What are your worst tech purchases?
What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
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What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
Easily 1000% my Samsung TV.
Each update somehow makes it slower, it always loads up whatever the Samsung TV app thing is before it will do anything with a menu so you can get out of it, I believe it requires a Samsung account before it will allows you to do anything, and every now and then it locks up so hard that I have to factory reset it to get it to work again.
I refuse to buy anything from Samsung ever again.
Ah, there’s the problem — you connected it to the internet. I’ve had decent experiences with Samsung TVs, but I just plug them into an apple tv and let the box do the work. I’ve had to see their UI on a couple occasions though and yeah it’s trash.
same with my LG. I never connected it to the internet directly. I chose instead to plug in an rpi
Last TV I had (besides my current CRT for retro games) I used an RPi 4 (later upgraded to the 5) for a media center and a steam link (purchased for $1 during a bundle sale) so I could game off of it from my desktop. I did also have a Chromecast but honestly with a wireless keyboard I would have been fine with just the steam link.
Every consumer TV is subsidized by the advertisements they (plan to) put on it and your data they'll sell. I bought a mid-range Samsung TV last year, used it for TV, movies, gaming, and I love it. But I haven't connected it to the internet, I use a separate device I can easily discard if need be. Not blaming you because it's counter-intuitive, but you can't update consumer TVs. They know it will live in your... living... room for several years and want to make money off displaying ads. Do you really think they'll update it to be less intrusive and show fewer ads so they make less money!?? Obviously, I just guessed right; I'm not a genius, nor do I have precognition. I've even heard stories about TVs connecting themselves to open networks, but I'm not sure sure I believe them...
Why oh why is your Samsung TV still connected to the WiFi? I kicked mine off WiFi within three months of getting the device and I’ve used it for four years now and it works like a charm!
Not a shill, but I honestly love my Samsung TV. I took it out of the box, plugged in an HDMI cable to connect it to my PC, and use it as a monitor. I've never connected it to my wifi, so it has no internet access. I've never had to enter my Samsung account info to use it.
Similar experience here. Good panel, solid colours, good angles and handles sunny rooms well. However, TV OS’s are one of the most asinine things to exist though. Never connect that thing to the internet if you can help it and it’ll work great.
Same, no account, no internet connects to my steamdeck and works perfectly
I love my Sony. Iirc, it wanted Internet for initial setup, but I unplugged the Ethernet cable soon after. It just works and displays what I want without issue.
My girlfriend brought a tcl roku special when she moved in. That blinked a very bright white LED unless it was connected to the internet. And now whenever I turn it on, it screams and displayed a fucked up picture from my media device until I go and use the "restart tv" option.
Fucking POS.
If you haven't already done this: wipe all the apps and run the cache-cleaning or whatever it is in the system menu. That should get it back down to where the memory and storage aren't at 100% and fixes most of the problems. I've kept my 2017 Samsung usable that way. Also, if you have a pi-hole you can set it to use that as the DNS and block the advertising domains, retaining most of the smart functionality without all the crap.
I heard turning off Samsung live tv and removing the app helps the performance tremendously, I have yet to try it as my wife for some reason is willing to tolerate a menu that takes over a minute to navigate one click at a time so she can keep the live tv feature, it is unusable to me
This is standard Samsung TV behaviour.
I had one and never again. Friend only just got one a few months ago and already loathes it.
I got a Google TV box and disconnected my Samsung TV from the internet. A week later I got an email about how connecting them helps me because it sends the data and my preferences back to Samsung.
... It sends thousands of information pings each day.
We have one of the Samsung frame TVs, it's a nice TV, it fits a specific need for us in a bit of a weird spot in a bedroom where a regular TV would look out of place.
But man is the software trash. It's laggy, a lot of the apps seem really poorly-optimized, and half the settings are just randomly unavailable for no apparent reason.
And since I had to install a box in the wall to hide the one connect box behind it, I kind of don't want to use it with another streaming device, something about putting too much stuff in that box kind of rubs me the wrong way.
That's a software issue and user error. Don't use the "smart" features is rule one for a consumer television.
I bought a Samsung for the display not the interface. I'm not sure if I've ever really even seen the built in interface, maybe when I initially set it up.
I bought an HD DVD player as a youth. I don’t think I need to explain further
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Wow I never knew about the AACS encryption key stuff.
I've always wondered how much piracy really hurts companies or individuals. I mean, it seems to me even with piracy happening these corpos are making bank.
This kills the Digg
Same. Young and stupid, and I already had the Xbox...
This is incredibly funny to me because I remember coming home for a holiday and seeing a new Blu-ray player under my brother's PS3. My dad was so excited about it.
Use it for ripping.
That thing is long gone
You have clearly not been to the library.
Is... The library bookstore full of HD DVDs people have donated? O.o
Well, true, maybe not HD, haha, but I was just referring to how to continue breathing life into a DVD player. But yeah, I didn't even know HD DVDs existed, given Blu-Ray...
Haha yeah, I think HD-DVDs were a bit more budget friendly compared to Blurays, but they were the extremely short-lived "team red" in the format war, and ultimately they weren't a huge improvement to upgrade to, unlike Blu-rays when everybody was jumping to 1080p.
But yeah! Absolutely! Hit up the library and enjoy those DVDs (and Blu-rays)!
I was just having a discussion with a coworker who was wondering why one would keep a DVD player around, and I basically explained how not owning your media gets it ripped away from you sooner or later.
Libraries sometimes even get DVD versions of streamed TV shows and movies that don't get a retail disc release.
I don't know about HD DVDs specifically but I do know they have plenty of movies usually in physical formats, depending on your specific location and whatnot.
Oh yeah! Totally! Big fan and advocate of the library. Mine's even got Blurays and videogames now!
Haha yeah you probably won't find HD-DVDs in the collection as it lost the format wars to Blurays , but maybe in the library book stores sold from donations. XD
I bought a MacBook Pro for iOS development. It was alright until Apple decided to exclude it from future OS updates, preventing me from using it for it's sole purpose, and forcing me to either buy a new one or stop developing iOS apps. Guess which one I chose. There is nothing wrong with the hardware, it's still got a 2TB SSD, 16GB of RAM and 16-core CPU but apparently Apple thought they could make more money off of me by intentionally barring it from updates to force me to buy a new one, rather than simply allowing me to install MacOS updates. They were wrong.
Edit: 8 physical cores, 16 logical
And unsurprisingly, this is one of the less cunty things Apple does.
should just install Linux and be done with it.
I thought Mac development had to come signed from one of their OSs though? Maybe I'm wrong. Have never owned one.
AS others have said you are correct. We had to buy a mac mini just to develop at one job.
If you dont make programs for mac then its much easier.
You are correct.
Can't publish to App Store from Linux, can you?
correct, but why develop for a platform that literally told you to fuck off and buy different hardware because they just wanted to.
I think that's the point that the MacBook Pro buyer was making.
What even model and year is it? They support the things for a very long time. I’ve got a 2011 that still works great but it’s getting Linux on it cuz they’ll run better in it than any version of Windows or OXS. 500GB SSD, 16GB RAM, i7 of some sort. Love it.
I've got a 2011 MBP running Debian that is about to be put into service as a backup for my Nextcloud server, which is being hosted on 2014 mini that's also running Debian. That one is my general purpose home server, running things like Navidrome, Mealie, Grimmory, Jellyfin, etc...
Then I've also got a 2011 mini running Mint, which I took to work to use solely for giving presentations for teaching competencies.
Those old Macs are resilient computers.
Nice nice! I just got all 200ish GB of photos of my old 2011MBP, so he’s free now! You reckon Debian is the way to go for him?
