203 points

It’s hard to top the inkjet printers I’ve owned. I still can’t believe 30 years later home printer tech is not only unimproved but worse between lower quality production and squeezing people on ink costs.

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45 points

And they’re making things worse as we use less and less paper at the same time… Geniuses

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8 points

Gotta protect those profit margins!

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17 points

I bought an old business monochrome laser printer ten years ago. Still hasn’t needed a new toner cartridge.

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12 points

I bought my parents a laser printer after years of them being incredibly frustrated by inkjets. I got them the same model as me, as well as a spare toner cartridge.

I’m still on my original toner cartridge, and I’ve had it for probably six years or so.

My parents are in their late 40’s and early 50’s. I think I might have accidentally gotten them a lifetime supply of printing.

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4 points

I got my parents a laser as well and evidently I picked a shitty one because they are planning to go back to the other side 😞

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2 points
*

Considering the volume businesses need weekly vs a private household I wonder why the very same cartridge lasts for >5 years

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16 points

If you’ve owned more than 2, those are on you! 🤣

But yea, consumer printers suck.

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15 points

Hey, my Brother laser printer can see my screen, you know! Apologise now!

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5 points

Laser printers are way way better than the other types

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2 points

My Lexmark laser, from 1996, just quit last summer.

Though I think I can fix it - seems a paper jam sensor is stuck.

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9 points

I got one of those Epson ink tank printers for $250au. I think it’s the first time inkjet printers have become legit affordable and high capacity.

Laser still wins on reliability though, and being an Epson means it’s a Tamagochi so needs to be used monthly at least so it doesn’t die.

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5 points

I should really get a laser printer but my need for 11x17 capacity kind of limits options. To be fair though, my brother small business type inkjet printer does pretty well! Ink costs suck but I don’t want to commit seppuku after using it.

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2 points
*

I’ve never owned a better inkjet than the one I’ve had in the late 90s on all measures; build-quality, print quality, speed, operating noise, ink consumption, ink price, overall price, usability. Everything has got worse.

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92 points

The worst piece of tech I currently own is a small server that must have hard drive issues cause it forgets everything when it restarts and I have to set it up again.

The worst piece of tech that I have ever owned in my life is a CD Cleaner I bought from GameStop back in the day. That shit was straight up a sacrificial altar. It never cleaned. Only consumed.

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57 points

The worst piece of tech that I have ever owned in my life is a CD Cleaner I bought from GameStop back in the day. That shit was straight up a sacrificial altar. It never cleaned. Only consumed.

Oh shit, I remember those. They “cleaned” by using an abrasive spray to “polish” the CDs. Those things were straight-up evil.

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16 points

Yes! RIP Dinocrisis. My Gauntlet: Dark Legacy survived the process though. Thing still runs today with a fucking trench etched across the bottom, it doesn’t make sense really.

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12 points

GameStop

That explains it.

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9 points

Funny thing is, out of all the disc “cleaners” we sold while I was at Gamestop, we got very few complaints about it. Make the discs look like they went through hell but the product worked.

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6 points

Was it a cleaner or one of those “Resurfacing” things with the crank that just scratched the hell out of your discs in a circular pattern?

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7 points

You needed to use the lubricant that came with it. I used mine hundreds of times with incredible results.

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9 points

Oh I followed all the instructions, used the fluid & all that. Still had to track down a new copy of Street Fighter EX…

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2 points

Being a teenager I tried it, but it burned.

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5 points

– forgets everything

Many mother boards have a battery on them that is used in retaining state. May need to be replaced.

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3 points

I checked the CMOS and ended up replacing it. I thought that was it too. Same issue.

I paid 100 bucks for this server 5 years ago, came with 4TBs. Only thing I ever did with it was run private game servers on it for my friends. Maybe I’ll try replacing it again just for laughs and poop.

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67 points

I bought a dehumidifier off amazon that was “rated” for 800 sq ft.

Not only did it not live up to that promise, but it also served as the worlds shittiest ice maker. Ice formed on the radiator inside and stoped it from dehumidifying the air.

Thats right, you too can have a ice maker that makes ice in the shape of a radiator while ineffectively dehumidifying your home!

Best part was they reached out after I left a one star review and what they could do to change my rating.

I said “Nothing. Make a better product”

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13 points

I wonder if we had the same dehumidifier. Same 800 sq ft claim, except it didn’t produce ice because it couldn’t pull enough moisture out of the air to do so despite it being ~80% humidity in my apartment.

After a night of running at full blast, I woke up and poured out a whopping 10 mL of water from the basin

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5 points
*

From my understanding, a lot of the products on amazon are resellers that buy stuff from alibaba and then resell it at a markup so it would not surprise me if that was the case.

They all looked the same when i was last on there searching for one.

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4 points

100%.

I’m constantly seeing the same items with different branding all at a similar price point - it’s all AliExpress garbage. And if the AliExpress version suits your needs you’re better off ordering from AE directly as it’s significantly cheaper. AE shipping speeds have improved over the years too, I’ve gotten items within 1 week several times now

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59 points

A smart egg tray. It was in fact quite stupid. Mainly purchased it because of how absurd it was.

Main issues:

  • it was constantly wrong about how many eggs were in the tray
  • it was wrong about the eggs age.
  • it took 6AA batteries that only lasted a month at best.

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25 points

That really sounds absurd. Both the idea itself and the fact that they somehow screwed up the execution of such a simple thing that much.

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25 points

The egg that stays fresh for a few hundred years is kinda lame for an SCP

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5 points

I dunno, does it warp probability around it so that no matter what, the egg is always fresh? How far does the effect extend? Does it affect people or just physical interactions? If people ask these questions are they under the effect and contributing to the egg’s defense and therefore continued freshness?

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10 points

That sounds eggceptionally stupid, eggregious even.

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3 points

Wow. Nicely done.

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4 points

eggcellent

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8 points

Hahahahaha omg that is horrible

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2 points

Wow I thought I was the only idiot that bought it. Once they started charging for the smart features, it got unbatteried and became just a fancy box.

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59 points

The Cuecat: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

Came at a time when there weren’t barcodes everywhere and QR codes didn’t exist yet. Companies had to publish Cuecat specific barcodes, it was much easier to just type in the URL by the time you figured out you could use it at all.

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20 points

The man who holds the patent legally changed his name after it failed so he wouldn’t be associated with it.

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19 points

Went down the rabbit hole on this guy a bit. He went on to participate in the CyberNinjas audit of Arizona’s ballots after the 2020 election. He claimed to have technology that could detect whether ballots had been folded in the mail, and claimed to detect bamboo in “fraudulent Chinese ballots”.

He was such a kook, the other kooks rejected him.

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10 points

You can cut one leg off an IC on the board and it becomes a regular barcode reader.

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2 points

It also looks vaguely like a dildo, which is cool.

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9 points

I completely forgot these existed until you just mentioned it!

I think I still have one somewhere in a box of “I might need this” along with a parallel port ZIP drive and a bunch of FireWire cables.

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5 points

Ha, I had one and it’s what first came to mind too. Pretty useless.

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