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Overkill objects for everyday life

neil.computer

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Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#621

Post by airhead969 »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #603
airhead969 wrote: post #600

In one job, I used to support just about every size of networkable color and b&w printer from 2 manufacturers. In the cost analysis to operate these things, it became clear: the larger and more expensive printers were not just faster, more reliable, and easier to repair, their supplies were cheaper per page. Their acquisition costs were higher. For anyone needing to churn out flat dead trees more than once a week: I…

You don't even have to get them used, if you watch for large color laser printers to come up on clearance when they are a generation or two old you can get a steal. I got my huge dell color laser for about $150 with free shipping. I have two kids who print stuff all day and in 3 years I have replaced the toner maybe one or two times (each color + black is a different cartridge). I haven't had to replace whatever you…

We're clearly not talking about the same class of printer. I was talking about flagship, departmental printers that typically do not sit on a table but have their own wheels and 3+ paper trays. I also avoid rebadged brands because they are less likely to have the breadth of repair parts that top-tier enterprise printers do (advice from the printer repair guy).

Sure, you can get smaller enterprise laser printers of many brands for cheap, but the smaller you go, the less repairable they are and the more expensive they are to operate.

Some of the cartridges I use go to multiple tens of thousands of pages. I never have had a paper jam on anything other than a printer with bad grabber rollers or cheap desktop models. Some of my printers have auto-stapling and collating. Basically, I never need a FedEx Office store unless I'm out-of-the-area.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#622

Post by watersb »

airhead969 wrote: post #593
Wistar wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After suffering through the APC and TrippLite crap, I bought a Falcon SSG1.5K UPS a few years ago for my animation workstation and network stuff. It has been fantastic. It does have a fan but it isn't noticeably loud. https://westwardsales.com/falcon-ssg1.5k-ups I bought it because the late writer Jerry Pournelle told me to. https://www.falconups.com/byte6417-final.pdf https://www.falconups.com/2008Chaos%20Manor%20Aw…

This sounds like a testimonial ad for Herbalife. $50 consumer-grade products are almost always "crap," but you're making a sweeping generalization across dozens of product lines in 2 brands without offering any evidence or proof that you used appropriate products for the task. Fans on most UPSes only kick-in when their inverters run during an outage or a test for cooling. I happen to have an SMX1500RM2UNC with humidi…

Jerry Pournelle had quite a bit of experience with the guts of computer gear; his first home compter is in the Smithsonian Institution collection.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#623

Post by airhead969 »

mavhc wrote: post #598
airhead969 wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a testimonial ad for Herbalife. $50 consumer-grade products are almost always "crap," but you're making a sweeping generalization across dozens of product lines in 2 brands without offering any evidence or proof that you used appropriate products for the task. Fans on most UPSes only kick-in when their inverters run during an outage or a test for cooling. I happen to have an SMX1500RM2UNC with humidi…

I have 3 smx3000rmhv2unc's and 2 of them give an error "battery bus soft start fault", according to the expert: "I suspect that the metering of the capacitor voltage is slightly wrong on this model of UPS. We've seen this error a few times and the units have performed fine both before and after. Its to do with checking the voltage rise on the cap on power on / battery supply. I think it meters out of tolerance and th…

That's a completely different model for 200V+ operation.

As a home-gamer, this one works for me. :'D

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#624

Post by henrikschroder »

carlmr wrote: post #618
henrikschroder wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all dishwashers have it. I found that most dishwashers in the US don't have it, so you have to work to find one that does. If they do, it's usually a compartment at the bottom of the thing with a sealed screw-cap. Oh, and don't bother buying "dishwasher salt", just buy medium-grain table salt, it's 10x cheaper.

>Oh, and don't bother buying "dishwasher salt", just buy medium-grain table salt, it's 10x cheaper. Is it the same thing?

Pretty much, the only difference is that dishwasher salt might dissolve easier in water, but it doesn't matter much, it's still just table salt.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#625

Post by franga2000 »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #470
franga2000 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk, not being able to get it fixed without data loss in the case of even a minor hw failure seems like pretty bad UX to me...

…and all the time you’re not having your MacBook in for repair, its trackpad is still night & day better than its competitors. This was true in 2009 and somehow remains true in 2021 (though it would be a very pleasant surprise to be proven wrong)

I've heard the latest Surface lineup and the XPS 13 have trackpads that seriously rival Apple's. Up until a few years ago, however, it was true that nothing came close to Apple.

Although personally, the lack of a touchscreen on any of Apple's laptops is much more of a dealbreaker for me and despite working remotely, I really don't use a trackpad for work all that often. I imagine RSI would be unavoidable if you used it constantly, wouldn't it?

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#626

Post by alpaca128 »

culturestate wrote: post #477
megablast wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About 8 years ago I bought the cheapest catering/professional microwave/combioven I could get my hands on. I did this because I got tired of consumer units with overcomplicated UIs designed (apparently) by unregenerate misanthropes, rotating dishes that are a pain in the ass to clean, overzealous bleeps that go off every 30 - 60 seconds after a cycle is finished, peeling enamel, corrosion issues, and that are too s…

> The cheapest microwaves you can get have two dials, one for temp, one for time. Why not buy one of those?? I imagine two reasons: first, the market seems to have decided that simple microwaves must be small microwaves. If you want to heat anything larger than a bowl of soup you’re gonna forfeit the dials. Second, most of the time the dials also suck. Want to heat something for 2 minutes 30 seconds? Good luck with t…

> the market seems to have decided that simple microwaves must be small microwaves.