I'm no expert in these matters by any means, but given my use-case for my older Macs I don't care about flashy features, I just want them to be solid. And I don't know as to whether you can get much more solid than Debian. I've tried a bunch of distros over the last couple of years, and seem to have settled on Arch for my Fucking About With PCs, and Debian for my Do Not Fuck About With This PCs.
My server only has 8gb of soldered RAM, but she trucks along just nice. Wasn't a huge fan of me uploading thousands of photos into Immich, but that more taxing on the CPU than anything.
A 2019 MacBook Pro, and for $3,000+ I was expecting to use it until it died - not until Apple decided I couldn't use it anymore. I personally don't consider less than seven years to be "a very long time," especially when paying over $3,000.
Linux is great, but it won't allow me to use it for the sole purpose I bought it - publishing iOS apps.
There is a patch to update macOS when it’s not compatible. One I have used before is from dosdude1.
You can also put Linux on it, or dual boot. Older Intel Macs I remember being really wasy, the T2 Mac’s need special drivers but it’s not too hard, and the new Mac’s have ashai Linux.
It's Opencore Legacy Patcher these days. A remarkable tool really.
I used it to run up to Sequoia on a couple of old Macs, which I've ended up just putting Linux on instead. But if you're an iOS dev, then OCLP is a decent shout.
That said, we're only a year or two away from macOS dropping Intel support entirely, and that'll be the end for OCLP.
I was told doing so ran the risk of getting your published iOS application blacklisted if Apple detected you were circumventing their greed, so it wasn't worth the risk.
Which model is that supposed to be? My intel model is still getting the latest updates and any MBP with 16 cores must be newer than that ...
The 2019 MacBook Pro that I paid $3,000+ for after taxes and shipping, but looking at the hardware specs I was mistaken on the core count. It has a i9 Intel CPU with 8 physical cores, and 16 logical. More than enough power for software development if Apple wasn't such a greedy entity.
That's the same model I have and it does support the latest version (running Tahoe 26.4.1). You'll get security updates until at least fall 2028.
Then I must have the model wrong - I'm traveling currently, and don't have it with me. Whichever model it is, it does NOT have the option to update. I'm stuck on MacOS 15.7.5
I know 2019 seems like just a little bit ago, but it was 7 years ago. I mean, the machine has been supported for at least 7 years. From what you say, it appears you have the 2019 15-inch model only offered from May to November of that year; incredibly bad luck, as the 16 inch was introduced in November of that year and that model is still receiving updates.
While I understand the frustration of not being able to write apps, it's still a solid computer and I personally would love an Intel Mac to run Linux on.
Edit: I took a look at which OS would've come with the computer you have. It's 10.14 Mojave. Oldest MacBook Pro that ran on was the mid-2012, making the length of support you should have expected to be 7 years.
It's simultaneously the shortest lifespan of any electronics I've ever purchased while also being the most expensive, by a considerable margin. Not a great combo no matter how you attempt to spin it.
On what evidence were you basing your assumption it'd last longer than 7 years specifically for development? Seems like 7 years is what would've been expected when you bought it and what can be expected now.
WTF. Do you work for Apple? What EVIDENCE do I have that I expected my hardware that I bought for over $3,000 to continue functioning until it died? My evidence is my experience with every piece of electronics I have ever owned from every other manufacturer up until that point.
I can still connect to Xbox Live on my Xbox 360, giving it a lifespan, so far, of 21 years.
Knowing what can be expected from Apple is exactly why I won't ever buy an Apple product again, and warn anyone who mentions them that they're buying a ticking time bomb and Apple holds the donator, which they will use for the explicit purpose of extracting more money from people, even while the hardware is still working.
Apple is also the ONLY company that charges an annual fee on TOP of their exorbitant hardware costs for the ability to develop apps for their hardware. They're also the ONLY company that demands you own their brand of hardware to publish apps. Google doesn't force developers to use a Chromebook to publish Android apps, and Microsoft doesn't force developers to use a Windows machine to publish Windows apps. Samsung doesn't demand you develop apps for the Samsung marketplace on a Samsung device.
This is literally only an issue with Apple, and it's entirely of their own creation. Apple is unrestricted and blatant in their greed, and I've learned they're not shy about it at all. I no longer participate in any of their ecosystems and never will again.
You're defining "useful lifespan" of the Apple very differently than the Xbox. You're defining the Apple by how long development tools are supported, and while that is a valid criticism, it is the same duration today as it was when you bought the laptop. By the metric you're judging the Xbox, the MacBook Pro can connect to the internet, can run programs, and can connect to Apple's consumer services the same as it ever could. Its life as a consumer device is far from over. I'm typing this on my pre-retina 2012 MacBook Pro (running Linux).
You've said the machines "sole purpose" was development, yet you chose upgrades not essential to that process; the absolute fastest chip at the time and a larger SSD are arguably not necessary for the machine's "sole purpose." And the expected lifespan of the machine by that metric is no different today than when you bought it. Hate to put too fine a point on it, but you choose to overspend on a tool and are upset that the tool didn't ROI your inflated expectation.
Apple's decision to require a Mac for development and "only" supporting for seven years is absolutely worthy of critique. But it's also been consistent, and I'm sorry you didn't factor that in when you bought the machine. Sounds like you're done developing for iOS; I don't blame you. But if you decided otherwise, you can get into a development machine for probably not too much more than what you can sell your 2019 MacBook Pro for. Mac mini (if you can find one) and even the Neo will run absolutely hog wild over the performance of your MBP.
idk. I just graduated college with the laptop I bought in 8th grade. that thing is 9 years old at this point. I paid 550$ after convincing my parents to cover the extra 50$ I didn't have cause I wanted the 1050ti version. I'm a computer science student and took a few mobile app dev classes. it never gave an issue and is still kicking.
I think for nearly 6 times what I paid in 2017, one should be entitled to use a device for as long as the hardware is able to keep going, regardless of brand. that macbook was hobbled by a companies arbitrary decisions. 7 years is apples typical support length, yes (it's the same for iOS on iPhones) but the fact is that these devices are still perfectly capable of remaining useful, but apple gladly turns them all into ewaste to get people to buy new ones.
your point of it still being solid if it had Linux is kinda moot. the average user doesn't know how to install Linux and that's not what they paid 3000$ for.
His 2019 is still usable and getting security updates. ITts as usable as your computer. It’s that it can’t do one thing any longer, and that is to develop apps that the App Store will accept. You can criticize the decision to only allow supported models to submit apps, but don't mistake that for ewaste.
Your 9 year old computer; pretty good chance it doesn’t allow for Windows 11. That’s what we’re talking about here, the ability to install the newest operating system. If you’re content without the newest OS, both computers are perfectly fine.
"yes, they intentionally made it so a perfectly capable device can't build apps for the app store, but that has nothing to do with ewaste!"
no idea why you've spent so much time trying to convince people in this thread the behavior that apple has been openly criticized and indeed sued over is somehow ok.
Because you and the other poster are making statements I feel are incorrect and worth refuting. And I most certainly reject the idea that the inability to submit App Store apps makes a computer e-waste.
You and the other poster are so blinded by hatred for Apple that you cannot separate reasonable (and warranted) critique from unreasonable.
I bought an after-market touchscreen entertainment/navigation unit for my 2008 car from some online place selling cheap Chinese gear.
It was so slow it was nigh on useless. I'd be halfway home before the maps would finally start, and Spotify would just crash. I pulled it out after a few weeks and went back to the stock unit.
Hey I did the same! Thought hey I know tech, I know car audio, this will be great. It wasn't. Some bottom of the barrel android tablet that barely run a music player let alone navigation. Ended up putting back the stock and getting a 15 dollar phone mount instead. Worked way better.
