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

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251–260 of 592 posts

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

#251
My ZSA Moonlander keyboard [1].

When I bought it, I was just looking for a sleeker and more ergonomic keyboard with a split design, but the ability to easily reconfigure every key on the layout brought a new meaning to the word "ergonomic" for me.

It means that when a particular motion or shortcut that I frequently use is puts too much strain on my hands, I can simply change the layout to make the keys more natural too use. And it's just an overall incredibly well made product.

[1] https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/

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

#252
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…

I've tried a lot of different monitor setups for productivity - ranging from three 24" 4k displays to a single 49" ultrawide, and ultimately have found the best setup for me is dual 27" 4ks, each running at a "scaled" 2560x1440. MacOS in particular does an excellent job of rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen, and the increased DPI over a regular 1440p 27" screen is very noticeable. Another option if you're not a fan o…

> MacOS in particular does an excellent job of rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen, and the increased DPI over a regular 1440p 27" screen is very noticeable.

MacOS in particular gets amazingly slow when you don't use a 1:1 or 2:1 scaling. I too have have two 27" 4k screens and they made the machine unbearably slow. It got so bad that I now treat them as 1440p screens and let the screens do the scaling. It's not pretty and slightly hazy, but at least the machine is usable.

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

#253
My Specialized Turbo Vado e-bike. I can get to work comfortably and get some exercise and not be constrained by the limited bus schedule or be stuck in car traffic burning expensive fuel and generating pollution.

Also our Urban Arrow cargo bike. We can get our kids the 3km to school in a few minutes while everyone else looks for a footpath to obstruct in their SUVs.

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

#254

A subwoofer. No matter how high end your headphones, bookshelf speakers, or studio monitors are, they will never be able to punch you in the chest in quite the same way as a decently sized dedicated subwoofer. It's a night-and-day difference for listening to music and watching movies, or even just listening to human voices in youtube videos. Just, be careful not to bother your neighbours with it.

This goes for your car, too. A small powered subwoofer is such a huge improvement.

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

#255
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried a lot of different monitor setups for productivity - ranging from three 24" 4k displays to a single 49" ultrawide, and ultimately have found the best setup for me is dual 27" 4ks, each running at a "scaled" 2560x1440. MacOS in particular does an excellent job of rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen, and the increased DPI over a regular 1440p 27" screen is very noticeable. Another option if you're not a fan o…

> rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen How does this work? Will it just upscale or is e.g. text still rendered at 4K? Rendering not at native resolution results always in blurred edges in my experience.

In macOS, the entire display is rendered at 4K no matter what you pick from the resolution box. Most apps have learned to provide 2x-3x “retina” icons so that their bitmap resources look crisp alongside the system UI resources at user-selected “resolutions”.

The Windows UI scaling slider behaves in exactly the same way, though fewer apps include 2x or 3x bitmap resources.

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

#256

Air purifiers and air monitors. It is shocking and disgusting how much dust and particles these air purifiers suck out of the air. The air monitors detect when to open windows for CO2, among other things. My allergies no longer exist. Edit: A few people have asked for recommendations. I recommend the Coway Airmega AP-1512HH for larger spaces and Blueair Blue Pure 411 for smaller spaces. For the air monitor I have the…

can you recommend a specific product(s)?

Would like to hear some as well. Saw some at Home Depot but would like to hear some opinions.

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

#257
Google Stadia - I got a free controller & chrome-cast in a promotion a while back and sceptically tried it expecting massive latency and poor image quality, but ended up being blown away. Being able to play RDR2 on my MB Air and then switching over to the TV (without any interruption) is something that never gets old. It's such a shame that the product seems to be in its death throes.

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

#258

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.

I've been eyeing the Apple trackpads for some time now, as the experience of their trackpads are like no other (for laptops at least). How well does the standalone trackpad work with Windows and Linux? Those are my main OSes I switch between, and it's very nice that mouse input is exactly the same for both so muscle memory works perfectly well, would the same be true for using a Apple trackpad?

I recently got the Apple Magic Trackpad 2 for use on linux. I use it on the left side of my keyboard, so my right hand isn't taking all the RSI wear from using a mouse.

Overall, it works very well. It's basically plug-and-play. I only use it wired (with the included lightning-to-usbc cable), so I can't speak for the bluetooth experience.

I'm using KDE5 on xorg 7.7, and the multi-touch features work fine (two- and three-finger click). I haven't tried setting up gestures (three-finger swipe, etc) yet, so I'm not sure how well those work.

One issue is kinetic scrolling, where the page keeps scrolling with inertia after your input (like on a phone, or on macs). Without this, two-finger swipe scrolling will just emulate sending individual scroll wheel clicks to the app, which I find very unsatisfying.

At least on my setup, kinetic scrolling doesn't work by default. Maybe more bleeding-edge distros, or Wayland, or GTK DEs have better support for this -- not sure. I got firefox to support it by starting it with MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1. Chrome, Libreoffice, Konsole, and other apps still use the scrollwheel-type behavior. I haven't really spent much time looking into kinetic scrolling for them. I think this is probably the biggest drawback, but my impression is that it's not specific to the Apple Trackpad.

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

#259
post #208

The latest iPad Mini. It was meant to be a Moleskine replacement. I draw a lot but I can't carry all sorts of pencils with me. I made it a dedicated drawing and reading device. No notifications, no emails, etc. Holy moly is it good. Procreate and Notability are incredible apps. Having different pens, layers and an undo button is fantastic. It replaced the paper pad next to my computer, as well as my Moleskine. The si…

I use the latest iPad Air similarly. Got it and an Apple Pencil as a more-capable replacement for my reMarkable tablet and my Kindle, turned off all notifications and did not install any distractions. It's a great device. For me the main apps are Bear and Concepts.

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

#260
post #208

The latest iPad Mini. It was meant to be a Moleskine replacement. I draw a lot but I can't carry all sorts of pencils with me. I made it a dedicated drawing and reading device. No notifications, no emails, etc. Holy moly is it good. Procreate and Notability are incredible apps. Having different pens, layers and an undo button is fantastic. It replaced the paper pad next to my computer, as well as my Moleskine. The si…

Hard agree that the current gen of iPads are really incredible, and that Procreate especially is maybe the best creative app that's ever been made.

They keep adding features under the same price point that make giddy with possibility.

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