Maybe I'm living in the wrong area of the world, I've never seen a differently sized microwave no matter the price category. They all are about large enough to fit a decently sized dish. Sure, the pizza from the local place won't fit, but that's not a microwave problem then.

> Want to heat something for 2 minutes 30 seconds?

Not really. In the 15 years I've had my ~$35 microwave (without a single issue I might add) I was never in a situation where I'd need much precision. Not to mention with every microwave, no matter the model, you need to have a feeling for how long to heat what in the first place. A lot of precision comes from that rather than beeping second counters.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#627

Post by ReptileMan »

dan-robertson wrote: post #39
adrianmonk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, that stand mixer isn't going to fit in my kitchen cabinet. Compare that to my consumer-grade Sunbeam. It's smaller, and the top part (motor, etc.) separates from the stand part via a quick-release button, so it fits on a shelf which isn't very tall at all.

And it probably doesn’t work so well if you aren’t making enormous quantities of dough.

Those Hobarts are usually rated for 1 kg of water. So this gives around 2.5 kg doughball. But they are rated for it so you can do it reliably. Without worry. But this is like 3 loaves of challah or 4 artisan breads.

For dedicated dough makers - spiral, fork or diving arm mixers are the standard. But planetary mixers are good if your dough is side affair or you need to whip some eggwhites from time to time.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#628

Post by airhead969 »

watersb wrote: post #622
airhead969 wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a testimonial ad for Herbalife. $50 consumer-grade products are almost always "crap," but you're making a sweeping generalization across dozens of product lines in 2 brands without offering any evidence or proof that you used appropriate products for the task. Fans on most UPSes only kick-in when their inverters run during an outage or a test for cooling. I happen to have an SMX1500RM2UNC with humidi…

Jerry Pournelle had quite a bit of experience with the guts of computer gear; his first home compter is in the Smithsonian Institution collection. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

So does Woz.

Even if either one or both were also a principle engineer for Intel, that'd still be a spurious, appeal-to-authority because they weren't a modern enterprise sysadmin, IT manager, or equivalent with visibility into what works and what doesn't in the real-world at scale.

Lionization in one or two domains for a limited time doesn't breed domain expertise across other areas for longer times. For anyone to be called, or call themselves, a polymath within the past 100 years is absolutely absurd. There are too many bifurcating domains splitting and branching too quickly for anyone of integrity to claim to "master" and stay in mastery of them.

I don't really care who they are: if they don't have sufficiently-current experience with enterprise-class gear, then random people have absolutely no place making claims about UPSes with supposed endorsements from dead dudes.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#629

Post by bobbo2525 »

yourapostasy wrote: post #417
Grustaf wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a joke or are you missing the point? The guy doesn't actually think that a fighter jet seat is better than a normal office chair in any practical sense. He just thinks these things are cool. Often, part of the charm is how incredibly impractical they are.

> The guy doesn't actually think that a fighter jet seat is better than a normal office chair in any practical sense. Now that people are discussing it, I do want to find out if there are former air force pilots reading this who can corroborate or refute my hypothesis: I suspect long-duration mission bombers like the US B-52 and B-2 have pilot seats especially tuned for extended operational comfort, even more so than…

Having worked at Martin-Baker for quite a few years, I can confirm that most ejection seats are pretty uncomfortable. The main issue is that adding too much cushioning means that during the ejection, the g forces compress the padding, moving your centre of gravity, and causing the rocket motor forces to rotate you more than it should do (as the thrust is now offset). So yeah, most office chairs are better!

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#630

Post by solatic »

culturestate wrote: post #477
megablast wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About 8 years ago I bought the cheapest catering/professional microwave/combioven I could get my hands on. I did this because I got tired of consumer units with overcomplicated UIs designed (apparently) by unregenerate misanthropes, rotating dishes that are a pain in the ass to clean, overzealous bleeps that go off every 30 - 60 seconds after a cycle is finished, peeling enamel, corrosion issues, and that are too s…

> The cheapest microwaves you can get have two dials, one for temp, one for time. Why not buy one of those?? I imagine two reasons: first, the market seems to have decided that simple microwaves must be small microwaves. If you want to heat anything larger than a bowl of soup you’re gonna forfeit the dials. Second, most of the time the dials also suck. Want to heat something for 2 minutes 30 seconds? Good luck with t…

> Want to heat something for 2 minutes 30 seconds? Good luck with that on a cheap microwave that shows minutes in 5mm increments with 2.5mm of play in the dial.

No cooking really works like this. Set the microwave timer for 30 minutes and set a timer on your phone for 2 minutes. After two minutes, pull the microwave timer to zero to stop the microwave and check the food. Decide whether or not it needs more time and chuck it back in, pulling the timer to 30 minutes again. After you count off 30-40 seconds in your head, pull the timer to zero and check the food. Rinse/repeat as necessary.

The timer isn't there for anything more than a safety to make sure that the microwave doesn't stay on forever if you forget about it.

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