I bought one of these. It's a bit clunky, but it was the best option for my application because it uses the stock touchscreen from the infotainment system instead of the aftermarket stereo which would have 2 screens on top of each other and look shitty. It's not cheap, and I wish it was a little more polished, but it does everything I need it to.
https://gromaudio.com/vline/?srsltid=AfmBOopqUVGKB-ToRqCqMa_JIbd041ZytmLBTFd-ZbM2vYJWTRPl3xm3
Thanks, but I'm fine with my Quadlock phone mount and an aux jack. (I still have a phone with a 3.5mm headphone jack.)
Nice. R.i.p the 3.5 mm. Miss that shit
How the fuck.
I got a used one for 100 eur and it's better than that, damn
Let's see... One that comes to mind that I guess is "tech" would be Substance Painter and Designer, back when it was independently owned and had an indie license.
"This will really take my Blender work to the next level. I'm going to LEARN this. Let's freaking go." I said, and "invested" like $150 into it.
I'm NORMALLY a FOSS nut, but this software was changing the game! Paint directly on 3d models with smart materials and layers and dynamics‽ AWESOME! Maybe it's worth paying a chunk of my meager part time income for quality software...
Then comes the email:
Subject: "Substance is joining the Adobe family!"
Then the follow-up to all the pissed off customers:
"Don't worry, it won't be subscription only."
Maybe a month later it's part of the "cloud" and made subscription only.
I don't care what's "iNdUsTry sTaNdArD." I refuse to engage with Adobe for any reason, and I'd rather put my hard earned money into supporting open source community tools than to ever get rug pulled by some shameless sellout ever again.
I agree with your frustration and dislike of Adobe but you can still get a permanent license through Steam. It is unfortunately an industry standard, only toolbag comes close afaik but it's still a long way off
EDIT: Yeah, they did finally release a Steam version with a perpetual license. That's a step in the right direction but I've already gotten burnt so bad lol.
You're right, when it comes to the industry's "cutting edge" unfortunately the likes of Autodesk and Adobe and their copycats seem to hold the hill.
But know what? I've actually quite made peace with the idea that I'm probably never gonna work in the AAA(A?) space where that top of the line cutting edge stuff is absolutely required.
In this case, Material Maker and Blender with some add-ons are providing some wonderfully intuitive materials workflows!
Despite my ambitions, my life just didn't shake out that way and now people that are at least a decade my junior are far exceeding what I can do, with a lot better training and a back that can handle the long hours. :p (Honestly from some of the stories we've heard out of the industry, I feel I dodged a bullet sometimes.)
But yeah...
It's kinda like when I say I work in Godot and people wanna say "WeLL uNrEaL's GrApHiCs ThO...".
They might be right but, ha! Am I, a little indie dev that might work alongside some other indie devs, REALLY gonna be making a project SO incredibly strenuous that it's gonna break anything less than the full might of Unreal?! Probably not. :p
(Power to whatever tools people like using of course! The tools don't make the artist. :) )
I've decided to dedicate my study and efforts towards empowering the Rest Of Us (TM). The FOSS tool users, the industry's rejected applicants, the amateurs, the little guys and gals; Especially the ones who are sick of being exploited by tools, employers, and corporations.
And I hope something good comes of it one day. <3
A plex lifetime pass. Was okay until the company went crazy. Now I use Jellyfin and I'm happy.
I remember when I started using Plex it was great. And then each update made it harder and harder to use, until I was struggling to find my own media. I still don't understand what was wrong with them. Jellyfin just works. It's infinitely better.
On the flip side, it was one of my best purchases. The sync feature has historically been great and I've had over a decade of use out of it for that single payment. I hate every update they make, but Jellyfin clients still don't have as good of a sync feature and that's what I use a ton of for traveling.
Yeah, there’s also the big issue with Jellyfin remote access. The TL;DR is that Jellyfin has a few critical “anyone can stream your media without a login” vulnerabilities that mean it should basically never be accessible outside of your LAN. Jellyfin’s devs have openly stated that they have no intentions of ever fixing these, because it would require completely divesting from the Emby fork that the entire project is built upon. And that makes sharing with friends/family really difficult.
Sure, you can use Tailscale (or whatever your preferred VPN is) for personal use. Maybe you’ll even get your immediate family on board. But good luck trying to get your tech-illiterate grandma (who lives 4 hours away) logged in over the phone. And unless she has a router that supports VPN connections, (not likely) she probably won’t be able to get her smart TV on your VPN. Which means she can’t securely access your server from her primary method of viewing media.
With Plex, you simply make the account, sign in, and get access. I even have a burner account that has access to a few of my libraries, so I can log it into my server at friends’ houses without them needing to make their own account.
Luckily, Plex and Jellyfin happily run side-by-side. If you prefer Jellyfin’s UI, then that’s great. You can continue to use it. But please don’t think that it’s secure just because you put it behind a reverse proxy.
Could you please provide some evidence for your statement?
I mean, we can just look at the official GitHub’s list of security issues to find a few of them really quickly. And note that many of the previous security issues they have “closed” were only due to 120 days of inactivity, not because they were actually fixed.
Anyone who says Jellyfin is secure enough to put on the internet is either grossly misinformed, or outright lying. Lemmy has a lot of apologia for FOSS, and Jellyfin is one of the worst offenders. Many users will be quick to comment “lol my instance has been port forwarded for years and has been fine” like it’s a valid security audit. I love FOSS. What programmers are able to do in their free time, just because they see a need and want to fill it, is honestly amazing. It’s a modern world wonder. But that doesn’t mean we should excuse bad security practices, or encourage users to relax their threat models just because something is free.
Same. Jellyfin just isn't there yet unfortunately. Maybe if a comparable plex4kodi existed. The jellyfin one isn't aa good unfortunately.
Plex lifetime pass (if you already have it) is still worth it for secure remote access, 2FA login, ease of sharing, and (most important) PlexAmp.
I got a cheap dash cam off Temu a few years ago. I’m sure I don’t have to explain beyond that.
Yes. I’m an idiot. I know. I’ve always known.
So just out of curiosity, did the dash cam not work for dash cam purposes?
As in, did you end up getting into an accident and have no usable footage?
Or was it just a piece of shit that didn't work?
My guess is the quality is so bad they can't see shit or it overheats from the sun very easily and shuts down
I'm not sure if they count is a "tech purchase", but I bought all new Samsung appliances in my previous home (washer, dryer, refrigerator, and dishwasher). The washer and dryer failed catastrophically within 6 months, the dryer drum cracked and shredded a whole load of clothing into confetti and the washing flooded my kitchen and ruined my cabinets (it was a weird house layout). The refrigerator just had random parts dying over and over (water dispenser, lights, sensors, ice maker) until it finally died at the year mark. The dishwasher made it nearly to year two before the control panel died and the replacement part was more expensive than an entire new unit. Never again Samsung!
I came in here expecting Samsung hate, and I am not disappointed. They're like 13% of South Korea's GDP, they should make shit that lasts longer than a year!!
You don't get rich by selling something people only buy once....
That being said I have a Samsung oven that's about 12 years old now and still works perfect aside from one element doesn't trigger the "burner on" light, but the "hot surface" light still works, so I'm not overly concerned.
Samsung used to be awesome up until, say, 10-15 years ago? Then they just got so big and quality just went off a cliff
I have a Samsung flat screen from 15 years ago, the thing is a tank and won't die. A new Samsung flat screen is lucky to make it 5 years tops
We just moved into a new house and it has all Samsung appliances. So far so good but I’m concerned.
If you’ve ever made a cell phone or a TV I will NEVER buy your appliance.
Got “burned” by a Samsung induction stove. Never again.
