The appliance that elicits anger and frustrated at it’s mere sight. The treacherous device that never worked right.
My old microwave wouldn’t cook anything if the date wasn’t set.
Yes. The date.
Now that’s a good prank
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.
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
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.
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.
My favourite bad security thing about them is that it’s possible to hack them with a fake fax.
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.
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.
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.
Brother
The stove in the place I rent. Only been living here maybe 2 years… and that thing is the devil. I thought it was just me getting used to an electric stove again. Nope, that thing is just a piece of shit.
Nothing can simmer, nothing can be left unattended for more than a few minutes (at most), it can’t maintain anything close to a consistent temperature, and forget boiling water before you die of old age… I use an electric kettle just so I can boil noodles in less than 40 minutes
Maybe it’s my pots?.. nope, I’ve tried. Maybe I’ll get better at using it?.. no, and at this point I wouldn’t even want to. It’s just a piece of shit. My mother-in-law is a great cook, and she was pissed when she burned smothered chicken on it… because she hasn’t burned smothered chicken in probably 20+ years; she confirms the stove is garbage
Fuck that stove
Thanks for hearing my rant, I feel a little better now
Edit: I forgot to mention that the fucker is BRAND NEW too. We’re literally the first people to use it. Garbage-ass, giant piece of horse shit…
I trust your mom. She’s gonna be right.
You could get your thermostat checked. Depending on the stove, it’s something you could probably do yourself. It’s like a ten dollar part, maybe?
We’re just planning on moving now, cause we hate this place and there’s a multitude of problems: A/C can’t keep up with cooling the house, costs a fuck-ton in energy bills, the management company won’t fix shit and they’re a nightmare to work with. They tried to blame us for rats getting into the attic, when it was a known problem before. Took us 2 months to make them hire pest control, and then acted like we should be grateful for normal-upkeep, and not having rats get inside
The neighborhood is actually nice, but the big-name management company are basically slum lords with a smile. But we had 3 dogs at the time and rental options were few, that had a fenced yard and would accept 3 dogs. 2 of them sadly passed this past year, and as much as I miss them and it wrenched my heart… we realized we could probably find something better now and not need such a large yard (our last dog is old too, and doesn’t romp in the yard anymore. He just enjoys little walks now)
The stove is just one of the things I hate about this place and I don’t want to fix any of their shite, even for $10. We’re just making it work for now
The humble Mandoline
Severed fingertips await
Holy fuck what
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Coffee dispenser at work. It acts up like it’s a printer. Replace left cartridge. Replace right cartridge. Cleaning required. Thorough cleaning required. Unknown leak. Heating water please wait. Unknown error. Fuck that, I’ll piss in a cup myself if I don’t get my coffee now.
Then there’s also the towel roll thing in the toilets. I swear it’s stuck for longer time than it’s functioning. It’d be a full time job keeping that rolling throughout the day
Ugh. If you have even a little space on your desk you could get a “5-cup” (that’s about 2 mugs) drip coffee machine and some unbleached paper filters for about $25. You could still make that refreshing stroll in the direction of the big machine, but with your fresh hot mugful already in your hand.
My apartment gym has a Nordictrack treadmill that I hate nearly every aspect of. First of all, it requires you login to use any of the programs, which doesn’t really work with 200 potential users. It has lost internet every single time I’ve used it and needs a restart, even though I use manual mode, the UI buttons are tiny and impossible to read while you’re running, and don’t respond correctly, and worst of all, there’s no goddamn place to put your phone so you can watch Netflix.
and worst of all, there’s no goddamn place to put your phone so you can watch Netflix.
kagis
Hmm.
