What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
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A Logitech MX Ergo trackball mouse.
I’ve used thumb ball mice since the 20th century. I replaced a Microsoft branded one with a Logitech M570, that started to get a little old in the tooth so I saw this “premium” mouse they were offering.
Worst HID I can think of. it really wasn’t that ergonomic, the ball was at such an angle that you don’t get much vertical throw, the Forward button is hard to reach, the customization software is insipid, the hole to push the ball out is too small, and then the coating started to perish. It has this rubberized coating that just…started failing. It’s disgusting to touch now. Only reason I don’t throw it out is there’s a lithium battery in it.
Oh, even techier: I bought a pair of ESP32CAM devices. Little ESP32 dev boards with a camera on them. That’s a surprisingly powerful yet low power microcontroller, with onboard Wi-Fi, attached to a microSD card slot and a 1080p camera. On paper that’s a cool idea. I think they both overheated and died.
Asus video cards.
I’ve owned 3 of them.
one caught fire, one failed in a spectacular flash of light, and one just quietly died.
Every single one of them managed to take rest of the system with them.
No I did not overclock/overvolt them, and yes I had good airflow/cooling.
Out of curiosity, where they newer nvidia cards, like 4 or 5 series, using 12VHPWR?
nope, older ATI. HD 4000 and HD 5000 series.
edit
and just to make a point, it wasnt the PSU failing either. It was the GPUs. the PSU is still actually alive and well today, running a relatives system with no issues.
Did you perchance have the exact same power supply in all three killed systems?
In Côte d’Ivoire they say : Premier gaou n’est pas gaou, c’est second gaou qui est niata. Meaning when you get conned for the first time you are not an idiot, but when you get conned a second time you are. But what about you, who got conned again ?
There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on…shame on you.’ Fool me—you can’t get fooled again."
George W. Bush – Nashville, Tennessee, September 17, 2002.
Other versions from BoJack Horseman:
“Fool me once, shame on you, but teach a man to fool me, and I’ll be fooled for the rest of my life.”
“Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, fiddle-le-dee.”
“Fool me once. Fool me twice. Fool me chicken soup and rice.”
A pager called MiniLink when I was 16 right before mobiles became common
The ASUS transformer with keyboard. As did an update that made it super slow and clunky right before end of lifeimg it.
As a fellow Asus Transformer survivor, I feel your pain! I’ve never actively hated a piece of tech as much and as fast as that pos. Pretty sure I downloaded that same update that basically made it so slow it transformed it into a paperweight. I have never purchased another tablet after that because it turned me off to the whole idea permanently.
I usually love ASUS as they have dared to try unconventional ideas, like the eeePC. I also like how they make everything from MoBos to TVs and phones. But it felt like they wanted to brick the Transformer for some reason.
Personally I have a couple of Samsung tablets, they serve a purpose when I want have a “TV” on in the background in a random place in the house I also read some comics that comes as pdfs on it
I actually generally like Asus as well, I pretty much use them exclusively for my motherboards, despite my disappointment with their pricing schemes the past few years. I also have a set of their pro art monitors from a while back still going strong. I will say the recent horror stories of their customer service for pc parts has me a bit concerned but I have been lucky and have never had an issue with their stuff yet. Never tried a video card from them though.
As for tablets in general, reading comics in bed is one of the only things that makes me want to try a tablet again. However, whenever I remember that transformer it just re-ignites my hatred. 😆 One day my rage might subside but until then I’m done with tablets. I’ve actually considered my next phone to be a folding one to see if that can get the job done for reading comics in bed with the bigger screen.
Thinkpad L390 Yoga. They crammed a 4.6 GHz CPU into a cooling system that was not designed for it, so the machine ran hot and throttled all of the time. The keyboard keys rubbed off after a few months of use. The Thinkpad logo was just a sticker that one day decided to stick to my hand because Lenovo used really cheap glue. It had a MicroEthernet port with a passive adapter that did nothing but break it out to a regular ethernet jack. The adapter cost 30€ and its cable turned into oil after a year.
I was able to undervolt the CPU and make it barely passable, then Microsoft released a Windows update that prevented undervolting. Gave it to a friend afterwards and got myself a GPD Win Max 2.
I got a cheap dash cam off Temu a few years ago. I’m sure I don’t have to explain beyond that.
Yes. I’m an idiot. I know. I’ve always known.
So just out of curiosity, did the dash cam not work for dash cam purposes?
As in, did you end up getting into an accident and have no usable footage?
Or was it just a piece of shit that didn’t work?
My guess is the quality is so bad they can’t see shit or it overheats from the sun very easily and shuts down
A Kodak luma mini projector. Absolute dog shit ui and the worst speaker I’ve ever heard completely ruin the entire experience.
I snagged a 30USD Chinese mini projector. The speaker is trash but it has an aux/Composite audio out and the image quality is shockingly good. I expected complete trash for that cost but I was shocked.
Had a Tapwave Zodiac as a teenager. Was so excited waiting for it, quite a disappointment.
I bought a 2nd hand MacBook Air with an Intel chip to put Linux on it. Forgot about the T2 chip being a bitch.
This worst purchase but entirely my fault. I bought a thrust master t3000 kit off of a website I had found because it was like 200 bucks cheaper than anywhere else. I get the thing in the mail and it’s the EU plug so I had to order another servo motor that was for US outlets
nowadays the wise play would be to move to the EU instead
Working on that now actually.
…to ieuropeandre
sorry I just had to see this joke through. moving on…
you’ll have to change your name
I just realized what you were referring to, it’s Eric lol not American Andre. I can see where you got that tho
An Eink smartphone from a Chinese company: Bigme Hibreak pro. It never worked, I sent I back for repair and they shipped it back to me in the same buggy conditions… Now it lies in a drawer completely frozen and unresponsive…
Trying to solve wifi dead spots across my then house. It didn’t have wired conduits, so no ethernet between floors. Went through a series of range-extenders, multiple routers, everything from cheapo no-names, to TP-Links, Netgears, and Apple Airports. All sucked. Terrible reception in all the places that people hung out.
Then mesh routers showed up. Got a 3-pack and never looked back.
Edit: runner-up was an HP Inkjet printer. Every time someone needed a color print, one color ink was either out or dried out.
Damn I know hindsight is 20/20 but I feel like you could have just ran some wires yourself (it’s pretty easy tbh) with how much effort you went through to avoid it.
But yeah I hear you on network stuff in general. I know a little about that stuff and it still is basically magic to me. Sometimes I swear my modem and router just choose to misbehave until I give them a little reset. I think they might be alive…
Have you tried a powerline Access Point like this TP Link Powerline AP?
Haha, yes I actually did get those back then. Didn’t work. Turned out the wiring between floors was really old and there was a lot of noise. Place was also a rental, so I couldn’t drill big holes into floors and walls to draw ethernet.
The thing that ultimately solved it was mesh. It’s worked pretty well since then and on to the new place where wiring is even worse. With mesh repeaters, we can even reach far corners of basement storage.
An early Purism laptop. That was the most lemony lemon that ever lemoned. Components failing, keyboard was shit, the case just fell apart. I think I had to replace it after 6 months because I was tired of its shit.
Movies for my PSP. A lot of them.
With how easy it was to jailbreak/mod the PSP was awesome for on the go everything
I owned a MindDrive. It did not help me get better at CS like I had expected. 😔
I once bought one of these weird gaming ‘keyboards’ where you only have the keys around WASD on it. Used it once, thought it sucked and never looked at it again