This is interesting to me... I've had two sets of Samsung wash and dryer, over the span of about 15 years now. Only replaced the first ones because I didn't want to move them across country.
I found them easy to work on and get parts for general maintenance... maybe I'm just lucky?
My brother and I saved up money for a few months and bought the Nintendo Virtual Boy.... We were not too happy with it so we thought we just needed to buy better games. That was not a viable solution for that POS.
The virtual boy is a good contender here. My friend got one at launch and it was laughably bad. I myself couldn't use it for more than ten minutes without getting a headache.
Mine was the Powerglove. I begged for it for my birthday and the price was high enough that was the only present that year.
I got an ouya.
The controllers keys stuck.
You had to give them your credit card in order to get an account.
The games were ok if you could get over the 1/2 second of lag between button press and game.
One of my gaming buddies is in Thailand, but plays on the American server with us. His ping is regularly 2000-3000ms. When he hits a button, he doesn't actually "do the thing" for 2-3 seconds. But dude is a fucking genius, and he's mastered the timing. He regularly outperforms folks with a 28ms ping (It's me, I'm "folks").
I'm one of the few.people.that really liked tbe Ouya. At the time it was the best living room retro gaming system out there. I bought 3 of them. And I had no problem with the controllers.
Same, I thought it was awesome. The game library sucked though, and it just never took off. After awhile I used it for Kodi 99% of the time.
I played the duck tales remastered on it though and that was fantastic
Oh yeah I forgot I also had a Plex client for it
I supported them on kickstarter unfortunately
So did I. What a fucking waste. I played it twice and into the attic it went.
I bought a couple Ouya controllers for cheap on eBay a few years ago. Mine work fine. I'll just connect my phone to the TV if I want to play Android games on a big screen, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouya
Convinced my mum to splash out on an Amstrad Emailer. It looked really cool and could store your phonation, and had emails.
3 months later, my Dad is checking the landline phone bill which is expensive for some reason. Turns out the Amstrad phones a premium rate phone lime every night. Managed to switch it off but then the whole thing stopped working saying it needs to do that to work.
Nowhere did they mention this, or at least it was not clear to both of us. Absolutely dodgy fuckers.
Maybe they shouldn't have put Lord Sugar in charge.
The Lord Sugar truck that Dave Gorman drove around was gold. So there's that.
There's also the fact they started showing adverts on the screen when it wasn't in use, and the adverts were usually for sex phone services - often showing nudity and with a quick-access button for the premium rate number, no less - right there in your hallway where everyone saw it.
I used to go for Xiaomi phones but I stopped because I had too many issues with the OS. The amount of times it would close an app almost as soon as it leaves the screen was too much, tried every setting ever to fix until I just starting doing 2FA with a floating/split screen.
8 years ago the OS was one of the best, 3 years ago it was one of the worst, not sure how it is now.
I bought the Poco F1, which i think was the first with a internal heatpipe back then? Well, geared at gamers. Still was fairly powerful 7 years later when it broke. So, there's that at least.
What app are you using to log the requests?
And it's on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.celzero.bravedns/
Awesome, thank you!
What happened about the bootloader? Afaik there's "only" a 7 days waiting time but that is to be done only once, if the serial number is tied to the Xiaomi account that makes the request, the next bootloader unlock has no waiting time.
And devices that run a ROM for the Chinese market only accept a bootloader unlock request from a Chinese IP address
Wow good to know, that means Xiaomi is dead for me now.
2000 devices globally is a ridiculously low number
Any Razer product ever. Shit company, laptop battery fucked itself, keyboard doesn't work, mouse falling apart
I never had a Razer mouse last longer than 6 months since they moved over to optical/laser mice (yeah, I'm old). Their products are flimsy crap for the most part.
The last Razer mouse I used, the button parts you clicked were part of the same piece of plastic as the rest of the shell, and they just...broke off one day. Both of them. Now I'm using another Razer mouse where the buttons are separate pieces. My bf keeps buying these things when they're on clearance, or I wouldn't use them.
Razer, in my (very dated by now tbh) experience has really bad quality control but if you get a good one it'll last for a long time. My mouse is 15 years old now and still working. Conversely my keyboard from them stopped working a little after the one year mark.
Idk seems that way for a lot of companies nowadays. Cheap out on QC and parts, hope people don't bother contacting your support and if they do it's cheaper to just replace some stuff and use a cheap 3rd party support center vs actually making sure the product is not a lemon.
Tbh I've had great experiences with Razer mice, although that's the only product I've ever purchased from them
Even the Razer Skibidi?
fuck samsung!
Their appliances are garage. They aren't even overpriced, they shouldn't exist because of how big of pieces of shit they are.
They should be parked on the street for how garage they are!
you park your garage on the street?
I street my garage in a park.
Interesting! Our washing machine is turning 10 this year, hasn't skipped a beat, yet.
Switch. My Nintendo acc got hacked which turned the thing into a brick basically, but Nintendo didn’t give a flying fuck
Friendly reminder that you should purchase Nintendo products secondhand if you absolutely cannot emulate and pay to get that bad boy modded cause fuck Nintendo
Fuck Nintendo.
Nintendon't.
Sega does what nintendont 😎 (hire actors who have admitted to assaulting women and don't give a shit that they have done so, Sega nor actor)
A Sony Minidisc recorder / player in the early 2000s. So much DRM. So many bugs. I'll never buy Sony again.
I am still very fond of MiniDisc and have all my old discs and equipment, which still works and plays just fine. But yeah, the 2000s were the decade of DRM and Sony’s tech side was constantly at odds with its media side. Limitations on optical recording & dubbing from MD to MD, using their horrible SonicStage software for NetMD, and horrible marketing overseas handicapped them constantly.
They finally got it right with their very last flagship NetMD portable (apart from its OLED screens dying after a few years) but by then Apple had made the iPod the default portable listening experience and Sony had very obviously lost.
They did make some excellent MP3 players, but once again: proprietary data connectors, restrictive media transfers, poor CODEC support, and freaking SonicStage made using those a nightmare as well. They never did learn.
MiniDisc as a format seemed to make huge sense at the time - mp3's were a thing, but writable CDs were clunky and iPods hadn't arrived yet. But yes - it was unusable - literally - I don't remember actually being able to listen to anything I really wanted to listen to on it.
Your mention of NetMD awoke memories of absolute rage for me! Just trying to install it was flakey. Then trying to get MP3's onto disc - it was never clear where the bugs stopped and where the DRM started. It simply didn't work. I was left feeling Sony were actively hostile to their customers. Never again!
Ha ha then allow me to remind you of Sony’s pre-NetMD USB adapter that kinda turned a USB signal into either TOSLink optical or analogue stereo so you could play your files on a computer and record to MD in real time!
Yeah, their software was trash, probably written solely to support ad copy in an attempt to lure MP3 people to MD.
As someone who made mix tapes and wanted all of an album’s B-sides in one place, MD was amazing and I embraced it as a replacement for cassettes. No cassette wobble, hiss, or getting eaten, no LP warp, surface noise, or skipping. It was digital purity in the palm of my hand, and for a while it sounded far better than MP3s.
But LAME got better and better, we started getting more storage and FLAC files and hard drive MP3 jukeboxes like the Rio Karma and Creative Nomad…MDs could not compete no matter how desperate Sony got.
I still love my MD equipment and have hundreds of discs that all still play beautifully. But the format is a historic footnote that (sadly) really did lean into its own obsolescence.
iPads. The first one was a hand-me-down only a few years old, but no longer getting iOS updates, so no apps would run anymore. Safari would crash on most web sites. Gmail worked, but holy hell was the keyboard beyond terrible. I used it to read textbooks in PDF. Couldn't revive it with an alternate OS. The next one was a gift; I thought I'd use it for NOAA navigation charts on my boat. Nope, the PDF reader crashed out on ~1MB files. (I had to use my budget Android phone instead.) Now it's no longer supported, and not even useful as a Home Assistant dashboard, because of the old OS. It's a (fully-functional) piece of e-waste now.
