The games were actually really fun…but the console was basically a really slow phone. And the controllers had sticky buttons. But worst of all, all games lagged badly. Like half a second or more on some games.
I tried making it work for a month! I even tried to hack it to put retro stuff on it. My tiny gaming pc at the time had better capabilities and was easier to work with…so I gave up on that too. Tried to use the controllers (they were Bluetooth, they could technically work with other machines) but they lagged and felt terrible.
I might be exaggerating a but I’ve never been a real fan of Bluetooth headphones or earphones. Sound quality never matched cabled ones (I also have the popular Sony one) and battery life sucks for the time I want to use it
I always wanted to be the cool hipster with cabled headphones and getting mad about phones without audio jack.
Truth is, my cables always got tangled up, especially at work. It was getting really annoying. I bought some open ear headphones from aftershokz because i often listen to music wherever and i don’t want to be isolated. These things absolutely fuck. Battery life is fantastic. Even if they are empty, i can throw them into the pocket charger for 15 minutes and they go for hours again. The sound is good. It’s not full blown headphone quality, obviously. But they are so comfortable and you don’t have to stick anything into your ears. I saw that bose has a similar product and i kinda wanna try them.
I understand it’s a very subjective experience. And tbh, one thing that bothers me about cabled ones is the cable noise when moving. Or accidentally pulling off the headphones from my head, although that’s not a common issue,but for sitting experience they’re perfect. Aside from that, my music preference is very eclectic, so e.g. the level of bass really needs to adapt properly to the genre I’m listening to atm, so the boosted bass Bluetooth headphones just don’t work for me. I’ve never experienced a Bluetooth pair that doesn’t have too much bass.
Ya, bass is always the downside of these things, but i’m not super into that. Also i don’t really like to listen to music very loud. I really don’t like when i feel the cable brushing my arms or something. And i rip them out every time i stand up. It’s so bad. A huge plus for me is also that i can leave my phone somewhere and i can still listen to music.
I have $25 wired IEMS that sound better than my most expensive Bluetooth tws sets. I’ve taken to just listing to podcasts and YouTube videos with my Bluetooth sets at work.
Not sure if it is was the worst but I had a Ngage Q. You know the taco shaped gaming phone? Only that it was the less taco shaped version. And it was in 2009, several years after those things failed. It was a decent phone actually and it had tony hawk pro skater, very playable.
But yeah ugly as fuck and hard to hold as a phone plus lack of colours on the screen unless it was a game.
I used to be a big fan of Samsung, but over the past couple years it has become a do not buy brand for me. They keep doing anticompetitive stuff with their phones so my next phone won’t be one.
Start of 2024 my Samsung TV that wasn’t that old up and died. And my less than a year old Samsung monitor is flickering.
My watch 6 classic is my favorite smart watch I’ve ever had, but in order to get it working well on a non Samsung phone you need to go through a bunch of bullshit hassle.
As someone who runs a Windows phone launcher to this day, I think you’re wrong 😂 had they actually pursued them, and supported them better. I think we’d still have Windows phones today, The app store was truly the killer.
My last ever Nokia phone, a half way house between old Nokias and smartphones circa 2008.
No touch screen, but could play music, videos, had a calendar etc.
Absolute piece of garbage. Got super hot at times doing who-knows what, and had a software bug where the audio would completely stop working until you rebooted it… which meant that multiple times my morning alarm went off completely silently and I was late for work.
Bought an iPhone 3GS as soon as my 1 year contract was up, Nokia were never relevant again after that era.
August wifi smart lock. Originally wanted the zigbee version for my home but apparently they stopped making those in favor of wifi, however wifi needs more energy to communicate and would go through they special batteries in a week’s time. Even replacing the unit with another one didn’t solve the issue, so I just returned it and deleted my account.
I have the same lock. I didn’t want it but it was the only lock I could find that would work on my sliding door. The key is to buy rechargeable batteries. Mine last maybe a month before they need to be replaced.
