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

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

#181
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

Which ones?

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

#183
There are three, maybe four. The 3, from least to most important, are:

1) My kneeling chair. Between the pandemic and a new job started a few months before, I am at my desk more than ever. I wondered about the ~acute angle between legs and torso in a regular chair, so I borrowed a kneeling chair from a friend. I figured I'd go easy on it/me and use it for just 15 minutes at a time at first. After a quarter hour or so, I switched back to my chair and was immediately all NOPE NOPE NOPE! Bought my own, adjustable one, later that day. Amazing. Best $100 ever spent.

2) My Delonghi bean-to-cup coffee maker. Had been looking for one after falling in love with the really high quality ones at European hotels, but didn't have a spare €7000. Found this Magnifica on sale at CostCo 5 years ago. Its nits and nuisances are so minor, I accept them happily: Great coffee, every time, exactly as I like it (grind and water volume are adjustable). Best $1000 ever spent. So good, it was one of only two possessions I wrote into my separation agreement. The other was....

3) My Jeep. In 2009 I replaced my car with a old-style CRV and loved the extra height and clearance. I started to venture a little further afield. I had friends who off-loaded, and it intrigued me. Knowing nothing and knowing I wanted to try more serious off-roading, in 2014 I made myself the gift of a JKU Rubicon. Drove it through a swamp the first night and was hooked. It has literally changed my life. I did not know I was handy, or could be handy, now I wrench on it myself and like a lot of members of my club, I'm learning to weld (though more slowly than I would like), and I've gotten pretty good at trail repairs, macgyvering things well enough to get someone off the trail, whether that means just out of the way, or as far as a trailer, or maybe even home.

I also did not expect to be really, really good at it. I've been a trail leader with my club for years, am club secretary, and am one of the guys who figures out new trails in our area, some of them, well, insane (really technical off camber climbs, high damage probabilities, etc.).

And the people! Literally all walks of life and all views, and all amazing.

King of the Hammers just ended; yesterday was my high holy day. My Jeep introduced me to KotH. My Jeep introduced me to some of my best friends, people who would drop everything at a moment's notice and help (my moving crew was all off-road buddies). My Jeep introduced me to going nowhere slowly, to rock crawling, and to discovering views otherwise accessible only by strenuous multi-day hikes. My Jeep is the reason my post-divorce house has an oversized garage stocked with tools. My Jeep is the reason I do so much of my own hands-on around the house.

Between the relaxation that comes from really technical rock crawling and the confidence that comes from both doing that and from cutting holes in to and cutting things off of a very expense piece of machinery, and from the camaraderie and friendship and love within my off-road family, my Jeep has literally changed my life.

Best never ending expenditure ever. Just Empty Every Pocket.

(The fourth? Anti-climactic, but a set of Bose noise cancelling headphones. They were my daughter's welcome gift when she started a new job, but she already had a set, so she passed them on to me. I would never have believed they were anywhere worth the price, it all seemed such hype. I was wrong. They are very cool, very comfortable, and work very well. Best hand-me-down ever. :->)

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

#184
post #10

I finally gave in to reality and got reading glasses for coding. Didn't realize how much I was suffering.

How did you decide which brand to get and at what strength? I wear glasses every day (nearsighted) and have been thinking about getting reading glasses for work but the ones I tried at the grocery store were way too strong. I somewhat recently upgraded to a larger monitor and have scaled up my fonts but I still feel like I am straining a bit.

Go to an optician/optometrist to get your required strength measured. The brand is likely not too important.

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

#187

A 43" monitor from Dell. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-43-4k-usb-c-... . It's wide enough that you can comfortably have three panes of code side by side and also tall enough that you can see a lot all at once. It's 4k, but it's so big you don't need much scaling to be comfortable.

Iiyama also has both a digital signage and a desktop monitor as competition, both using MVA panels (the former's is even rated at 5000:1 typical static contrast).

They might well be cheaper; I switched to the digital signage one as my daily driver because my old 40" 4k's backlight PSU has become too weak to be useful and that model of screen got EOL'd (the desktop variant I mentioned above was released 2~3 months after I bought mine).

But unless you can color-calibrate yourself on the source, I'd recommend against the digital signage models as they don't offer any color profiles/factory calibration.

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

#188
post #8

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

I love my AeroPress. Faster, better, and easier than anything else!

I've been a huge AeroPress fan for years (at least 15 I think), but recently moved to a house with a massive kitchen and bought a good mid-range espresso machine and I have to admit, I'm in love with it. I got this one [0] for reference and it's filled with really clever design touches. Only the quality of the steam control dial lets it down, in every other respect it's superb. The AeroPress has gone in a drawer and not been seen since.

Edit: Meant to add, actually the entire flow including steaming the milk is faster and less messy than the AeroPress too.

[0] https://www.sageappliances.com/uk/en/products/espresso/bes87...

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

#189
The 3dFX Voodoo2 - amazing leap in 3D gaming

The oculus quest 2 - VR for the masses, so much fun, actually works well for the first time without $$$

The Intel Core CPU - multi core computing for the masses, huge performance and efficiency gains over prior gen merging pentium M tech

Most recently Apple Silicon, specifically the Apple M1 MacBook Air:

- it runs dead silent

- it runs cool on my lap

- it has a tiny charger

- but mostly the performance blows away all non plugged in laptops besides other m1s and most desktops consuming many more watts at much higher temps and noise level

Its amazing how much a difference having full performance while on battery makes compared to x86 counterparts. I was a linux on thinkpad guy for years but this made me flip back fullstop.

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

#190
remarkable 2. I use the chrome extension to send HN articles and read it there mostly. It has cut down my article surfing/skimming significantly.

As a writing pad, it’s a perfect set of functions and is the origin device of all my ideas.

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