Locked hardware? Just say no!
I bought my first iPad back in 2011, and, being a Mac and iPhone user at the time, it was great. I've had a few over the years, and always considered them indispensible.
Then I got a 6th gen mini. I didn't actually buy it, it was a gift from my dad who has a tendency to buy Apple stuff tax free when he's on holiday on New Hampshire. My one was £600 at the time. For its utility it's worth maybe half of that.
The first thing that pissed me off was that Apple decided that it wasn't worthy of Stage Manager. I understand not wanting it to be able to run a multiple app desktop on such a relatively small screen, but you can't even hook it up to an external display. Or, you can, but it doesn't scale. It's just a bigger version of what's on the iPad's screen. The mini is a PERFECT candidate for Stage Manager. Small, portable, easy to carry about. But no, because Apple.
Then iOS 26 came along, and suddenly every iPad was getting Stage Manager. Finally, I can use my little iPad to its fullest potential.
No.
My one still doesn't support scaling. So I can have multiple apps, but just bigger.
Then I replaced my iPhone with a Pixel running Graphene, and started using Linux a lot more, and suddenly, out of the Apple ecosystem, my little iPad made even less sense. It can technically run SyncThing, but it's so restricted as to be functionally useless. So 95% of its use now is as a MIDI controller for Mixxx on my Mac when I'm doing my radio show.
£600 for a half-baked MIDI controller is pretty fucking steep.
Dell Android Tablet. This was brand new with the purchase of a Dell laptop but no longer getting anndroid updates, so no apps would run anymore. Chrome would crash on most web sites. Gmail worked, but holy hell was the keyboard beyond terrible. I used it to read textbooks in PDF. Couldn't revive it with an alternate OS.
There wasn’t a next crappy Android tablet.
Raycons. Got suckered by the YouTubers. They were garbage right out of the box. They could barely maintain a connection with each other, and the sound quality was awful.
Yeah, general rule of thumb is to avoid anything being peddled by YouTubers. It’s a good sign that the company is putting a ton of money into trendy marketing instead of R&D or product quality.
Back in 2014, I bought a non-pro white MacBook for one Bitcoin.
It's not the MacBook that is the problem...
They said ONE BITCOIN. That's €68070
Eh? How can it be clearer? They bought it in 2014, at which point it was approximately €300. So must have seemed like a steal at the time.
Samsung washer and dryer. The bane of my existence. I just moved and left them behind, so happy!
I have heard similar stories from all other Samsung appliances.
The Bosch SmartHome outdoor camera.
The only way to view the stream is through their app and over the cloud, and the recordings are kept in the cloud exclusively. There is no way to use it without the cloud account. Everything is slow, choppy, unreliable and buggy as hell. Replaced it with Frigate running on our homeserver and a proper Hikvision IP camera. Much better quality, viewable from everywhere, much faster, ultra reliable, perfect.
Germany hates UX in my experience.
Solid hardware but Jesus that software
Movies for my PSP. A lot of them.
With how easy it was to jailbreak/mod the PSP was awesome for on the go everything
I guess they had a burn-on-demand rental service in Japanese convenience stores, that'd be about the only way I'd watch UMD movies.
I think I'd have to go with the HDMI switch I bought for work. There were some limitations, like it couldn't do more than 1080p, but otherwise it worked quite well for what I needed it for. The reason it was my worst purchase is because when I was illegally fired from that job, I wasn't allowed to collect my things from my desk. They assumed it was theirs and they never returned it. I got the better deal though, they didn't keep track of KVMs so I never returned mine
My old Wemo smart plugs. Constantly lost connection and the app was so useless for resolving issues.
When they announced they were stopping support this year, I was wondering what they considered support beforehand. Also, there's a class action lawsuit because of that.
You might be interested in pywemo. Bring new life to those things instead of just tossing them in a landfill. They also work with Home Assistant.
I had some connection issues when switching out my AP (had to factory reset), but otherwise they've been mostly solid.
They still work very well when integrated into home Assistant
I’m in the same boat
You should try integrating them into home assistant. They still work very well.
They work with Home Assistant still and work pretty well.
Pretty much anything that was "a really good deal".
I read this as "a really good idea" and still kind of agreed.
Windows Surface Pro 3
Worst purchase of my entire life. Every update broke some function of the tablet. At one point no stylus would pair with it so i had to use have gestures, then another time the detachable keyboard wouldn't work so i had to use a USB keyboard. The final straw was that the tablet updated, rebooted, and powered off and wouldn't turn back on for like 3 months... Until randomly in the middle of The night it finally woke up.
Anything Samsung. The appliances fail fast (TV & washing machine in my case), and the smartphones are constantly getting more and more enshittified (speaking as a long-time customer since the 1st Galaxy S all the way to S23).
Replaced my samsung phone with a unihertz Atom -- Definitely not for everyone, but I love it. With samsung I'd gone from my phones never breaking to two phones that seemed to jump out of my hands and crack if you looked at them funny, so I gave up on the brand and looked for something small and rugged. I swear I could chuck the Atom off a building into concrete and it'd be fine. I do wish there was a newer version to update the software, but you get used to the older interface pretty quick. Hopefully Unihertz will go back to the atom series and make one with linux software, but I was thinking of just buying another and seeing if I can install linux.
I got a SG fe 20 last one. Moving to pixel.
~$800 headphone setup. My then-employer paid for more than half of it, so I splurged a bit. Got refurbished planar magnetic headphones for ~$500 and an amp for ~$300. I later bought a balanced audio cable (I don't remember the price, maybe $20—50).
It sounds good, but I've also been down the Chi-Fi IEM rabbit hole before. I think I could get similar results from $150—250 Chinese IEMs.
There’s a LOT of snake oil in the audiophile world, and the matter of cost is almost universally a matter of diminishing returns. I say this as someone whose typical audio rig costs at least $250k: At home, I use basic Sennheiser monitor headphones.
You’ll notice a huge difference between $50 headphones and $100 headphones. But the difference between $100 headphones and $200 headphones will be much less noticeable, even though there is a much bigger price difference between the two.
Also, you probably got scammed on that balanced cable. I can guarantee that the recording studio used the cheapest $1/foot starquad cable, soldered by the intern using $3 Neutrik connectors.
The only reason I've ever been able to justify balanced headphones were if they were too power hungry and needed extra current.
As someone that owns headphones in that range and maybe higher, I'm very curious which headphones you picked up. Also, the idea of getting "similar results" from IEMs versus some over ear headphones is a bit wacky, they're way different IMO.
Heh yeah I used to think that about IEMs too.
My headphones are the HIFIMAN Arya Stealth Magnet Version.
Don't get me wrong, I like the way they sound. They're better than any other headphones I've had. I have no buyer's remorse over it — but only because I didn't pay full price.
I was wondering if they were Hifiman because while they make many excellent headphones, and I'd almost never recommend someone pay full price as they tend to have really strong deals a little while after product launch. I actually owned the original Arya and it is one of the few Hifiman that I have do have buyers remorse for as they just do not fit my head well. That obviously applies to all of the models with that shape (Ananda, Arya, Edition, Susvana, HE1000). My favorite headphones are actually very old Hifiman, the HE-6. They are stupidly demanding on power, but I like their sound more than any other headphone I have ever listened to.