Yeah, I was thinking that it’d have some kind of bike-style handlebars or something, but nothing quite like that.
thinks
So, there are these…I don’t know what they’re called. “Gooseneck leg camera tripods”? They’re intended to let you mount a camera anywhere, but if you feel strongly enough about this, I’m sure that one can get one of those and I’m sure that someone makes a quarter-inch-bolt — which camera tripods use — adapter to a smartphone holder. Can probably stuff a phone on pretty much anything with that.
goes looking
Okay, I don’t know if anyone else makes this. I thought it was a whole class of devices, but maybe it’s just one manufacturer. Basically, three gooseneck legs with grippy things down them, “Joby Gorillapods”. Just wrap the gooseneck legs around whatever you want to mount the thing to.
https://www.amazon.com/gorillapod-original-tripod-point-cameras/dp/b0087fftt2
And once you have your quarter-inch tripod mount from that, there are a ton of different products that will let you mount a phone on a tripod bolt.
https://www.amazon.com/phone-tripod-mount/s?k=phone+tripod+mount
Can probably even get some sort of telescoping counterweighted-arm thing that’d let you jam it right in front of your eyeballs — I have a mic boom like that on a tripod — though I dunno if you want to deal with lugging something like that into a gym. And if the treadmill is vibrating at all, an arm would amplify the vibrations.
Holy crap, you put a lot of thought into my issue, lol thank you.
That’s not quite what we have though, the display is like a modern tablet, and if, and only if you login can you watch the Pelaton-style videos, which are your only options for workout programs.
You lost me at “login” on a treadmill lmao.
Treadmills are already pretty niche considering walking/running is free.
Why would you login to…a treadmill? Why would it need internet? So you can watch Netflix on the world slowest Public computer?
The trend of having touch screens on things is horrible enough. We definitely jumped the shark with technology long ago
Your history, prob one of those gameified ones where you run on google maps like trails
imo my ideal one would just have an adjustable phone dock with wireless charging.
Samsung Fridge (don’t judge me, it came with the house).
I knew it was a “when” and not and “if” it would start having issues, and it finally showed its colors last month.
Front panel buttons either refused to work at all or would cycle through every option continuously and randomly.
Want water? Sorry, only crushed ice today. Want ice? Sorry, just water today. Oh, I actually did want water (starts dispensing). PSYCH! Now I’m going to shoot ice at you and splash water everywhere.
Was about to just toss the thing and get something dumber and more reliable, but decided to roll the dice with a replacement control board from ebay. Thankfully, that worked and I’m only out $80.
Are you sure someone wasn’t pranking you? Cuz that’s hilarious.
Lol, if only. It’s not a “smart” fridge, but it does have a lot of, frankly, unnecessary electronics for what it does. Electronic components that, as any internet search for Samsung appliances will confirm, can and do go bad and are a pain to repair.
I used to really want an icemaker for convenience, because invariably I’d run into a mostly-empty ice cubes tray when I wanted ice cubes. Or I’d fill the ice cubes tray before it was empty, but then I’d partially-melt the ice cubes there and make them unusable until they refroze.
I didn’t care that much about chilled water, because I can throw ice in it. But the ice cubes were a pain.
I even got a dedicated icemaker at one point, when I wanted softer ice to run a small shaved ice machine.
But…finally I figured out what I needed to do differently. Instead of freezing water in ice cube trays and taking the ice cubes directly out of the tray, just go stick a container in your freezer. Whenever you get ice cubes, if the ice cube tray is full and there’s space, just dump it into the container and refill it. Now you have a big container of ice cubes that’s always full. Just replicates what freezer-integrated ice cube makers do. Haven’t had any issues since. Maybe this is obvious to some people, but it wasn’t to me.
You can get little containers that will fit into the door shelves if you want to stick them there:
Oh, I absolutely love my ice maker. Didn’t think I needed one until I replaced the fridge in my old house with one that had one. Now I can’t live without one (except in the dead of winter when I clean it and just turn it off for ~2 months)
Dogs love chewing on ice cubes, especially in the summer. Between keeping bowls of ice cubes out for the dogs and me making margaritas and slushy cocktails all summer, I’d never be able to get by with ice trays.
Dogs love chewing on ice cubes, especially in the summer.
Just as a warning — I don’t know if it’s an issue for dogs, or as much of an issue for them — I once chipped a tooth by chewing on ice. I liked chewing on ice too. Would sometimes put a little black pepper on it. The dentist told me to knock it off, not good for teeth.
That being said, at least the icemaker ice I had was softer, much easier to crush, probably would have been much less of an issue, so if you’re giving 'em ice from one, maybe that avoids any potential issue.
