A refurbished Dell XPS 9315. Had it a bit over a year, just out of warranty and the screen hinge sensor broke. Can’t open the laptop more than like, 20 degrees or so before screen shuts off. So it can really only be used as a “desktop”. New screen to replace would not be cost effective, plus I don’t have much faith in Dell products anymore.
Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#32Chromecast: only streams chrome within same wifi connection (no vpn) snd only streams some video formats. I should have researched more.
Somebody wrote a tool for pushing Apple airplay to chromecast [1]. There might be a way to push arbitrary streams?
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#33Lenovo Legion 5i. It fails at its primary purpose of being a gaming laptop by having memory/graphics issues while playing games.
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#34Hmm let me think back...
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Apple Homepod
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Bought it years ago since i was in the Apple ecosystem and I wanted an easy way to play music, set timers and add items to my grocery/reminder list.
I also knew state of the art in LLMs was picking up so I was willing to overlook how bad Siri is.
Flash forward to today:
- Siri is still a pile of garbage
- It only recognizes my voice despite my wife having an iPhone and being part of the household
- Sometimes doesnt save the timer
- Only recently did it get Spotify integration through my phone
- Still cant give it multiple items to add to a list at once
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Google Home
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Started strong then got progressively worse with each update until it could no longer do basic tasks like timers + reminders
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GoPro Hero
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Housing failed on my first use and they refused to honor the warranty.
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Quest 3
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Amazing device! But I wanted to use it for a virtual monitor and all the software was terribly buggy.
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Worth stating my favourite purchases in the last little while that make me happy every time I use them.
- XREAL One Pro (Amazing for a virtual display)
- Kindle
- Apple Watch (Perfect for waking me up but not my wife)
- iPad Air (Second display + drawing)
- Macbook Pro M4 14' (A portable beast)
- Moccamaster (Simple machine, great coffee)
- Toyota Tundra 2010 (Likely will run longer than I live and theres no touch screen in sight)
- Yeti mug (hot drinks all day)
- Hydroflask (cold water all day)
- Timbuk 2 Parker (Best daily use + light travel bag Ive had in awhile)
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#35I regret buying an okay-ish car. I should have bought a cheap rubbish car, or paid the price for a good car.
After 3 years of owning it, I'm stuck paying and repairing a car I want to dump.
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#36I regret buying an okay-ish car. I should have bought a cheap rubbish car, or paid the price for a good car. After 3 years of owning it, I'm stuck paying and repairing a car I want to dump.
What are your definitions of the 3 different levels of car?
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#37[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#38I regret buying an okay-ish car. I should have bought a cheap rubbish car, or paid the price for a good car. After 3 years of owning it, I'm stuck paying and repairing a car I want to dump.
I felt exactly like this on my last car. That made me decide to never, ever get a car loan again. I'd rather drive absolute trash beater cars before ever getting stuck in a loan.
Best option is to save up ~$10,000 and get something decent outright.
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#39I regret buying an okay-ish car. I should have bought a cheap rubbish car, or paid the price for a good car. After 3 years of owning it, I'm stuck paying and repairing a car I want to dump.
What are your definitions of the 3 different levels of car?
Not him, obviously, but for me:
> cheap rubbish car
Something for $1,000-5,000. It's a gamble buying this type of car. It's either going to be a gem that was well-maintained by a senior, or an absolute nightmare of tow-trucks and repairs.
> okay-ish car
$6,000+. Car comes in decent shape, is clean, ready for the road, but is still in midlife. You can probably get at least 5 years out of it, most likely more, but things will start breaking.
> good car
Brand new car. Minimum $15,000+. Can last a lifetime, depending on how much you drive and how well you maintain it.
Re: Ask HN: What's a Purchase You Regret?
#40the first laptop I bought with my own money after college back in 2010-2011. Needed one for work, so I "splurged" on a $600 ASUS laptop. The battery tanked around the time the 1-year limited warranty expired, so I had to keep it plugged in for nearly the entire time I had it. It was slow as hell (no SSD) and weighed a ton. That POS met its fate to an e-waste recycler around 2014.
Another regret is my first Apple computer. A 2014 Mac Mini that replaced that Asus laptop. 8GB of ram and the slowest "hybrid" HDD drive. I hated using it so much until I figured out how to boot it off of an external SSD. Then I started to understand why people like MacOS.