My wife and I bought those stupid Surface tablets. Not really sure why. Too big to be comfortably portable, too small to be useful at home. At least the magnetic keyboard thing makes a good mousepad for my desktop PC.
I keep pondering grabbing one of those to put a Linux on. I want a tablet that isn't an iPad, and isn't Android, and those seem like the most cost-effective way to achieve that.
Same.. I reckon they would be pretty good if they aren't locked down
Most models are just PCs. The cameras in my Surface Go 2 don't work out of the box on Linux, but everything else is fine.
I actually had the opposite experience.
It was the perfect device for going through university for me. I mostly used it for note taking and homework with OneNote. For something like proving my work with matrices I could just copy the last matrix, paste it, then replace the one column/row that I was working on and repeat. In that case, work that took other students an hour or more would only take me a few minutes.
Additionally, since it wasn't just a tablet, I could run whatever software I needed on it for completing projects.
Of course a somewhat recent update from Windows bricked the device, and I haven't gotten around to switching it over to Linux (like I have with my other devices). It does look like there's a great group helping to support that transition though: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
I had the original Surface in college and it was excellent at the time.
I've got several, as I work in IT and we got a bunch returned that weren't windows 11 compatible. We just downloaded Rufus, which skips the TPN check and all good - a fully supported windows 11 build. I use one as a music centre. Just plugs into my old analogue hifi and runs Spotify. As it's touchscreen it's perfect for that purpose. I'm tempted to use Linux instead, but imagine to would be a hassle to get the drivers. Might try a distro on one of them this weekend and see how it goes.
A Samsung smartwatch, it's almost useless.
Feel you
God, I love my watch 7
I use it as a clock a lot, as well as tracking on runs via Strava, then I patch my HA through to it for local control. Can watch my son sleep in his crib from my watxh
An early Purism laptop. That was the most lemony lemon that ever lemoned. Components failing, keyboard was shit, the case just fell apart. I think I had to replace it after 6 months because I was tired of its shit.
I bought a router that had 5-10% package loss, it was basically trash, returned it of course.
Just keep the package?
Might sound weird but it was the PSP I imported at launch.
Great device but that was when I realized I don't like handheld gaming.
This is exactly why I haven't bought a steam deck, I'm not convinced I actually like handheld gaming still.
I love my Steam Deck, but I rarely use it. At home, I have a PC and I'd rather sit in a comfortable chair with ample screen space with a full keyboard and mouse. I only bring it with me when I'm expecting to be away from home for more than 24 hours with enough downtime to actually use it.
I use it as a home media pc as well, but I also rarely play it. My wife likes it more but she doesnt have a desktop.
Audio set up, microphone, DAC and headset, a friend recommended for me during covid. My, now, husband was in disbelief on how crappy it actually is and well now i have studio quality for almost the same (just 100€ extra) what i paid back in covid times
Barnes and Noble Nook HD+
I was all in on a 1080p tablet with micro sd card in 2012. And then it just shut off and never turned on again a few months out of warranty.
Then there was a Lenovo yoga tablet in 2014 with windows 8. The Intel atom processor was such a dog it just ended up being a solitaire screen and about nothing else.
Recently bought another cheap tablet for a different specific use case. We'll see if this one is a POS.
Razer Diamond back gaming mouse, shit at clicking, shit quality, over priced
Bohmann air-conditioner, broke after few hours of usage at most. Well within warranty, the reseller(Mediamarkt), and manufacturers took me for a long long ride until I eventually gave up on getting my money back...
Trying to solve wifi dead spots across my then house. It didn't have wired conduits, so no ethernet between floors. Went through a series of range-extenders, multiple routers, everything from cheapo no-names, to TP-Links, Netgears, and Apple Airports. All sucked. Terrible reception in all the places that people hung out.
Then mesh routers showed up. Got a 3-pack and never looked back.
Edit: runner-up was an HP Inkjet printer. Every time someone needed a color print, one color ink was either out or dried out.
Damn I know hindsight is 20/20 but I feel like you could have just ran some wires yourself (it's pretty easy tbh) with how much effort you went through to avoid it.
But yeah I hear you on network stuff in general. I know a little about that stuff and it still is basically magic to me. Sometimes I swear my modem and router just choose to misbehave until I give them a little reset. I think they might be alive...
Have you tried a powerline Access Point like this TP Link Powerline AP?
Haha, yes I actually did get those back then. Didn't work. Turned out the wiring between floors was really old and there was a lot of noise. Place was also a rental, so I couldn't drill big holes into floors and walls to draw ethernet.
The thing that ultimately solved it was mesh. It's worked pretty well since then and on to the new place where wiring is even worse. With mesh repeaters, we can even reach far corners of basement storage.
Ah that makes sense! Well at least that solution is working out for you.
That BlackBerry tablet. It honestly wasn’t a bad device on some levels. It had features that weren’t as easy on other devices for some time. Like the fact it automatically got internet from my phone seamlessly.
But support for apps was garbage and the hardware the dumb. If you let the battery fully discharge you had to spend like 15 minutes plugging and unplugging the power to force it to trickle charge to get enough battery for it to start the system that ran the battery management.
I was a tech-manager at Staples when those launched and it was an absolute shit-storm right from the start with returns and complaints.
The only thing crazier from that time was an HP WebOS tablet (I can't remember the name) that launched with pretty big fanfare with HP trying to take a marketing page out of Apples playbook, only to have it fail so completely that they announced a week later that support was being dropped and any remaining stock was offered to anyone who wanted at 99 bucks.
Wild days indeed.
The power supplies for those things showed up dirt cheap on Ebay at a time when 2A+ USB power supplies were premium items. I bought a bunch of them.
I work in the automotive industry, about a year ago another shop was dropping a vehicle off to get worked and a dude wearing a collar had not one, but two blackberry tablets he was using for invoicing and just day to day management.
Asus video cards.
I've owned 3 of them.
one caught fire, one failed in a spectacular flash of light, and one just quietly died.
Every single one of them managed to take rest of the system with them.
No I did not overclock/overvolt them, and yes I had good airflow/cooling.
In Côte d'Ivoire they say : Premier gaou n'est pas gaou, c'est second gaou qui est niata. Meaning when you get conned for the first time you are not an idiot, but when you get conned a second time you are. But what about you, who got conned again ?
There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you.' Fool me—you can't get fooled again."
George W. Bush – Nashville, Tennessee, September 17, 2002.
Other versions from BoJack Horseman:
"Fool me once, shame on you, but teach a man to fool me, and I'll be fooled for the rest of my life."
"Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, fiddle-le-dee."
"Fool me once. Fool me twice. Fool me chicken soup and rice."
Out of curiosity, where they newer nvidia cards, like 4 or 5 series, using 12VHPWR?
nope, older ATI. HD 4000 and HD 5000 series.
edit
and just to make a point, it wasnt the PSU failing either. It was the GPUs. the PSU is still actually alive and well today, running a relatives system with no issues.
Did you perchance have the exact same power supply in all three killed systems?
as I said in my post, it wasnt the PSU. It has gone on to power many gaming systems since then without issue (its last hurrah being a R9 280x based system before its retirement), and is living out its retirement running an email/bill pay terminal for a relative still as reliable as ever.
I had an asus rtx 3060 for ~4 years and the only problem I am had with it was the RGB sometimes not working because of software issues.
Every smart phone. Without exception.
An Eink smartphone from a Chinese company: Bigme Hibreak pro. It never worked, I sent I back for repair and they shipped it back to me in the same buggy conditions... Now it lies in a drawer completely frozen and unresponsive...
