The appliance that elicits anger and frustrated at it’s mere sight. The treacherous device that never worked right.

  • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
    1·
    7 hours ago

    Keurig coffee makers. My first one killed itself during descaling, the in-warranty replacement’s buttons were cursed and never worked. I always felt guilty for destroying the planet one K-Cup at a time too.

    The terrible devices actually encouraged me to grind my own beans and make Japanese-style pour over iced coffees.

  • Synapse@lemmy.world
    1·
    10 hours ago

    TV + Android box (Nvidia shield TV) + Soundbar.

    This trio is a bug-riddled experience, constantly changing behavior without explaination, frequently malfunctioning.

    All I want it to do is Jellyfin, YouTube and occasionally Twitch. I just want 1 on/off button on 1 remote that will turn on and off the whole system. Keypad to navigate, Ok and back buttons.

    One day, the Soundbar decided it will only turn on automatic 1 out of 10 times from now on. Why ? Sometimes the video output will be green and I have to reboot the android box. Why? If my SO stand up from her chair in the other room, the TV will turn black from 5 seconds. Why ? The biggest button on the remote is NETFLIX that I don’t use and it’s very easy to accidentally press it and the remapping software only works sometimes. Why ?

    This is so frustrating, also because there aren’t any fix possible. Any suggestions online may or may not work, most often they don’t. I am just stuck with this technology that is expensive, but still garbage and no better alternatives exist on the market.

  • Mesophar@pawb.socialEnglish
    5·
    1 day ago

    The microwave, because my roommates insist on having a model that beeps every 30 seconds after it finishes cooking so you don’t forget you had food in there. They still forget, though. It just gets on my nerves while I try to wash some dishes while waiting for the microwave to finish, or if I’m using it as part of prepping while cooking.

    • JackFrostNCola@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      14 hours ago

      Ah, my old oven did that trick with the clock.
      Even better is that it was a strange brand and didnt have an easily findable online manual, the only way to set the date was to first push the ‘alarm set’ and ‘alarm cancel’ buttons at the same time, then use the + & - buttons to change the time.

    • rekabis@lemmy.ca
      3·
      2 days ago

      Find an old 70s Amana Radarange on Marketplace or whatever local selling forum is available to you.

      I have both 1972 (analog rotary dials) and 1976 (electrostatic push button) models, and they can bring a cup of water to boil in less than 30 seconds. Most any modern microwave I’ve tried this on needed 2-8 minutes to do the same damn thing.

      • nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        you can get a modern high power microwave, you just need to look out for the wattage. boiling a cup of water in 30 seconds is not unheard of

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 days ago

      I dont remember when but the printer was an evil demon sent from hell, then all of a sudden printers just got good.

      I cant remember what the last serious issue I had with a printer was.

      • Denjin@lemmings.world
        3·
        1 day ago

        I cant remember what the last serious issue I had with a printer was.

        I do, it was immediately before I switched to a Brother.

    • Korhaka@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Not when I am done with it. From having to support them before I am so glad I don’t own one.

      • rekabis@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 days ago

        You need to look into something thoroughly classic, like an HP 4050DTN. I’ve had mine since 1999 and it’s lasted me through two degrees with only 3 toner cartridges. I get the ones that can do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage. And while yes, other parts like the fuser are now clamouring for replacement, to date the only things I have ever done are replace the toner cartridges and upgrade the JetDirect module to keep pace with my wired network.

        Not bad for a printer that’s a quarter century old.

        Edit: JFC I feel old now.

        • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 day ago

          toner

          This is why. You bought a laser printer. People balk at the upfront price but they last way longer and the price per page is a lot cheaper, not to mention better print quality

  • RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    5·
    2 days ago

    Nothing makes me particularly angry, but I’d really like if my washing machine had an accurate sense of time. It’s so far off sometimes I might as well just pretend there’s no timer. 1 hr 10? Come back in 1 hr to find it’s got 58 minutes to go. Which is sometimes 10 minutes but might actually be 58. Or 30. Or 70.

    Dumb fucking thing. Doesn’t even do multiple cycles in a row so it’s not like the timer resets for the next bit.

  • neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    3·
    2 days ago

    A few years ago we bought a dishwasher when we were in no place to be spending money on something unnecessary, but my wife was 8 months pregnant and wanted one. We bought the cheapest one at I think Lowes, if I recall correctly it was around $100, maybe $120.

    The ducking thing doesn’t have buttons, it has some stupid sensor panel, not touchscreen but is supposed to mimic it I guess. The sensors just don’t fucking work, ever. I spend 10 minutes loading the thing and 15 minutes trying to get it to start. Most of the time I have to cut the power from the breaker a few times to eventually get it to work. It’ll just change through all the settings beeping like crazy, so we have to keep it shut which means our dishes don’t dry properly. For a while I could only get it to start on the intense mode so it took 3 hours to run, now it only works on normal. It’s like I have to do a magic spell each time but the steps change weekly.

