable modem back in the mid 90's with braodband when I all I could get was dialup in the UK.

The problem with TV is legacy, NTSC is just an older and worse standard than PAL. However the networks here are being really quick on the uptake of digital HD TV and so if you have a decent HD TV and digital cable/satellite you can get TV with twice the resolution of PAL. I think the TV culutre here is responsible for the huge number of giant projection TV's compared to the UK. My wife remembers watching a giant projection TV at her friends house when she was a kid and all we had in the UK was probably a 14" colour portable with 4 channels.

Hi! I'm new in Canada and originally come from Asia. It seems to me Canada is 'so last years' when it comes to overall electronic stuff. Handphones here really make me feel like re-living few years back .

Life's a bitch.