HP Printer
Anything with fucking Bluetooth. Even in 2024 getting it to connect consistently requires some kind of arcane magic
I had to buy a Clicker for college in a day when any number of phone apps, or even the Smart board, would have done exactly the same thing. I think it cost about $150 and the only thing it did – THE ONLY THING IT DID – was serve as an expensive and drastically crippled version of Kahoot. Abject waste of money for all parties involved.
Not sure if it counts as technology but it was a Ford Focus.
Manual lawnmower.
The surface RT and windows ME e-machine computer were both a close second.
It’s hard to top the inkjet printers I’ve owned. I still can’t believe 30 years later home printer tech is not only unimproved but worse between lower quality production and squeezing people on ink costs.
And they’re making things worse as we use less and less paper at the same time… Geniuses
Gotta protect those profit margins!
I bought an old business monochrome laser printer ten years ago. Still hasn’t needed a new toner cartridge.
I bought my parents a laser printer after years of them being incredibly frustrated by inkjets. I got them the same model as me, as well as a spare toner cartridge.
I’m still on my original toner cartridge, and I’ve had it for probably six years or so.
My parents are in their late 40’s and early 50’s. I think I might have accidentally gotten them a lifetime supply of printing.
I got my parents a laser as well and evidently I picked a shitty one because they are planning to go back to the other side 😞
Considering the volume businesses need weekly vs a private household I wonder why the very same cartridge lasts for >5 years
If you’ve owned more than 2, those are on you! 🤣
But yea, consumer printers suck.
Hey, my Brother laser printer can see my screen, you know! Apologise now!
My Lexmark laser, from 1996, just quit last summer.
Though I think I can fix it - seems a paper jam sensor is stuck.
Laser printers are way way better than the other types
Everything is better with lasers. Prove me wrong…
Sharks with laser beams on their heads?
Fricken, better.
I got one of those Epson ink tank printers for $250au. I think it’s the first time inkjet printers have become legit affordable and high capacity.
Laser still wins on reliability though, and being an Epson means it’s a Tamagochi so needs to be used monthly at least so it doesn’t die.
I should really get a laser printer but my need for 11x17 capacity kind of limits options. To be fair though, my brother small business type inkjet printer does pretty well! Ink costs suck but I don’t want to commit seppuku after using it.
I’ve never owned a better inkjet than the one I’ve had in the late 90s on all measures; build-quality, print quality, speed, operating noise, ink consumption, ink price, overall price, usability. Everything has got worse.
A smart egg tray. It was in fact quite stupid. Mainly purchased it because of how absurd it was.
Main issues:
- it was constantly wrong about how many eggs were in the tray
- it was wrong about the eggs age.
- it took 6AA batteries that only lasted a month at best.
The egg that stays fresh for a few hundred years is kinda lame for an SCP
I dunno, does it warp probability around it so that no matter what, the egg is always fresh? How far does the effect extend? Does it affect people or just physical interactions? If people ask these questions are they under the effect and contributing to the egg’s defense and therefore continued freshness?
That really sounds absurd. Both the idea itself and the fact that they somehow screwed up the execution of such a simple thing that much.
That sounds eggceptionally stupid, eggregious even.
Wow. Nicely done.
eggcellent
Wow I thought I was the only idiot that bought it. Once they started charging for the smart features, it got unbatteried and became just a fancy box.
Hahahahaha omg that is horrible
Tablets. I’ve owned 2 so far, plus fucked around with a third, fancier one that was borrowed from someone else (in case you care: a very old Samsung one, a Xiaomi model from the late 2010s, and a new-ish Apple iPad for the borrowed one).
They suck as smartphone replacements because they are too big.
They lack button inputs, so they suck as gaming devices or as computer replacements.
You can browse the web… But if you decide to type anything, the large size plus the touchscreen keyboard make for an awkward experience (in ways that it’s not on a smaller phone)
They have lit screens, so they suck as eReaders.
They’re sorta okay as like, personal screens for watching movies or whatever, but like, at that point just use a television??
They can make sorta good drawing tablets, the ones that are pen-compatible I mean… Because I mean, yeah. But the lack of a keyboard is a bummer with how I learned to draw with my other hand on Ctrl+Z, though that’s more a muscle memory issue than anything.
In general, every tablet I used felt like a less-good verion of a dozen other devices, yanno?
HP anything, absolute trash
A Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite.
Their own lower-end APUs are sooo slow (even worse than Samsung) and the bloated stock ROM doesn’t help. The tablet was borderline unusable without limiting background applications (which for some reason reset every time you reebooted the thing), and it’s not like it ever got any updates.
An iBook. I had the GPU replaced twice under warranty. I sold it after the second time. Never again.
I think the Thinkpad X130e with the AMD E-240 CPU. That processor, really, was the bad part. Every little single thing you wanted to do was absolutely CPU-bound, even when it was contemporary and new (c. 2011-2012). The amount of time I wasted waiting for the fully hammered CPU to do literally anything was too much.
I bought the laptop used because I figured a tiny Linux laptop would be great. And other aspects of it were fine, such as the display, keyboard, trackpad, build quality, etc. But that stupid CPU totally killed the device. Such a regret.
I went from a cheap mp3 player that I could just plug in to my computer and drag in music to an iPod which forced me to download the iTunes bloatware create an account and then took 100x longer to transfer music because of the pointless conversion each file had to undergo. This was my first and last experience with a personal Apple device. Ended up putting some old pop music onto it and giving it to my grandmother after 2 days. Uninstalled iTunes and went back to using my cheap mp3 player until I replaced it with a smartphone.
Coming in as a close second place, an all-in-one Sony Vaoi computer that cost a fortune and had shit performance. Took daily nags to Sony before they took it back and gave me a refund. I find that Sony’s hit and miss though. My favourite smartphone (Xperia Play) was Sony, and I love my Sony Bluetooth earbuds. The Sony Smartwatch was shit.
Anything that relies on mini/micro USB for charging. With enough repeated use, they eventually cause an early failure of the device.
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.
Have you tried “arrete?”
Used to love it, had too many weird promptless experiences, unplugged it and now it’s gathering dust on a shelf.
Though it was nice to say “Hey google, tell me today’s news” and get a few different news updates while making coffee.
Edit: Out of sheer curiosity, have you tried factory resetting it?
I’ve factory reset every Google home of mine multiple times over the years. Never had any effect.
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.