    I would love to throw it out and get a new one but it technically works and it’s only 3 years old.

    • Denjin@lemmings.world
      2·
      1 day ago

      A dishwasher is, IMHO, not unnecessary. If they’re used efficiently ie only run when they’re full, they use considerably less water than washing by hand does, does a better job than I do and I push a button and don’t have to participate any more until it’s done. Plus, depending on the energy makeup of your country/home setup, use a lot less energy to heat the water than your domestic hot water does too.

    • rekabis@lemmy.ca
      3·
      2 days ago

      When you have the money, get a Bosch 800 series.

      Like, my god it’s practically perfection. Don’t use pods, you need to use HE powder, but otherwise this is the best consumer dishwasher I have ever seen short of an industrial model.

      • ace_garp@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        …or consider boycotting Bosch, due to their move towards cloud-required-to-run dishwashers.

        Watch the first 30 seconds of this to see how much nonsense the Bosch 500 has going on.

        • rekabis@lemmy.ca
          2·
          1 day ago

          Things must have changed in the last five years, then. The 800 my wife and I got back in 2000 has none of that malarkey.

          • ace_garp@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 day ago

            Yes, I think this has only changed this year.

            It is both astounding and a shame that these cloud restrictions have been added.

            With enough negative feedback to manufacturers, and a drop in unit purchases, these usage limitations can be removed on future models, similar to how touch-controls of in-car systems are starting to return to physical controls.

      • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
        19·
        3 days ago

        I have a black and white samsung printer that is like a decade old with the only maintenance being adding the powdered ink and replacing the roller thingy a couple of times. Always works, never had an issue, printed thousands of pages over time in spurts of hundreds at a time and even not printing for like two years.

        On the opposite end inkjet printers are the fucking worst computer accessory I’ve ever dealt with. They have always been a shitshow even before they started the ink pricing shenanigans because they are finicky and unreliable to start with.

        • GingaNinga@lemmy.world
          9·
          3 days ago

          mine has said that all the ink is critically low and I’ve just ignored it for the past few months and it just keeps going.

        • Botzo@lemmy.world
          7·
          3 days ago

          Nearly same here, but mine is from 2010 and all I’ve ever done is replace the original starter cartridge of toner with a generic one once, and that was 12ish years ago and 2 cross-country moves. I’ve maybe printed a thousand pages ever.

    • Pacrat173@lemmy.ml
      17·
      3 days ago

      I got a Brother printer. I hate it less than my HP and Cannon ones I used to use but it’s still a printer. A sin which cannot be redeemed

      • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
        4·
        3 days ago

        I’d enjoy my Epson Eco tank printer more if it wasn’t trying to constantly update firmware, apps, drivers, etc.

        I’m not setting up faxing. Stop asking.

    • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
      92·
      3 days ago

      Stop buying shitty ink jet printers and get a laser printer. Pretty sure the Brother MFC my dad purchased a decade ago will outlive him.

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        6·
        3 days ago

        I do think that most people would be happier with lasers, especially on the “clogged nozzle and requires regular use” front (though now there are also lasers that also do the “razor and blades” sales model, with a cheap printer and more-expensive toner).

        However, there are legitimately some people who do need inkjets for one reason or another.

        • Lasers, and especially inexpensive lasers where the manufacturer wants to shave down power supply costs, have a brief period of very high electrical draw when they are powered on. This is why you’ll typically see UPSes with warnings saying “don’t plug laser printers into this device”. This probably isn’t more than a minor irritation for most people, but I bet that it can overwhelm small inverters; there are probably people living full-time in RVs or something for whom this a problem.

        • Even relatively-inexpensive inkjet printers today can produce what I’d call pretty impressive photograph prints if paired with fancy photo paper. Color lasers — and I’ve never bothered to even get a color laser — do not print photos that look remotely as nice as inkjets do. I don’t print photos — I have screens that can display photos perfectly well — and if I really wanted to do so, I’d go to one of the many stores around that do have the ability to do really fancy photo prints. But if someone were into that, they can’t really substitute a laser printer or most other types of printers for that. Maybe dye-sublimation printers, if those are still a thing. kagis Appears so.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      Inkjet printers clogging and requiring ink refills aside, I don’t think I’ve ever been unhappy with (2D) printers. I’ve used…continuous-feed dot-matrix printers, a thermal wax printer, laser printers, a text-only line printer, and a continuous-feed plotter. They all worked pretty well.

      And honestly, I’m still kind of impressed at what inkjet printers can turn out on photo paper, even if I wouldn’t buy one for my own uses.