Dogs chew on bones which are much harder, and other than potential for bone fragments/splinters, they’re fine (such was my logic, anyway lol). But for good measure, I asked their vet a good while back, and was given the green light.
Everything with a built in lithium battery that isn’t easy to swap. Phones, headphones, vapes, the weird gameboy thing I got offa aliexpress.
I’m about to smash my goddamn phone. i can buy the best phone with all of my money and it still sucks ass
I think we are asking too much of phones. I’m not even certain we are in charge of the wanting any more… they dangle… we salivate.
No… I haven’t gone back to flip phone yet but I’m sure tempted.
I’m asking it to do all the computer things it’s currently doing but to be reliable at doing them because that’s what I use it for now and I’m addicted
Sames. My employers subscribed to the mobile version of the app we were all working with forever and it was like have strings cut. So… yeah… good to be able to catch up at the beach.
Hm. Whoever made microwave ovens with an impossible to clean exposed resistance for broiling in the off chance you felt like making lasagna in a shoebox should be shot into space.
Everybody below pointing out that repeated beeping noises are unacceptable is also not wrong. It’s gotten to the point where half a dozen different things may be beeping in my kitchen, nobody knows which one it is and everybody is in a reverse-race to ignore them to see if someone else goes to deal with it.
I once had a dishwasher that opened the door by itself using magnets instead of nagging you like a needy cat and I miss it every day.
Magnets are brilliant. I had to go really high up the range for mine to have a motor that opens the door at the end of each cycle. It has good energy ratings too but I’m not sure the extra cost will be worth it in its lifetime because the “eco” cycle is like the cheating on the homologation run of cars: it uses so little power and heat nothing gets clean enough if it’s full.
I think mine got away with it because it was a small countertop model with a light plastic door. I don’t know if you’d be able to do that for a large embedded family-sized one where you don’t know how heavy the door is because it’s attached to a cupboard cover. You probably do need a motor for that. If not to smoothly open the door at least to give it a little push with a push rod or something.
The point is we have the technology to push a flippy door open automatically, my dishwasher doesn’t need to screech for attention every time it completes a task like a needy toddler.
I never know about “eco” cycles in dishwashers anyway. I mean, those things are efficient in the first place and if you use hot water to wash manually you may not be saving anything against a full cycle. I’m also surprised to hear people complain about them so much, presumably out of getting bad cleaning results. Mine is old and not that high end and I very rarely get a bad load out of it. If one thing was in a blind spot it’s just a matter of leaving it in to go for another run.
I think maybe people don’t know how to use a dishwasher? I’m torn about that one, because on the one hand well designed appliances should be impossible to use incorrectly, so it’s technically the dishwasher’s fault still, but at the same time dishwashers are awesome and having lived without one for a long time I’m never going back to that life. I would get one with an automatic door next time, though.
Electric toothbrushes. They really are superior to regular old brushes, but they tend to break down after less than a year and aren’t exactly cheap. Ironically, the last time mine broke I replaced it with the cheapest one and it’s lasted longer than the ones before it. Go figure!
What do you do for them to break so soon?
I’ve had two electric toothbrushes in my life. The first one lasted for maybe 10 years. The breaking point was plastic degradation which occluded the internal electronics and destroyed de button to turn it on.
I think could have been repaired with the right materials. The repairability of the brand I buy is pretty good.
For anyone curious the brand is:
Tap for spoiler
Oral b
The electric toothbrushes are nice but the head replacements are too expensive and I’ve not find a suitable offbrand replacement. So I end up boiling the toothbrush heads several times to extend their lifetime.
That spoiler thing? Fantastic. I chuckled, anyway.
So, I have never thought about this before but I would think the lifetime of a toothbrush head is based more on mechanical stress on the bristles and not bacterial growth.
Which I assume you try to address by boiling them. I remember studies made on boiling dishwashing sponges and unless I remember wrong boiling them regularly actually lead to more bacterial growth over time. Don’t remember thr explanation and maybe funded by “big sponge”.
That said I always use mine at least 2 months longer but am not boiling them.
“Big sponge” have us all in their pocket.
My toothbrush head actually starts developing black patches overtime of what I asume is my own bacteria setting in in the brush. Mostly in cavities hard to reach for a normal cleaning.
