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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?

#301

Post by Aeolun »

peteri wrote: post #220
clarkdave wrote: post #161

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…

Totally agree with this, I have mine(2x27" 4K) running in the same scaled way and I really miss it when I go back to the office with a crappy three screen 1080p setup.

Can’t get the same monitors for the office?

I always try to get the company to pay for me of course, but I have no patience for suboptimal equipment any more, so I’ll buy it myself if I have to.

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

#302

Post by whichfawkes »

yokto wrote: post #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 t…

I love my Ergodox EZ.

I'd recommend a split keyboard to anybody who has their fingers on keys for more than a couple hours a day. My shoulders and upper back feel so much better, and I swear I even look better because my posture has improved. Much less tendon pain as well.

Furthermore, I'd recommend the EZ or the Moonlander to anybody who can spend the money. I'm sure you get a large part of the benefit from a cheaper split board, but the thumb clusters and custom keybinds are really really nice.

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

#303

Post by ddek »

thebean11 wrote: post #261
lucumo wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The new MacBook pros can handle it

Hell, not even the pros.

My work laptop is a 2019 i7 MBP, it struggles with my 4k monitor regardless of scaling. I bought the cheapest mac mini last year to see what the M1 fuss was about, and it has no problem with the 4k screen, even with scaling.

Other OS's? Windows is passable until you start transitioning in and out of full screen. Linux...

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

#304

Post by maccard »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #297
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.

Good solid-state storage has been the biggest quality of life improvement you can make to a single-disk device for the past decade. I get a chuckle out of colleagues who ask for copious RAM today, and while I'll usually show them where they can put money to do what they actually need better, this kitchen analogy suffices for most of their use cases: The hard drive, RAM, and CPU are like the fridge, the prep table, an…

> I get a chuckle out of colleagues who ask for copious RAM today, and while I'll usually show them where they can put money to do what they actually need better, this kitchen analogy suffices for most of their use cases:

Industry dependent, of course. Desktop processers are getting more and more parallel, and more cores requires more ram. I have a 32 core Threadripper in my workstation with 128GB RAM, and on full compiles I still OOM. My next upgrade to this machine will be 192GB.

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

#305

Post by toiletfuneral »

rdtwo wrote: post #140
hellcow wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America's Test Kitchen recommends the Victorinox knives for every skill level and budget, including professional chefs. It's just a damn good knife, and it happens to be cheap at around $50. Go with this rather than Ikea if it's in the budget :)

Fantastic starter knives, otherwise spend 150-200 on a Japanese gato/r/chefsknives has good recommendations. The mass market knife block sets are actually worse than the victronix and cost more.

No post body was provided.

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

#306

Post by brysonreece »

Comma Three by Comma.AI

Reduced my engaged driving time by like 90%. Coming from a history of <$1k vehicles, it’s amazing IMO that most of my trips to and from places now consist of me setting the cruise speed (even in midtown) and letting my vehicle worry about stop and go traffic. Could not recommend enough.

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

#308

Post by jyxent »

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…

I'm using a 43" 4K TV as a monitor now, and I really like it. It does take some getting use to at first, but with a tiling window manager I can split it up how I like and have the benefit of being able to use the whole screen at once for games and movies. Higher pixel density would be nice, because I still need subpixel text rendering to make the text look nice. But with 8K TVs coming out and getting cheaper, that would make a good combination of workspace size and decent enough pixel density.

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

#309

Post by ColonelPhantom »

heywire wrote: post #127
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.

What OS are you running inside the VM's? I was quite late with upgrading to an SSD, and Windows 10 was unusably slow, while Linux was quite usable. Sure, it still got quite a bit faster with an SSD, but it was far from as life-changing as it was for Windows.

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

#310

Post by maccard »

mittermayr wrote: post #265

Herman Miller Aeron (Remastered). It's a hefty price if you look at 'regular' chairs, but once you have had one for a while, you can't go back to anything else. The amount of time you spend in that chair is insane. So, naturally, that, and whatever it takes to get good sleep. Also, a Logitech MX Master 2S, again because I use it all day, every day. They tend to become a bit stiffer over time it seems like, so I've ha…

aerons and steelcase leaps are regularly available second hand shipped on ebay. I bought one for me and my partner during covid and spent <$800 on both. They dont come with the warranty but in 12 years of sitting on one, ive only ever had to replace the feet and the armrests in the two ive had.
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