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Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

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Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#41

Post by kroltan »

zabzonk wrote: post #8

> Why is it hard to buy things that work well? Asks someone that posts a giant wall of unreadable text.

The website has basically no CSS, so it's up to your user agent to decide on its default presentation.

Just so happens that modern user agents don't really care about bare HTML, just CSS and JavaScript, so your default presentation is optimized to 1990s hardware at 800x600.

I guess "reader mode" is slang for "what the user-agent should be doing to make documents reasonable for modern displays", so press that button in your user-agent.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#42

Post by zozbot234 »

asdff wrote: post #35
giantg2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or through the erosion of real wages over the past 50 years, consumers have been more or less forced into buying lower priced items. And was this not the promise of free trade and globalization - cheap stuff? Edit: why downvote?

Cheap stuff that used to be wood or metal and last for 100 years has turned into plastic cheap stuff that you write a nyt column about if it manages to survive the demands of regular expected usage for 1 year.

The wood or metal stuff was not cheap, by and large. It was the cheapest available at the time, but still very expensive by current standards.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#43

Post by porknubbins »

maxerickson wrote: post #6
chrisweekly wrote: post #4

... or things that work at all? (eg humidifiers, at various price points, maybe 40% of which are even functional when first unboxed)

I'm 2 for 2 on humidifiers (1 ultrasonic, 1 wick evaporative). What fails on them?

One of the major issues with humidifier design is that whatever you put into the humidifier gets into the air, which sounds obvious but is an issue. We don't want to use chemicals to keep the paper wick from getting moldy because then we are breathing that. Or with ultrasonic they throw up mineral dust into the air. We end up just buying a lot of paper wicks.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#44

Post by chii »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #2

Because we have unreasonable expectations. Making things work well is hard, and thus expensive. Take a chair, for example. Anyone can make a chair: just get a bucket, turn it over, and sit on it. Boom; backless chair. Want a backrest, arms? Get a 2x4, a saw, a drill, and some bolts. An hour later: Boom; chair. You want a chair that works well? How do you even define works well for a chair? Do you need cushioning? Do…

an aeron chair costs about $2000 dollars (give or take). The construction is sturdy, so i expect it to last at least 10 years, if not 20 (you take care of it etc).

So the amortized cost is some 100-200 dollars a year for an excellent chair. If you buy a crappy chair, i bet that the cushion starts failing after a year or so of constant sitting. So you'd probably replace it yearly, or suffer a bad chair for a few years before replacing.

I bet that most people would choose an excellent chair, if they could guarantee themselves the 10 yrs of good operation and comfort.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#45

Post by emodendroket »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #15
maxerickson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 2 for 2 on humidifiers (1 ultrasonic, 1 wick evaporative). What fails on them?

I foolishly bought one off the top of the best-seller list at Amazon a couple years ago. It was like $35 and came with a little card that said "Hey, if you give us a 5 star review and send proof to SHADY_EMAIL_ADDRESS@gmail we'll give you a $25 Amazon gift card!" It did work reasonably well, but if you failed to clean it and fully dry it out within 6 hours of using it, it would get an INSANE mildew smell. Amazon of c…

What were you expecting? They can't fundamentally change what happens when you leave things wet for hours.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#46

Post by throwaway111023 »

emodendroket wrote: post #40
giantg2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of those things mentioned have changed very little in decades. Some have also been under continuous improvement for hundreds or thousands of years.

Which?

house foundations, water delivery off the top of my head, logistics in general possibly if I'm wanting to stretch the term.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#47

Post by emodendroket »

sjg007 wrote: post #36
Firmwarrior wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I foolishly bought one off the top of the best-seller list at Amazon a couple years ago. It was like $35 and came with a little card that said "Hey, if you give us a 5 star review and send proof to SHADY_EMAIL_ADDRESS@gmail we'll give you a $25 Amazon gift card!" It did work reasonably well, but if you failed to clean it and fully dry it out within 6 hours of using it, it would get an INSANE mildew smell. Amazon of c…

You have to add bleach or humidistat to evaporative ones or keep them running full time. You also have to replace the media once a month or so. The steam ones are better imho.

I prefer steam for less cleaning too, but they're power hungry.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#48

Post by ______-_-______ »

Swizec wrote: post #37
yrral wrote: post #16

I think it's that you don't notice things that work well. House foundations, light switches, filesystems, silicon manufacturing, water delivery, grocery store logistics, etc etc etc. These are all things that most people never notice because they just work. It doesn't even occur to people day-to-day that these things can fail.

Look up "Things seen this week during structural inspections!" on imgur. Some truly horrifying stuff from that person. For some of these foundations to still be standing and building occupants not to notice anything's wrong ... I can't even imagine how much safety factor is built-in. If we built software with those margins, nothing would ever ship. Here's a few: https://imgur.com/gallery/Ko2jo4j https://imgur.com/gal…

I'm planning to buy a house in the next year or two. I would 100% hire this guy as the inspector if I knew who he was. Those photos are more effective than any marketing.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#49

Post by emodendroket »

Mindless2112 wrote: post #31
cheschire wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were your humidifiers just not good at making air moist? Or were they completely non-functional? Technology Connections had a good video on the quality of humidifiers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeehYYgl28

I bought the one he didn't like (the electrode boiler) after watching that video (and his tear-down video [1]). (I have hard water and have had trouble with ultrasonic humidifiers.) It works great! You do have to descale it regularly to keep it going. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC9-t47tKts

You don't really need to. It will keep working regardless, just toss some salt in the water.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#50

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I tend to write stuff that works well. I'm working on the last two screens of a project that has been underway for a couple of years. It's still a ways off from release, as we have lots of fender-polishing to do, but I'm pretty chuffed with how it works.

One of the reasons that it has taken this long, is because I am totally anal about Quality. Constant stopping to fix bugs, or even refactor out bad design decisions.

I've found that doesn't always make me popular.

[EDITED TO ADD] See what I mean? Advocating for high Quality work is not received well. I've learned to keep it totally to my own work, and even that is often perceived as an attack.

Pretty crazy.

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