I think it is more about the power required to run the lock motor.
I have several z-wave door locks as well. They all need battery replacement within a few months. Unless I don’t open/close them very often. They can go much longer.
But it really isn’t to big of a deal. Home Assistant tells me when they are getting low and I just swap the batteries in a few minutes.
To this day I don’t know what problem smart locks are supposed to solve that hasn’t already been solved by the good old lock and key combo. Requires no electricity, no internet, just works.
Letting people in without giving them a key (or if they forgot their key) is the use case. Also if you have smart home stuff like home assistant, you can program it to lock on its own based on conditions (like night time or your phone leaves the house).
Re the first part: nobody enters my house if they don’t have a key and I’m not present. Re the second part, I don’t trust any software-based technology near enough to rely on that kind of stuff without double-checking. . Turn the key, done.
Every piece of hardware I’ve used past 2010 or so seems to have just gotten worse and worse, I honestly think I’m cursed.
2013 (? can’t quite remember), Sager gaming laptop with sli gpu config, gpus drew too much power for the battery (I believe), leading to black screen and reboot. Company feigned ignorance, ran unrelated tests on RMA, Socially awkward at the time and was scared to ask for a refund. Convinced to this day it was a scam.
2015, desktop computer I built randomly powers off during usage, no errors, not the power supply, unsolved to this day.
2020-2022 5 cheap ebay thinkpads, all with one hardware problem or another. My beloved T60p was the last to go.
2022-present Framework laptop, ports suffer intermitent failure, webcam microphone stopped working. Replaced webcam/microphone, works for a day, breaks again. Unsolved.
2022-preset Steam deck, had to RMA 3 times for various hardware issues, works now, but the right trigger still rubs against something but I can live with it. Spilled coffee on the left trackpad so it’s sticky; that’s my fault though so I can’t blame it on the curse.
I had a laptop a while back with a fingerprint scanner that would work for one day, then stop working completely. I reinstalled the drivers, and it would work for a day and then stop again. I eventually gave up using the fingerprint scanner until I “upgraded” the laptop to Windows 11, and it worked again. No idea if it still works, since I rarely use that laptop now
You could either have the world’s worst luck, or you are genuinely cursed
Alternatively, you keep spilling coffee on your devices and going into a blind fit of cleaning rage that blocks out the memory of the original coffee spill
I usually buy Asus for computers, and I go for a mid-range business model with dedicated graphics. They’re cheaper than the gaming counterparts, still have good specs, and they are much more reliable and easy to work on.
Had a secondhand Alienware, circa 2017, and that thing looked nice, but it was heavy, bulky, and you had to remove the back cover, drives, battery, WiFi antenna, and a bezel just to swap the CMOS battery. But that’s everything Dell IMHO.
In ear earbuds. I blimmin’ hate them but my Audio Technica over ears are too bulky for the gym.
Bit off topic, though if anyone could recommend cheap but decent wireless headphones, for the gym, that are not in ear I would appreciate it a lot (I’m in the UK).
Not cheap and i already said it in another comment. I absolutely love my aftershokz open fit. My ear hurt like hell when i use in ears and they never seem to fit. These i wear sometimes 10 hours a day. I went to the shower multiple times because i forgot i was wearing them. They sound really good imo, battery life especially with the charging case is fantastic. It’s perfect to cycle or in areas where you still need basic awareness. Like i can talk to people at work while i have some music in my ears.
Do they hurt the backs of your ears? I’ve had some cheap in-ear headphones that also had curved plastic to fit around the shell of your ear for stability. I’d have to take them off after an hour or two in pain, but not because of the in-ear component.
Not the one you replied to, and I have a slightly different model (OpenRun Pro) but in my experience, not at all.
They work a little differently with bone conduction. This requires a tiny bit of pressure just below your temple in front of your ear. It doesn’t hurt, but if I wear it all day long (way more than a couple hours) I find myself a little bit… Annoyed with them? Just a little. I still happily put them on again the next day. Zero pain.
