Asklemmy

OUYA

A Surface RT ... Slow, barely any software support. Totally lost whatever trust I had for Microsoft.

Maytag dishwasher and gas dryer. Maytag had always purported themselves to be a top brand. However, both of these products would not last more than 4 years. I should have bought the Bosch dishwasher like consumer reports told me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

These things were trash and the concept was even worse.

If you count cars: A Skoda Octavia PHEV.

I love Skoda. I love the Octavia. It was my fourth Octavia and I already ordered two more for my staff. PHEV would have been ideal for our use case.

Well,things didn't go as planned.

The whole car was bugged with software and hardware problems from day one - controll units randomly crapping out, when my dealer wanted to replace them he often had to get 5 units because four would be DOA and the one that worked kicked the bucket before I left his premises. Highlights:

• A steering wheel coming loose (only slightly,but still)
• The main display that shows your speed,etc. randomly shutting down. (Especially nice as I live close to Switzerland with their exorbitant speeding tickets)
• Randomly playing a screeching sound at full volume (especially nice at 3am or when on a highway)
• Randomly shutting of AC, some motor controls , etc.

It took 12 months for VW to take that steaming pile back, and only we sued them (Shortly before the hearing).

Second place goes to LG which sold me a OLED TV for 2k that randomly showed faulty pixel lines exactly 3 years and 3 days after I bought it (so it's out of the extended warranty programs as well). And when asked for a quote for the repair they had the audacity to ask for almost the new price for the TV back then, aka 150% of the current market value - without even looking at it first. Good way to make sure that I never buy LG anymore.

My current Amazfit smartwatch. The only good thing about it is the long battery life.

It's a piece of crap otherwise. Requires the data harvesting app to always be running in the background or it loses connection to my phone. It's slow, has ugly watch faces and the custom ones are awkward to install. I can't get it to work with Gadgetbridge. The always on display is so dim that it's useless. Pinging my phone doesn't work.

I don't know why I let the Internet convince me that spending £120 on this thing was a good idea. I'm going Casio or something next time around.

Google Home. Bought them for $40 CAD and back then they were great. Responsive, did quick google searches, played my music all over the house.

Over the years they’ve lost functionality. Mine no longer accurately respond to voice queries and no longer complete google searches. I can still play music on them manually from my phone but when I ask it something, it responds back in French or does something completely different than what I had originally asked.

Worst part is that I ask it something, it does something different, and then when I say “hey Google stop” it just keeps going and going. Have to manually pull the plug for it to stop.

Košs KPH30i headphones. Those fuckers are an actual health hazard. They will make your ears suffer for the crime of putting them on.

Really sad cause Porta Pros are incredible. And I usually see people suggest getting the KPH30i instead. Don't do that.

A Canon printer. Not just a simple one, but a big (wide) one with real ink tanks, about 20 years ago.

Under Linux, I could only access basic printing services with that, and this only by using a default driver not made by Canon that happened to work. So I contacted Canon to get a proper user manual to create a proper device driver for this (something I could have done without problems), and basically got the answer that they would not support this, as "open source is theft of intellectual property". They also had some very choice words about Linux in general.

I assumed I just got an asshole on the phone, so when I attended Cebit a short time later (back then the biggest trade fair in Europe for things like that), I went to the Canon booth, explained my issue, and basically got the same reply. So I sold the Canon printer and bought an HP one. At least HP supported Linux and supplied working drivers. Sadly, they have really gone down the drain since that, so the next printer will be a different brand again...

In ear earbuds. I blimmin' hate them but my Audio Technica over ears are too bulky for the gym.

Bit off topic, though if anyone could recommend cheap but decent wireless headphones, for the gym, that are not in ear I would appreciate it a lot (I'm in the UK).

Every piece of hardware I've used past 2010 or so seems to have just gotten worse and worse, I honestly think I'm cursed.

2013 (? can't quite remember), Sager gaming laptop with sli gpu config, gpus drew too much power for the battery (I believe), leading to black screen and reboot. Company feigned ignorance, ran unrelated tests on RMA, Socially awkward at the time and was scared to ask for a refund. Convinced to this day it was a scam.

2015, desktop computer I built randomly powers off during usage, no errors, not the power supply, unsolved to this day.

2020-2022 5 cheap ebay thinkpads, all with one hardware problem or another. My beloved T60p was the last to go.

2022-present Framework laptop, ports suffer intermitent failure, webcam microphone stopped working. Replaced webcam/microphone, works for a day, breaks again. Unsolved.

2022-preset Steam deck, had to RMA 3 times for various hardware issues, works now, but the right trigger still rubs against something but I can live with it. Spilled coffee on the left trackpad so it's sticky; that's my fault though so I can't blame it on the curse.