Thinkpad L390 Yoga. They crammed a 4.6 GHz CPU into a cooling system that was not designed for it, so the machine ran hot and throttled all of the time. The keyboard keys rubbed off after a few months of use. The Thinkpad logo was just a sticker that one day decided to stick to my hand because Lenovo used really cheap glue. It had a MicroEthernet port with a passive adapter that did nothing but break it out to a regular ethernet jack. The adapter cost 30€ and its cable turned into oil after a year.
I was able to undervolt the CPU and make it barely passable, then Microsoft released a Windows update that prevented undervolting. Gave it to a friend afterwards and got myself a GPD Win Max 2.
Mother bought a pair of "light therapy" glasses many years ago from a Russian quack site. It was basically a pair of blacked-out safety glasses with ~8 LEDs for each eye and a button cell to power it all. All circuitry and wires fully exposed and visible. You'd set your program and it would cycle through different colors for a predetermined time. Also came with a knock-off Chinese iPod and some gas-station headphones, preloaded with "relaxing sounds from nature." You were expected to lay there for 30 minutes with your eyes closed as it did its thing. This cost around 600€ in 2019. What an absolute scam.
surface pro 4 maybe.. had swollen battery, yellowish screen, touch/stylus malfunction, charger connection issues, keyboard connection issue, heat/fan grinding noise, etc all right after the warranty just expired (3 years iirc?)
it still does boot and i've learnt a lot of computer stuff thanks to it though
Yours still works? Mine died after a couple years. It didn't even last through university. When people asked me about it I always said I would never recommend it and only kept it because of OneNote and university. I did not replace it with another one when it died in the middle of me studying for an exam.
it still boots, im using it as a pdf viewer rn
It was fantastic for OneNote. If mine didn't die I probably would have kept it around just for that.
I bought an HMD skyline phone based on the fact that it was a user serviceable device. I'd like to support that kind of thing so I took a gamble on a "goofy" phone. Best buy's website had a sale on them and I went for it. When it showed up it came out of the box with a dead USB port. It may be user serviceable but I don't want to user service it right out of the damn box so I took it back to a best buy store to try and get it replaced. They had never heard of it and wouldn't touch it. Turns out just because it came from best buy's website doesn't mean it came from best buy? I guess? Best they could do for me was to tell me to contact HMD, and the best HMD could do was have me ship it to somebody to get it repaired. This took weeks and when it came back the cameras weren't aligned properly anymore. I kinda gave up on it after that and bought a used Pixel from eBay. I jammed GrapheneOS onto it and never looked back. I'll never buy from best buy or HMD again.
I had the Nokia 8.3 5G from HMD, which was a really pretty phone with a killer camera, but the charging port stopped charging on that one! I wonder if they've got some kind of chronic board problem?
Nobody wanted that model for sale and there were no custom ROMs which was a huge bummer.
No surprise they're kinda fading. I wish your user serviceable one worked out, because we really need one of those projects to take off.
I like my Motorola now. I hear Graphene might be porting to these, and they have SD card slots and headphone jacks. Also you can pretty-please get them to unlock the bootloader.
I bought a Wii U. It had some good games at the time, but Nintendo's strategy over the last 10 years has just been to rerelease those games with better performance and new content. I wish I'd just waited.
Dude, a WiiU is worth it for Nintendoland alone. Throw in the Windwaker remaster and you're set. I don't think you lost out 😎
We just found and resurrected our Wii U, the kids play it more than the Switch now.
It's also a Wii with HDMI.
It's a fine retro game console especially when you mod it but it definitely didn't live up to expectations
Tablet - it was a middle ground that I never found a use for
If I'm out and about, I'm not dragging the tablet with me and will just use my phone.
If I'm home, I'll use the computer.
I'm not saying that tablets are bad or useless, they just aren't for me.
Same. Got a tablet when i changed mobile operator.
Only good use i found for it was to look recepies when cooking.
I actually get a lot of use out of my tablet, mostly for reading manga and comics. Sometimes for books too
Haha the running joke anytime my wife sees the tablet is she just goes "porn"? So now it's embarrassing to even try to find a use for it lol. She doesn't use it either.
I bought an Xbox One to play D3. Nobody else did and then the rest of the episodes got cancelled.
I bought a System76 laptop once. Poop_OS! was fucking awful and when I owned it their updating application especially was and had been left buggy and broken for years. So I put Fedora on it instead which then stopped working shortly after. The kernel just wouldn't load past a certain version and I gave up waiting for a fix and just e-wasted that miserable piece of shit with tinny speakers and bruise inflicting pointy metal casing. I have no faith these guys can make Cosmic not blow ass when they struggled to make a basic update GUI function for YEARS.
you had a bad time with two distros and you binned a machine? holy moly
When one of those distros is from the manufacturer that's certainly not a good sign.
I only posted regret not timeline...could've written that better. It was 2020 (AMD 4700U) and was used until 2026 but spent the last two years in the garage running an OBD-1 diagnosis program for an old truck and playing music over bluetooth. It just stayed on outdated kernel until it got replaced. Steam Deck replaced its original purpose. A mini PC replaced it in the garage this year.
Zip drive
An out of date, yet new, drawing tablet. Obsolete at the touch of a finger...
A pager called MiniLink when I was 16 right before mobiles became common
The ASUS transformer with keyboard. As they did an update that made it super slow and clunky right before end of lifeing it.
As a fellow Asus Transformer survivor, I feel your pain! I've never actively hated a piece of tech as much and as fast as that pos. Pretty sure I downloaded that same update that basically made it so slow it transformed it into a paperweight. I have never purchased another tablet after that because it turned me off to the whole idea permanently.
I usually love ASUS as they have dared to try unconventional ideas, like the eeePC. I also like how they make everything from MoBos to TVs and phones. But it felt like they wanted to brick the Transformer for some reason.
Personally I have a couple of Samsung tablets, they serve a purpose when I want have a "TV" on in the background in a random place in the house I also read some comics that comes as pdfs on it
I actually generally like Asus as well, I pretty much use them exclusively for my motherboards, despite my disappointment with their pricing schemes the past few years. I also have a set of their pro art monitors from a while back still going strong. I will say the recent horror stories of their customer service for pc parts has me a bit concerned but I have been lucky and have never had an issue with their stuff yet. Never tried a video card from them though.
As for tablets in general, reading comics in bed is one of the only things that makes me want to try a tablet again. However, whenever I remember that transformer it just re-ignites my hatred. 😆 One day my rage might subside but until then I'm done with tablets. I've actually considered my next phone to be a folding one to see if that can get the job done for reading comics in bed with the bigger screen.
My partner bought a Skylight screen a month ago. I put it up, but it’s basically been unused since.
For me, there was this very early health tracking watch I got, which was so fragile that it would reset and lose all data if I did anything more active than walking.
Some Google TV that was well reviewed, but at some point shortly after I got it had a software update that made the UI unusablly slow. Like, 5-10 seconds to respond to every button click.
During Covid I ordered a little screen replacement kit from a cheap Chinese company, and they said it was delayed due to Covid, so I was trying to be patient, but then the company disappeared. Unfortunately, I was too patient and the six months went by so I couldn't reverse the charge. Only time I've ever gotten scammed, and I was pissed because I had even looked them up before I ordered and they seemed to have decent reviews until after and everyone was calling them out. I don't know if they were legit then collapsed during covid or they put a lot of effort into looking legit with fake reviews. Lesson learned I guess.
Our shitty MSI laptop
A Kodak luma mini projector. Absolute dog shit ui and the worst speaker I've ever heard completely ruin the entire experience.
I snagged a 30USD Chinese mini projector. The speaker is trash but it has an aux/Composite audio out and the image quality is shockingly good. I expected complete trash for that cost but I was shocked.