For me boiling easily removes those dark patches. It is true that they come back faster than the time they took to appear the first time. Put it peaces my mind and I’m still alive after all this time.
Funnily enough I stopped using washing sponges in the shower and start washing myself only with my hand because someone told me that sponges were bacterial paradise. And to be true I found out that I really don’t need a sponge to clean myself.
OK. Black patches are… concerning, then I get why you do this.
Philips Sonicare. My first two developed the same problem: some connection inside came loose and the head would be loose and rattly. I tried opening them up and fixing them, but they were too bent out of shape. My third one ( a slightly different model) is going strong for some time now, so maybe I just got unlucky.
They break after a year? I’ve had mine for a decade now…
Judging from responses in here, I got unlucky.
I really don’t get all the shit microwaves and printers get. smart devices especially samsung and xiaomi phones are the worst, from privacy, ownership and control, and maintainability points
edit: fixed a typo. got a stroke when writing…
Sounds like you’ve never had to service a printer, their hate is justified
Same privacy, ownership, and control issues. Had HP remote shut down one of our office printers b/c it detected unauthorized ink. It wasn’t unauthorized ink. They didn’t care. And it is trivial to hack and duplicate any document that ever gets printed or put to glass
I’ve never had issues with microwaves
me neither, but they all universally could have a silent mode.
truth be told, I have a very old microwave with buttons and dials, so mayhaps I didn’t get to experience the shit “modern” microwaves do
Not me, but my mother has beef with air conditioners. When I was little, I got sick (to the point of losing consciousness) due to a dirty AC in a hotel, so now she (maybe rightfully) assumes that a random given AC in a public place is filthy. We don’t have one at home either - mostly because in this climate we’d only need it for a short time each year, but also because mom thinks it’d be easy to not take care of it properly and let enough filth accumulate.
Most modern refrigerators. They have tons of features (ice makers, water dispensers, screens) that are unnecessary.
But what gets me really going is the shelving, specifically door shelving. Most manufacturers have moved to clear polycarbonate for the “wall” around the shelf which is specifically not recommended for shock loading. For example, the load that is applied when the door closes and the condiments slide into the retaining piece. To get a fridge with metal means upgrading to a luxury model.
And don’t get me started on the fact that door shelving overlaps with interior shelving. Go look at a 1940s Shelvador and learn how to build a proper appliance.
Frankly, most appliances bother me:
- microwaves have UI issues, but I do like Panasonic’s genius inverter line.
- stoves have too many features and electronics. A true commercial style stoves without gadgets and gewgaws to break is hard to find for home use.
- so many dishwashers simply don’t clean dishes. Modern ones (imho) get too hot
- Most washing machines are way too rough on clothes.
- what the fuck is even with dryers? If people in the UK hang their clothes to dry, you can too (tropical climates may be an exception). Thankfully heat pump dryers are becoming a thing.
Do most fridges not have shelves that can be put practically anywhere?
The key with the shelvador is that there’s no overlap between door shelves and interior shelves. You can stuff the fridge right to the brim and close the door. Too many refrigerators now have an overlap, so you need to reserve space from the fridge to allow the door shelves space. It’s not a matter of placement, just the door shelves are too deep (or interior, depending how you look at it).
I’m not up for hanging wet sheets and towels throughout my condo, much less clothes. And my HOA would fine me exorbitantly if I hung laundry on my balcony. I’m seriously glad there are washers and dryers in the basement and that, after constant issues with frontloading washers, we went back to toploaders.
If people in the UK hang their clothes to dry, you can too
This is something of a thing in places in Europe, though not much in the US today.
I don’t really like line-dried clothes. I’m sure that it’s gentler on the clothes, but in addition to the convenience, machine-dried clothes are considerably softer; line-dried stuff is stiff by comparison.
I prefer line dried as they are way less creased than when they come out of the dryer.
Yeah one can’t hang clothes outside to dry here, since it’s not dry outside, and line dried laundry is stiff and wrinkled, dryer laundry is soft and smooth. But I still pull half my clothes out and hang them inside to dry because oof dryers sure do wear them out faster.
I discovered that a dehumidifier is really good at drying clothes cheaply. The one I bought has a specific button for laundry.
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