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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?

#481

Post by darkteflon »

bredren wrote: post #461
darkteflon wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can second that - I have four of them, they run 24/7 on medium and pull ~8 watts at the wall each, assuming my meter is accurate. Picked them up after the last big discussion on air quality here a few months back. They are the Wirecutter pick, I believe.

I keep an agent that monitors amazon pricing on the filters, and just buy a bunch when they dip abnormally low. Have you found any other ways to minimize cost on them? I have only used the ones sold by coway, as my pal tried some 3rd party and they were jenky.

Depending on where you live, filters are a once/twice a year expense, I believe (I’m only a few months in). Honestly my advice would be: just be diligent about maintaining them. I vacuum out the filter and charcoal screen once every couple of weeks. Takes a few minutes, pretty painless. Amazing how much dust they pick up in normal operation.

Incidentally, which agent are you using for Amazon?

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

#482

Post by anotherevan »

My Kobo ereader has been great. I read around 50-60 fiction books a year and they've almost entirely been in electronic format for a decade now.

The Pocket integration has also been expectantly useful for reading various articles.

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

#483

Post by anotherevan »

A dog. Our previous dog passed away in November 2020 and we adopted a new family member late last year. It has been a joy watching his intelligence and personality blossom as he's gotten more comfortable with us (his previous living situation was not an entirely happy one.)

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

#484

Post by lioeters »

A pair of headphones: Sennheiser HD 280 Pro. I'm still using the same pair I bought years ago (maybe a decade?), but bought another pair recently because I like them so much. Clean sound, comfortable, and lets me enjoy and appreciate sounds, music, and even silence. (I often keep them on with no sound, haha..)

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

#485

Post by NomDePlum »

Microsoft Trackball Optical. Borrowed one 20-years ago when I hurt my shoulder snowboarding. The person who loaned it to me then left the company and told me to keep it. Still using it.

Haven't had to use a mouse since. Never did like mice as used to find when overly focussed on something I'd end up half way across the desk without noticing.

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

#486

Post by MonaroVXR »

capableweb wrote: post #266
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…

You're mentioning "Panel Lotto" in your blog post in relation to reviews being for IPS panels but then sending customers TN panels instead of IPS panels. I don't think that is what is commonly referred to as "Panel Lotto" (I'd call that straight up fraud and I'm sure most courts would be on your side). "Panel Lotto" (as I know it at least) refers to the company's policy regarding returning a panel that had dead pixel…

> Panel Lotto" (as I know it at least) refers to the company's policy regarding returning a panel that had dead pixels on arrival.

Like the Nintendo 3DS back than? Where you couldn't figure out, which screen(s) you would get pre-purchasing or Lenovo with their display panel and keyboard lotto?

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

#487

Post by gnicholas »

notreallyserio wrote: post #119
dividedbyzero wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not OP: I charge mine while I'm in the shower and eating breakfast. That gets me through the day with about 50-60% to spare. I do wear mine overnight. I have a relatively new series 7. It remains to be seen how it performs as the battery cycles hundreds of times. edit: Fixed percent remaining. It was much better than I'd remembered.

Could you get by if you just charged while in the shower? Also, do you think your current use is lower than normal due to COVID/WFH/lack of travel?

I've considered getting one but hate the idea of having to charge my watch every day. My Pebble still gives me what I need, so I'm holding onto it for as long as the battery is in decent shape.

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

#488

Post by Trias11 »

One Mix 4 micro laptop. I bought i5 version of it on aliexpress however amazon has higher end version of it (i7) available.

9" or so screen, full blown windows 11 laptop, extremely well built, solid. I upgraded it to Windows 11 Pro myself just for fun so I could RDP to it and control it remotely.

I bought it for narrow use case (need to control hardware device that doesn't have mobile app) and extremely pleased on how fully functioning, well built it is.

It could fit into large enough pocket and if you're in need of SMALLEST device as fully featured Windows-based computer - that's the answer.

Drawbacks: no webcam (this is plus for me actually) and small battery life (ask me which power bank i chose to solve this issue).

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

#489

Post by timando »

db48x wrote: post #60

An Intel Optane NVME SSD. Check out this screenshot http://db48x.net/temp/Screenshot%20from%202019-12-09%2013-27... See where it says “avio 3.53µs” and “avq 0.61”? That’s 284,000 IOPS even with nothing queued up. With any other drive you would be lucky to get a tenth of that at QD1. Even better, this is a mixed read and write workload; most drives are fastest when you are only reading or only writing.

Intel discontinued Optane for consumers.
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