I once bought one of these weird gaming 'keyboards' where you only have the keys around WASD on it. Used it once, thought it sucked and never looked at it again
Micro usb to hdmi that I didn't know wasn't compatible with my phone
Old crazy HP pisser of dad died a slow dead, needed a new one. I sent him a link to the Local online tech retailer, filters all set to bottle printers. One day dad wrote me, he was just in (i think Fust? Some local tech retailer), they only had HP printers, i should come set it up. Still crazy behavior in Cups but at least a laser this time. Half a year later, he bought new toners of 500$ for the 300$ printer "it's the last one i need before retirement, i swear!".
I hate those HP pissers! It’s hard to get the stains off the floor.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Holy fuck, that would make me quickly turn around nope away.
Wow. I've never seen a printer dump all of its toner like that. The only thing worse would be if it was on fire and on a carpet floor.
that room is cooked
I saw nothing and suddenly feel sick I'm going home early.
someone self-destructed
A Logitech MX Ergo trackball mouse.
I've used thumb ball mice since the 20th century. I replaced a Microsoft branded one with a Logitech M570, that started to get a little old in the tooth so I saw this "premium" mouse they were offering.
Worst HID I can think of. it really wasn't that ergonomic, the ball was at such an angle that you don't get much vertical throw, the Forward button is hard to reach, the customization software is insipid, the hole to push the ball out is too small, and then the coating started to perish. It has this rubberized coating that just...started failing. It's disgusting to touch now. Only reason I don't throw it out is there's a lithium battery in it.
Oh, even techier: I bought a pair of ESP32CAM devices. Little ESP32 dev boards with a camera on them. That's a surprisingly powerful yet low power microcontroller, with onboard Wi-Fi, attached to a microSD card slot and a 1080p camera. On paper that's a cool idea. I think they both overheated and died.
This worst purchase but entirely my fault. I bought a thrust master t3000 kit off of a website I had found because it was like 200 bucks cheaper than anywhere else. I get the thing in the mail and it’s the EU plug so I had to order another servo motor that was for US outlets
nowadays the wise play would be to move to the EU instead
Working on that now actually.
...to ieuropeandre
sorry I just had to see this joke through. moving on...
you'll have to change your name
I just realized what you were referring to, it’s Eric lol not American Andre. I can see where you got that tho
yea I got that... Perhaps I should leave joking to the professionals
Lenovo Daydream VR camera. Worked ok at first, but was soon after abandoned by Google and Android dropped support for it as well. These days an expensive brick. Oh and the battery became a spicy pillow as well 🤦
I had the daydream headset. It's sad it was abandoned, it had potential and it would be cool if instead of selling expensive whole other systems for VR, we could just use our phone. I got mine on Super sale, not realizing Google was planning to abandon it. I thought they were just going to roll out a new one soon. Instead, all the apps were abandoned and it's more or less useless now. Still works okish as a vehicle for porn I guess.
Not sure if it qualifies as tech, but a hybrid water heater. Was twice as expensive, sometimes provided only luke warm water and finally the compressor gave out prematurely. Should have just bought a normal one.
What makes it hybrid?
Gas and electric components
Actually, this is not the case at least with regards to the one I owned. The "hybrid" part was that it had a heatpump attached that was more efficient that standard electric heating in some circumstances. Mine worked OK, so I wouldn't put in my worst buys, but the electricity savings were definitely exaggerated by the sales rep.
It's a water heater that has a mini air conditioner on top. It pulls heat from the garage(or wherever it is located) and puts it into the water. Sounds like a great idea. At least I thought so but as it turns out they are not well built and wind up giving you two chances at having to replace the whole thing; when the compressor portion breaks or when the water heater section breaks. Way more expensive too. Very disappointing.
All three different aux to usb-c adaptors I have bought..
The "best" one was the cheapest aliexpress one.
They are generally pretty terrible unless you get a full on expensive portable DAC.
Cheap chinese Android tablet that was supposedly 8-core 16Gb ram. It's an absolute piece of shit, I think my S4 has more juice. It's a paperweight now after the Ali seller disappeared.
Vr Headset.
Worth it to play Half Life Alyx and 3D Skyrim.
But was it worth $400?
Skyrim is terrible in 3D. I can barely hack and slash normally, and I'm supposed to do it while disoriented and facing the wrong direction. Even with my coward play style of sneaky mage with uncapped runes, it's too much of a pain to do anything other than stare up at the sky.
I owned a MindDrive. It did not help me get better at CS like I had expected. 😔
The Outa console. It's sitting in my shelf in my officefas a reminder of how dumb I can be.
Those HD fans they had didn't cool anything but the vibration wrecked the HD.
Jide Remix Ultratablet.
Kinda glitchy from the start. Got one minor software update before the company decided to focus first only on their mini-desktops and soon after, B2B; dropping the consumer support entirely.
Which wouldn't have been so bad is the released the proprietary blobs for others to use to keep up support. The hardware was nice, and the concept was one of the first to try an "Android version of a Surface". But to my knowledge, no ROMs have ever been made for it.
the video version of the echo devices.
I bought a 2nd hand MacBook Air with an Intel chip to put Linux on it. Forgot about the T2 chip being a bitch.
As the owner of a proper Linux tablet, tablets are for combining with keyboards for use as small laptops.
They're also good for watching videos during taxi, takeoff, and landing during which laptop use is forbidden.
Which tablet
Surface Go 2.
It wasn't a Linux tablet when it first arrived, but that was easy to fix.
Using it as a laptop? In theory, a 10" screen thin and light laptop with the guts in the base instead of the screen is a better design. There aren't very many of those to be had, especially not for $90 on Ebay.
Watching videos during taxi, takeoff, and landing? The alternative is paying attention to the safety briefing. I think I won't.
BQ Aquaris E5 Ubuntu Editon
Big flop
gaming motherboard that is too new for my system and has this stupid bug on some driver that my internet cuts off randomly
I saw this video show up as well, and it got me thinking what are mine?
I tend to do tonnes of research before buying any tech. But potentially it would be my TP-Link BE6500 WiFi 7 router. Like it works amazingly well, and it solved all of the routing and bandwidth issues with streaming and gaming on WiFi, however I don't think it was worth the price or headache getting it working.
Otherwise, not sure if we're regarding this as tech, but I purchased the Illumi Classic IPL device a few months ago. I made the wrong decision here, I should have spent the extra and picked up the Illumi Pro instead.
Had a Tapwave Zodiac as a teenager. Was so excited waiting for it, quite a disappointment.
Microvision ShowWX+ pico projector. They'd been advertising their laser-based VR tech for almost a decade but still had zero products on the market, so when they advertised a portable, battery-powered 640x480 laser projector with adapters for cell phones (this was 2010 so fairly unusual) I ordered one. I hoped I'd get something fun for travel/work use, and maybe help kickstart Microvision finally selling what was supposed to be a revolutionary VR display. Supposedly it required no focusing and would produce a bright image from 1' to 6' wide.
It was $400, arrived months late, didn't work out of the box, and even when I finally had everything updated, it was so dim you could only see it in a pitch-black room or when the projector was inches from a reflective surface. To top it all off, the "low power, highly efficient" laser module constantly overheated.
Just a complete disaster. I think in the following 16 years they've sold maybe a dozen monochrome HMDs to the Air Force... for analyzing skin cracks in grounded planes.
Ringconn Gen2 smart ring. Battery issues. Eventually wouldn't hold a charge for an entire day. This is after being sure to charge it from no lower than 40% and generally no higher than 90% Completely unusable after a year.
I've bought some different smart switches and bulbs that changed hardware but not model number thinking I could flash them to ESPHome.
Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module for Intellivision
Bee 17 Baahmer
You didn't get hours of entertainment out of that? Not even with the Smurfs game!?