Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 592 posts

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#121

Post by amelius »

cik wrote: post #29

I've spent a long time engineering, and adapting my workspace. It's at the point now that going to an office is a horrible experience, compared to my home office. Here's my setup * Ikea Standing desk (I never sit). I know plenty of people who use these for sitting, simply because the height of the desk is finally suited to their specific frame. * As many monitors as will make you happy (to each their own, but I'm hap…

> Wacom One tablet - Now I can draw on digital whiteboards in Zoom, or even on shared websites and it's significantly better than the mouse experience.

Except there's no scroll wheel to zoom in/out. Which makes it difficult to use in programs like Inkscape and KiCAD.

Does anybody have a good alternative (external scrollwheel perhaps?)

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#122

Post by chordalkeyboard »

Arubis wrote: post #107
ssss11 wrote: post #8

A good coffee machine at home. Unbelievable ROI, one of my favourite purchases.

Maybe tangential, but would most folks be likely to discern the difference vs. a glass French press? Most drip coffeemakers I’ve used are both more expensive and make worse coffee (not to mention harder to clean), so I’ve largely given up on the category, but admittedly haven’t done proper research in quite a while.

I have yet to find a French press without plastic components that contact the brew.

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#123

Post by evan_ »

snowwrestler wrote: post #87

Switching from a mouse to a multitouch trackpad completely resolved my wrist pain, and I find gestures essential to productivity now. I started off with a Fingerworks trackpad; this is the company Apple bought to bring in multitouch technology. Then when Apple’s trackpads got big enough and supported enough gestures, I switched to those.

Yeah agreed. Just being able to throw your hand at the Trackpad and start a cursor move anywhere, rather than carefully grab a mouse, is huge.

I use BetterTouchTool to add extra gestures to move windows to different places on my monitor. It feels like magic and any time someone’s watching me they ask how I’m doing that.

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#124

Post by bikingbismuth »

A small macropad, in my case a CU7. I’ve mapped keybindings that I commonly forget like mute/unmute for Teams, delete/archive for Outlook, and I have a macro for putting in my username and username+work email. Makes signing into things a bit faster.

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#125

Post by logicalmonster »

Open ear headphones that use what they describe as bone conduction technology really added some value to my life. It's tough to go running in normal headphones because you can't hear danger (cars, animals, people, etc) but it's a lot easier to push yourself with some good background music. This gives the best of both worlds.

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#126

Post by bsenftner »

trabant00 wrote: post #110
nickjj wrote: post #95

A 2560x1440 monitor running at its 1:1 native resolution. The screen real estate improvement over 1080p is substantial. You get so much more vertical space and you can easily fit 4 side by side code windows at 80 chars. At 24" or 25" the PPI is also quite nice for reading text. I wrote up a very big monitor selection guide at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-fo... , I try to keep it up to dat…

Wait till you get a 32 inch 4k one. I am shocked a lot of IT professionals still use 1080p when the above can be found for as low as 250 usd with discounts

I have four 4K screens, and it is heaven. I got spoiled early in my career by a Unix system that had a greyscale newspaper layout monitor in the early 90's. That monitor could crispy display an unfolded two page newspaper layout with space on the left and right for tool/editing interfaces. For a while, 4K monitors were landing right near US $300, so I got 4 over a period of months. Simply being able to array references around my work, with space to spare for communication and music interfaces. It is lovely to hit stride and before I know it the day is over, and a ton of work accomplished.

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#127

Post by heywire »

khaledh wrote: post #118

The switch from a mechanical HDD to a SDD was the biggest gain in performance I've seen from any piece of hardware. I still remember the time when HDDs were the norm and the agony of waiting on loading/accessing something from disk was real.

I do a lot of work with virtual machines at , and don’t have enough room on the internal ssd to hold them all. I usually swap them in and out as I work on different projects, but every once in a while I’ll boot one direct from an external usb3 HDD. I can’t believe we used to work that way. I couldn’t imagine going back. An SSD can breathe new life into a 10+ year old system easily, too.

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#128

Post by j4yav »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #112
j4yav wrote: post #67

The Apple Watch surprised me in how much awareness of my health it generated - mainly how much and what quality sleep I was getting, but also other general signals. It helped me pay more attention and make some good health improvements. Presumably any other smart watch offers similar benefits.

When do you charge yours? Is the battery life good enough for using it day and night?

I have to charge daily (but I wear it the rest of the day, including when sleeping). I usually do it in the morning after my workout as I start work.

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#129

Post by Saris »

Arubis wrote: post #107
ssss11 wrote: post #8

A good coffee machine at home. Unbelievable ROI, one of my favourite purchases.

Maybe tangential, but would most folks be likely to discern the difference vs. a glass French press? Most drip coffeemakers I’ve used are both more expensive and make worse coffee (not to mention harder to clean), so I’ve largely given up on the category, but admittedly haven’t done proper research in quite a while.

Usually manual coffee making can be just as good or better than a machine, or at least much cheaper for the same quality. You can make very very good coffee with a $40 pour-over or french press.

French press doesn't really have a machine equivalent that I can think of though, it's sort of in its own category of coffee.

IMO a good burr grinder is good to have no matter how you make your coffee. If you don't already buy whole beans they're much fresher, and if you do but use a blade grinder the burr grinders do a better more consistent job at it.

Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?

#130

Post by tezza »

* streamdeck (with AutoHotkey) saves more hot loop critical tasking than i could have dreamed of

* Microsoft X6 keyboard - the original hot action key

- svn st, svn diff, svn ci -m “” as an example of the very frequent things replaced by a discrete key each

Post reply on HN