Oh, and bass comes out a little differently and kinda tickles a little bit. If you listen to stuff with a lot of bass frequently it may not be your best option. Sound quality is generally like a pair of Sound Blaster speakers from the 90s: it gets the job done just fine, but it’s not for audiophiles.
I also stan aftershokz. For gym use I use ear plugs to block out machine sounds and I can still hear my book/music/video just fine. The battery life is great - I charge them nightly to be certain they won’t die, but haven’t had any problems running them two days at a time for 8+ hours on the occasion that I forget.
Also a huge fan of mine (OpenRun Pro). Worth mentioning that they’re pretty lousy in noisy settings, like airplanes or mowing the lawn, but I love being able to listen to things without separating myself from the outside world
I know you’re looking for on or over ear, but for the gym, it might make more sense to get the non TWS earbuds like the LG Tone or similar. They’re light in your ear as all the battery weight stays on your neck.
A Canon printer. Not just a simple one, but a big (wide) one with real ink tanks, about 20 years ago.
Under Linux, I could only access basic printing services with that, and this only by using a default driver not made by Canon that happened to work. So I contacted Canon to get a proper user manual to create a proper device driver for this (something I could have done without problems), and basically got the answer that they would not support this, as “open source is theft of intellectual property”. They also had some very choice words about Linux in general.
I assumed I just got an asshole on the phone, so when I attended Cebit a short time later (back then the biggest trade fair in Europe for things like that), I went to the Canon booth, explained my issue, and basically got the same reply. So I sold the Canon printer and bought an HP one. At least HP supported Linux and supplied working drivers. Sadly, they have really gone down the drain since that, so the next printer will be a different brand again…
Well, the question for me back then was printing wide, so the selection was quite limited from the start. And laser was completely out of the equation, as anything printing wider than 21cm was industrial (size of a bus and price of a house) back then.
Ink stinks, but I’ll condone the toner. Inkjets are so unreliable compared to lasers. Good luck, but I worry you’re stacking the deck against yourself a bit with the ink and would hate to see you lose here.
I’ve had it for 8 years now, and so far it’s only on its second set of toners etc.
The only warning I give to brother printer owners is don’t leave them on. The capacitors in them aren’t the best and your printer will either not turn on without a long power off, or like mine it will turn on and off randomly all day and night.
So now I only turn it on at the wall when I need it, and unplug it after
1012 and ilk were also good, from the same era. I still have one of those running.
My LJ4+ lasted 21 years, the first part in an office setting and the latter a retirement in my home (and about 12 house moves). For its 19th I got its RAM filled. Woo! But we decided “as a household” that we didn’t need a reliable energy pig printer for a few pages a month. It made the lights flicker and the UPSes report a brownout. But it was a good printer.
Now we have an m404n and it’s everything today it needs to be.
Google Home. Bought them for $40 CAD and back then they were great. Responsive, did quick google searches, played my music all over the house.
Over the years they’ve lost functionality. Mine no longer accurately respond to voice queries and no longer complete google searches. I can still play music on them manually from my phone but when I ask it something, it responds back in French or does something completely different than what I had originally asked.
Worst part is that I ask it something, it does something different, and then when I say “hey Google stop” it just keeps going and going. Have to manually pull the plug for it to stop.
I have the ring doorbell and a home blob which I only use to play the doorbell tune in the house. It is 50/50 luck if the tune plays when someone presses the doorbell button.
My current Amazfit smartwatch. The only good thing about it is the long battery life.
It’s a piece of crap otherwise. Requires the data harvesting app to always be running in the background or it loses connection to my phone. It’s slow, has ugly watch faces and the custom ones are awkward to install. I can’t get it to work with Gadgetbridge. The always on display is so dim that it’s useless. Pinging my phone doesn’t work.
I don’t know why I let the Internet convince me that spending £120 on this thing was a good idea. I’m going Casio or something next time around.