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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the video version of the echo devices.
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.
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
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 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
Pretty much anything that was “a really good deal”.
I read this as “a really good idea” and still kind of agreed.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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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.
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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 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
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Wow good to know, that means Xiaomi is dead for me now.
2000 devices globally is a ridiculously low number
What app are you using to log the requests?
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And it’s on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.celzero.bravedns/
Awesome, thank you!
BQ Aquaris E5 Ubuntu Editon
Big flop
Anything Samsung. The appliances fail fast and the smartphones are constantly getting more and more enshittified.
I got a SG fe 20 last one. Moving to pixel.
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Zip drive
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.
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 ™. 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
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.
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.
Mine was the Powerglove. I begged for it for my birthday and the price was high enough that was the only present that year.
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.
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