      I had one very elderly Apple laser printer that I picked up once that someone was throwing out. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, laser printers were wonder printers that business users might have, but home users mostly didn’t have in their price range — fast output, sharp text, but expensive; always wanted one, but I wasn’t going to buy one. It didn’t have much memory, so there were some limitations on the complexity of what it could print. I rigged up the lpd on my computer to do all the rendering of vector Postscript images and convert it into a fax-compressed raster image and hand it off to the printer, so aside from taking a while to transfer the resulting image to the printer, it could pretty much handle anything. It served for something like ten years, with the remainder of the original toner cartridge lasting something like five of that, and I only tossed it because I wanted a higher-resolution printer, not because it had any problems functioning. I could probably still be using that thing. Kinda have some warm fuzzies remembering that ancient thing still soldiering on.

    • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
      5·
      3 days ago

      In grad school I picked up a an old free HP LaserJet, with an Ethernet NIC card (it was an upgradable printer, maybe from the mid 2000s?).

      It was great! Only complaint was no duplexer, but the thing printed great from Linux and the generic toner was cheap.

      Today though…the experience is a bit different.

      • Landless2029@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 days ago

        Yeah I got an HP laser MFC with like 3 new carts 10 years ago. NIC and Duplex. Going to have it for at least 10 more years or brother when it dies.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
      4·
      3 days ago

      I really cannot believe we fucked printers in so many unique ways.

      • No universal drivers and software support, requiring entire settings pages to be about printers
      • DRM everywhere, rendering third party cartridges useless
      • Routinely bad security, making Wi-Fi enabled printers one of the common attack vectors

      Etc. etc.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        HpLJ4 was a wonderful beast.

        Having said that, “print drivers” need to be “I’m gonna blow a PDF onto your port 9100 and you better make the things go on the goddamned paper or you fail and it’s the wood chipper for you”. I’m tired of everything else.

      • Toes♀@ani.social
        4·
        3 days ago

        My favourite bad security thing about them is that it’s possible to hack them with a fake fax.

  • megane-kun@lemm.eeEnglish
    101·
    3 days ago

    “Smart” TVs.

    I just want my TV to show pretty pictures with sound thrown at it by the digital receiver. If I want, I can attach a computer for streaming. How is that such a big ask?!

    • 🔰Hurling⚜️Durling🔱@lemmy.world
      401·
      3 days ago

      TV’s are actually cheaper not because the tech necessarily being more available (even though it should) but instead it’s because companies are harvesting your data on smart tv’s and selling it making more profit than they would make with just selling you a TV. On a separate but somewhat related note, has anyone else noticed smart phones becoming more expensive as they become more protective of the users privacy?

        • 🔰Hurling⚜️Durling🔱@lemmy.world
          4·
          2 days ago

          Oh I know they are still harvesting our data, but that data is not openly shared so in that sense it’s more secure (Basically I misspoke). It used to be sold like tables of information, now they only sell access to advertise to those groups (more money)… You know what, fuck that logic. I’m talking out of my ass. Phones are more expensive because greed, pure and simple.

    • Unleaded8163@fedia.io
      25·
      3 days ago

      I couldn’t find a dumb TV, so I got a smart one didn’t give it wifi access. Every time I turn it on, it shows me a clock that’s wrong and I think “Not so smart now, are you?”. It’s a perfectly functional dumb TV.

      • megane-kun@lemm.eeEnglish
        7·
        3 days ago

        I mean, yeah. Somehow I’m aware of that. But also, we haven’t bought a TV for almost a decade now, and my biggest mistake is letting it update to the latest version. If there’s something these adverts have done is drive me into consuming even less than ever before. I actively don’t buy stuff now.

        • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
          12·
          3 days ago

          Disconnect it from the network and factory reset it.

          That stopped mine showing me adverts. Won’t stand adverts from a device I’ve paid to bring into my home.

          Only had to do that because I checked to see if the “download subtitles” feature would actually work.

          Spoiler

          It didn’t.

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
      61·
      3 days ago

      I’m so happy my old 1080p dumb TV is still chugging along. Acts as a third screen to my computer, has a minor spot with pressure damage making the colors darker there. Ultimately still far superior to all the smart junk and cost me only 270€ when it was new in 2014

      • bollybing@lemmynsfw.com
        2·
        1 day ago

        My wife doesnt like how much noise it makes and says its messy and violent and dangerous to open anything with a gun. We are eating a lot more soup now though.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        Agreed. Simple, cheap, reliable, and faster than struggling with that piece of shit opener that barely works and you should have thrown away years ago.

        If I were running a soup kitchen, I’d have a different preference, but reliable lever openers like the P38, P51, or even the opener on a leatherman serves my needs better than any of these POS twist-style openers.

      • nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        those are great when you need to pack light, but holy shit it’s a pain in the ass to open a can with those things. feels like it’s going to rip my goddamn fingers off

      • Korhaka@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Ohh is that the proper name for them, found it on eBay very cheap. Ages ago I was annoyed at tin openers but tried one that should stab through the lid and then lever through. It broke within a day or two, it was rivited together and they failed.

        Think I might just buy some, also a more practical size for taking out and cooking over a stove.