Painful tech realizations

[Dyaets]

On 9/25/2020 at 8:57 PM, B.Toast said:

I remember my first MP3 player could hold a massive ~100 songs, ran on a single AA battery, and could last at least most of the day, and thinking, "It'll never get better than this." 

Oh yes! That's the second thing I should have also mentioned. Had just the same feelings  

[thedangerine]

On 9/23/2020 at 10:45 PM, James Evens said:

Nobody will run a X99 as NAS  when power cost 30cent/kWH and rising.

 

Lol I use my old X99 system as a NAS and probably will for as long as I can regardless of power costs

[jollander]

I used to think that IOS, Android, Win Phone 7, Symbian or any other phone OS was just a personal choice and that they'd be equally good. 

 

My most painful tech realization was after buying a Symbian phone (Sony Ericsson Satio) with a pressure sensitive touch screen. No app support, horribly slow and I had to press really hard for the screen to react. In the end the pressure sensitive screen got STUCK and spam-smsed while in my pocket. It would just send "PPPPPPPP" to everyone on my contacts list.

 

 

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

On 9/25/2020 at 10:57 PM, B.Toast said:

I know Samsung puts out better hardware

apple has always had the best cpus. otherwise yeah, though I think there is a better solution to the use of ram on android than adding 16+gb of ram on a phone

[NineEyeRon]

Painful as it is it turns out I did the right thing with my build.

 

Limiting me to less powerful GPUs because of the case size and PSU power has really helped me keep my spending under control. I would love to splash out but because I probably need to buy a case, PSU, GPU and monitor I am likely never able to afford the upgrade. 

 

So I will continue to game on what I have, its well suited to the games I play and I wont be lured by new hardware which just wont be fully utilised, despite me wanting it and it hurting when I can’t.

[Jet_ski]

My tech realization came after I ordered a really nice but expensive laptop. I really wanted it and I could have used the larger screen and better hardware. It arrived with a massive puncture through it. As I thought about how much I spent on it and how much it sucked to receive it damaged I realized that somewhere along I had forgotten these things aren’t actually toys and I had let myself spend too much on it by adding so many upgrades. At the time of ordering the price of the upgrades didn’t bother me. It cost $3400. The same as a 2 week vacation I took a few years back. During which I made lots of friends and enjoyed the beach. So I decided to make do with my outdated laptop and save to go on another trip. Then freakin covid happened.

[mao91]

21 hours ago, thedangerine said:

Lol I use my old X99 system as a NAS and probably will for as long as I can regardless of power costs

That's another tech realization I've made. The cheapest piece of tech you have is the one you've already paid for. Sure, I could go out and pay $25k for a new car that gets about 35-40mpg, but my current car gets about 25mpg and that's just a lot of gas that I could burn before I'll ever reach the point where the new car would save me money. 

[mao91]

10 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

My tech realization came after I ordered a really nice but expensive laptop. I really wanted it and I could have used the larger screen and better hardware. It arrived with a massive puncture through it. As I thought about how much I spent on it and how much it sucked to receive it damaged I realized that somewhere along I had forgotten these things aren’t actually toys and I had let myself spend too much on it by adding so many upgrades. At the time of ordering the price of the upgrades didn’t bother me. It cost $3400. The same as a 2 week vacation I took a few years back. During which I made lots of friends and enjoyed the beach. So I decided to make do with my outdated laptop and save to go on another trip. Then freakin covid happened.

Where are you taking a 2week vacation that costs $3400? For me, if I have PTO, a 2-week vacation could cost me just a few groceries and maybe a tank of gas. But then again my idea of a vacation is not traveling per se, but just kayaking all day every day for a couple weeks and being away from people and technology.

[Jet_ski]

On 10/3/2020 at 3:51 PM, B.Toast said:

Where are you taking a 2week vacation that costs $3400? For me, if I have PTO, a 2-week vacation could cost me just a few groceries and maybe a tank of gas. But then again my idea of a vacation is not traveling per se, but just kayaking all day every day for a couple weeks and being away from people and technology.

I went to near LA; different beach areas. The accommodations cost a lot. But it was definitely worth the experience. 

[Guest]

On 9/25/2020 at 8:57 PM, B.Toast said:

 

I'll let you in on a little secret: nobody who builds PCs actually likes Windows 10. We just love hardware customization. For my work, if I could run MacOS on a custom hardware configuration, I absolutely would, as it would open up a whole world of outboard hardware possibilities. Unfortunately, my choices are limited because the audio production industry, generally speaking, worships Apple. Still, I refuse to pay those kinds of prices. 

I was very anti-apple for a long, long time. Then, in 2017, when I needed a smartphone for work, a local store was giving away the new base model iPhone 7. I really was looking at a Galaxy, but free was free. Used that for a few years and now am up to the iPhone 11. I know Samsung puts out better hardware (except the camera for some reason) but now with the whole Google vs. Apple controversy showing Apple actually caring more about user privacy than Google, I'm sticking with Apple for privacy reasons.

 

True. The main reason I have a PC is for gaming, because I like tinkering with hardware and upgrading the components, and because I want a powerful desktop that doesn't cost a minimum of $12,000 (the MacPro + monitor base price). 

 

I'm probably always going to use iPhones because I tried Android and all I could l think of while using it was how I preferred the iPhone.

