I bought a greyscale eink tablet that I use as a monitor. It is fantastic. I find myself much more able to concentrate while using it.
I'm interested in hearing more about this. Does the tablet itself double as monitor, or was it a hack?
Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
491–500 of 592 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#492Wireless charger - it doesn't really save time, and I still have a ton of cables everywhere, but it totally eliminates battery anxiety and provides a surprising amount of peace of mind. Obviously, you have to have hardware that's capable of charging wirelessly, but it's becoming more common these days. Also, you never lose your phone anymore. Ebook readers - I've been using them for years, and recent models with flat…
> Retractable metal poker - got this off Amazon for my weed paraphernalia, listed as a metal toothpick. It's incredibly useful and has saved my ass countless times. Need to poke that reset button? Scrape some gunk out of a USB port? Clean your nails? It's good for everything except picking your teeth, which is just unnerving.
This is what I use a set of precision knives for.
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am honestly shocked that someone working in IT would even think about working with a laptop with a spinning disk. This isn't 2010.
I’ll take spinning disk over vdi any day. VDI is the worst
VDI and spinning disk is most terrible. No one care IOPS.
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm, I'm looking to eradicate smells from my house. Do air purifiers help getting rid of that old-house smell?
As a quick solution, rent a commercial grade ozone generator. Run it while you’re not in the house as in the concentrations they can put out it is damaging to lung tissue. This is how hotels clear out smoke smells in rooms for instance. Once you run it for a few hours, you can open things up and air it all out and the smells should mostly be gone unless there’s an active source of smell. I did it while restoring an o…
I bought dirt cheap portable ozone generator that also produces toxic amount of ozone for human. It worked for removing smells.
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#495A mmotorized standing desk.
Clamp style monitor mounts.
A laptop mount adapter for the VESA bracket.
Bone conduction headphones. I can wear these all day and not feel my ears hurt.
A Samsung Galaxy S7 Plus tablet. It's got the most screen size for any tablet and I love reading tech books on it.
A kindle Oasis. I've used the Kindle Touch and Paperwhite but the Oasis is something else.
A grill-style sandwich maker. I can heat up anything and grill just about anything with it. It's amazing.
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#496Oura ring. Stopped having to guess how much fuel I got for the day. My subjective feeling has a shit correlation with how productive I really am, but the stats from the ring are pretty spot on. I have chronic insomnia so it might help me more than others, but I take quite a lot of decisions based on it. Over 7 hours measured sleep is a good day, 6-7 is standard, 5-6 means modafinil for the day (which turns it into a…
It sucks that the company screwed over their loyal customers by forcing future updates of the ring behind a subscription service. I was about to pull the trigger on the 2, and they announced the three the next day with the subscription service so I ended up never buying one.
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to stay away from the Apple ecosystem, or just don't like the aesthetics of the Apple Watch, I've found Whoop to be great for tracking sleep quality and activity. There is a monthly fee but it's minimal if you're using the data it collects. Not worth it for something passive, or if you're sedentary outside of work.
I was really tempted by Whoop but then I saw this: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/05/whoop-3-platform-review.... There are also some good points raised in the comments. In particular, I like this comment: > I’m probably biased because I’ve used Polar for 20 years and Whoop for over 4 years now. I like where Polar has got to on their new Vantage products in terms of activity load, sleep, recovery etc. I started usin…
Same, I really like mechanical watches as well so that sort of limits what options I have :)
I have noticed a bit of a disconnect between how I feel and what the whoop says, but not so much that I'd think it's wrong. Just eyebrow raising every now and then. I've never tried a Polar though.
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#498Earlier 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…
> 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…
macOS has secret modes that disable the 8x upscaling dance that happens in this situation. You access them by holding the option key while switching to scaled resolution from native. The text quality is very slightly worse but the performance is very significantly better.
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#499My 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…
Do you miss the function row?
If you really want function keys, you can just put them on a layer that you switch to with a thumb key.
Re: Ask HN: Any piece of hardware that was more of game changer than you expected?
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
My son has one. I hate typing on his keyboard when he needs my help, especially when I help him doing his math homework. You see I use the numeric keypad a lot on that hence the hate for his "tenkeyless" in that case. But he hates my large keyboard when he needs my computer, so that balances out, hihi. Each to their own I guess
I see a lot of people praising tenkeyless but I use the numeric keypad so often I can't bring myself to buy one, even if my current keyboard uses more space.
I'm comfortable with dedicated keypad on the left of a keyboard rather than right, because of the right is where mouse locates. Don't you?