What is piece of tech that, when it first came out, you thought sucked, but when you used it, became essential?

MigasTigas · March 8, 2021

Keyboards that have a numpad. Couldn't withstand with the fact that why on earth there were two sets of numeric keys, but today use it all the time on my projetcs and work.

WkdPaul · March 8, 2021

* title fixed *

FRD · March 8, 2021

Another thing I want to about phones is their speed and cameras. I remember my first smartphone was so slow and it would easily drain in performance and better when using it. Nowadays phones are so fast, barely any lag and they work as intended.

Cameras on phones these days are also really good, but I have a love/hate relationship with them. Phone cameras still don't replace actual professional cameras yet, which I why I like to carry both if I'm going on a trip.

Finally, one thing we can all agree on is the step from HDDs to SSDs, who ever thought that a speed boost was so godlike over just drive capacity for the money.

icase81 · March 9, 2021

So many things don’t seem like a huge improvement until you go back to the old way. SSDs, old 512k DSL in the 90s, etc. they were improvements but didn’t feel like the gigantic leap they were until I had to try and use a laptop with a 4200rpm ATA drive again or had to use dial up somewhere.

But singular piece of tech? True wireless bluetooth headphones. I avoided them because I have tiny weird ears and earbuds hurt badly after 10 minutes, no matter if it’s silicone or memory foam tips. I stuck to my Sennheiser over the ears. I decided to try some mold your own earplugs and stick a $30 set of Anker buds in them to make custom eat pieces. It’s so great to be able to mow the lawn or snow blow or do anything really without having huge hot over the ear headphones on. My Senns are still better sounding (a $200 pair of headphones sounds better than $30 ones?! No wai!) but the extra freedom of the BT ones means I grab those 9/10 times.

RollinLower · March 9, 2021

On 3/6/2021 at 5:13 PM, manikyath said:

touchscreens on laptops.

when i saw it for the first time i thought it was silly.. but then it ended up being one of the primary points for me upgrading my laptop.

damn, on my work laptop i have the touchscreen turned off in BIOS because i kept closing all my tabs when i picked the thing up.