 

The main thing that Apple has over PCs is the "ecosystem". If Windows "Your Phone" would better integrate with iPhone that would be amazing. I'd love to see my texts and reminders and notes on my PC. That's the thing that always makes me feel relieved when I start using my MacBook Pro instead of my PC. I wish I could have one computer that does it all, but there's no such thing. 

[PlayStation 2]

4GB of VRAM just isn't enough even for 1080p in a number of games. 

I had an R9 Fury X and while that motherfucker could plow through things my 580 just couldn't, it didn't have the VRAM to back itself up in modern games.

[Mitko_DSV]

On 10/3/2020 at 10:47 PM, B.Toast said:

That's another tech realization I've made. The cheapest piece of tech you have is the one you've already paid for. Sure, I could go out and pay $25k for a new car that gets about 35-40mpg, but my current car gets about 25mpg and that's just a lot of gas that I could burn before I'll ever reach the point where the new car would save me money. 

Well, this made me remember the only car in my family that isn't still ours (every other car that was bough we still keep, oldest one being from 1976). It was from 1986, on the highway it got 40-42mpg and in the city in got like 30-35mpg. Wasn't particularly fast, but it was cheap and reliable, sadly it was too rusted and my grandfather sold it instead of fixing it. Maybe one day I'll get another one of those, they're still common and cheap.

 

And to be on topic my tech realization is that I don't need new hardware. I used to want to upgrade my PC a lot, but now I just don't need anything more, I happy to use what I have. I used to want a mechanical keyboard, because I like nice clicky buttons, but I found an old membrane keyboard at home and I'm really happy with it since it has nice clicky buttons. I cannot type well on a keyboard with mushy buttons or ones that are very easy to press.

[Loote]

More or less tech:
1. Security usually costs performance, but we're in times where you can't just trust nobody will try to do malicious things.
2. Highly personalised things are several orders of magnitude more expensive, or impossible. You can see a nearly perfect laptop but just adding that OLED screen is simply impossible(or but the company and make the produce it for you possible).
3. Marketing makes us waste resources on worthless numbers/whatever new thing they try to sell us.
4. Patents drive the industry and obstruct it at the same time.
5. Safety reasons make us not have nice things.

[Bad5ector]

On 9/24/2020 at 2:23 AM, Fatih19 said:

Renewables ain't cheap, eh?

They can be if the proper infrastructure was in place. But that will take lots of money up front to do. Otherwise you are stuck with combustion or nuclear to handle the day to day loads. Micro-grids might be the way of the future, but it will take a while before that technology catches on (not many people are keen to retrofit their homes on the best of days).

 

But on topic, painful tech realizations... that I am being nickel and dimed by all my subscriptions that I barely use and am too lazy cancel or scared that once I do, I'll want to use them again.

[TempestCatto]

I will never have the latest and greatest. As soon as I buy parts, something new is announced or rumored.

[Fatih19]

3 minutes ago, Bad5ector said:

But on topic, painful tech realizations... that I am being nickel and dimed by all my subscriptions that I barely use and am too lazy cancel or scared that once I do, I'll want to use them again.

Nah dude, that's just being a hoarder. Get rid of them all and spend the money on something you actually want.

[Bad5ector]

Just now, Fatih19 said:

Nah dude, that's just being a hoarder. Get rid of them all and spend the money on something you actually want.

You aren't wrong lol... though I'm thinking it's time I kill the PS+ subscription that I used a total of 0 times this year.

[Loote]

9 minutes ago, Bad5ector said:

You aren't wrong lol... though I'm thinking it's time I kill the PS+ subscription that I used a total of 0 times this year.

Think about how easy it is to subscribe again. Locally we have an equivalent of Amazon Prime with free shipping at the cost of x/month and 10x/year, but I get the monthly one 3 times/year buying things only in said months. I also learned that when I'm going to play a game for 3 days $5 for a weekly premium is cheaper than $8 for a monthly one.

 

Quote

They can be if the proper infrastructure was in place.

We have crazy cheap Internet compared to US, but when you do the math, putting optic fibre on my street is simply not a profitable idea, thus I don't expect to get it anytime soon.

[Computerboi1231]

well as my 2001 Windows XP computer gets older it starts breaking down but it worked very well until yesterday when it fully broke down. So I took it apart and it broke down because I was using the old beast for 5 hours and dumb me I forgot the heat sink was bad but before this I upgraded the CPU to a intel core i5 and weirdly it could support a 100 gigabite  HDD and a day before the computer broke the fan broke. So anyways RIP computer. 

 

[Dyaets]

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

I will never have the latest and greatest. As soon as I buy parts, something new is announced or rumored.

Huh! Yep, you just hit the spot of painful tech realizations  

[mao91]

 

4 hours ago, Bad5ector said:

 that I am being nickel and dimed by all my subscriptions that I barely use and am too lazy cancel or scared that once I do, I'll want to use them again.

Likewise there are subscriptions I would like to get but refuse to because I know I can't afford them or won't utilize them. I don't have any game subscriptions. I have a Prime sub because when I need something TOMORROW, its my go-to (more often than I care to admit!) And I have a Slate Digital subscription because I use their software for my work. And of course Disney Plus for the partner who is obsessed.