The appliance that elicits anger and frustrated at it’s mere sight. The treacherous device that never worked right.
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.
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.
My old microwave wouldn’t cook anything if the date wasn’t set.
Yes. The date.
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.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
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.
Is a printer an appliance? 🤔
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.
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.
Not when I am done with it. From having to support them before I am so glad I don’t own one.
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.
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
I think I will continue to not own a printer.
Do printers count? I fucking HATE printers.
After some half a century of existing they are somehow still annoying to use.
Try industrial label printers. They are like printers on hard mode.
Printers are a given, I figure.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
Yeah some laser printers can for sure pop a circuit breaker in older houses
hPLJ4 gobbled 600w when firing up. You better believe it popped some breakers.
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Came here to say this. F all printers ever made.
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
lpdon 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.
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.
Yeah this drives me insane too.
Dont have a timer if its guessing
The humble Mandoline
Severed fingertips await
Holy fuck what
deleted by creator
“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?!
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?
as they become more protective of the users privacy?
that was a good joke
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.
as they become more protective of the users privacy?
that was a good joke
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.
Yep. Best way to get a TV that will never sell your data or show ads is to literally blacklist its MAC address at the router level, and then assign the “smart” functionality to a device environment you control, like a Shield Pro with a custom launcher or an Intel NUC media PC or NAS or something similar.
The Samsung man will still sneak in your house at night and check your watch history. There is no escape.
The dumb ones are typically “display” monitors, like what fast-food restaurants use for their menus. Likely more expensive, but built better too
Not built better, just under-driven on brightness so they can run 16-24 hours a day. Contrast suffers, frame rates are limited, you’re paying for support you will never use, and enterprise software features you will also never use.
sceptre makes a dumb tv thats pretty ok
I think some commercial TVs might do what you want.
The cost of a TV is subsidized by advertisements and deals with different apps for prominent placement.
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.
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.
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
Brother
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.
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.
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.
My favourite bad security thing about them is that it’s possible to hack them with a fake fax.
My fridge because once a year it seems the coils freeze over.
ZigBee buttons for Home Assistant.
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.
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.
Using pods is a waste of money anyway
They’re also not good for the dishwasher. Or the environment.
…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.
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.
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.
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.
Microwaves are allowed one proud “ding” or three “beep” before they are on my hate-list.
My microwave has an un-interuptable 6 shrill beeps, that then repeat if the door is not opened in 10 seconds. There is no mute option, and it can be heard everywhere in the house. I have seriously considered just ripping the speaker out of it. It is, without a doubt, the appliance I hate most in my house.
Perfect this is the type answer I was looking for!
I moved from the US to Europe and I keep joking that the largest QoL upgrade has been my unbelievably dumb microwave. It has a power knob, a timer knob that is spring wound, and when it hits 0 it physically hits a bell like an older toaster.
I fucking love it. It was like 20€
Wait what do US microwaves do? Play the national anthem?
Newer ones have way too many digital buttons and a loud repeating beep when finished. Even newer ones, probably Bluetooth or something
https://homemicrowave.com/microwave-with-alexa/
Want to set up your microwave with Alexa for plenty of cool tricks, but didn’t know how to pick the best microwave that works with Alexa?
Having an Alexa compatible microwave in your kitchen, you can control the microwave and adjust the cooking setting simply via Alexa’s voice control feature.
Speaking for myself, I don’t really want Internet dependency, much less a microphone sending data to the Internet on my appliances.
I could maybe see connecting it to Home Assistant to deliver a silent notification, instead of waking everyone up at night for example.
This is the only use case I could possibly think of for networking a microwave. An enhanced mute feature.
Yeah, you still have to put the food into the microwave, might as well just press the button there too.
Sounds like mine. Shrill beeps that can’t be cancelled, muted, or interrupted, although I think mine is 30 seconds before the reminder beeps.
My favorite part, though? It beeps when you open the door. Like, just as a sound effect. I, the user, your god and your master, am the one who opened your door. There is no status to notify me of, there is no input to confirm. It’s just useless racket that can’t be eliminated without hardware modification.
Open the door to your microwave and see if it has instructions for written on its body. Mine has a secondary menu where you can turn it off.
Checked there and searched online for any demo modes/ testing codes that would allow me to mute it. Evidently, a lot of folks online absolutely hate my microwave as well, because no one can mute it. That said, the community of microwave haters has provided me with instructions to rip out the speaker if I choose to silence the wailing banshee for good.
Mine is not nearly as bad as yours, but it is loud and doesn’t stop beeping when you open the door, just continues until its preprogrammed three loud beeps are over. I muted it when my kids were babies and have never looked back. I think a lot of people worry about muting their microwave because they think they won’t hear when it’s done or something. I’m here to tell you that you won’t miss it. Go forth and rip that speaker out with no regrets.
One thing you can do if you’re not fully prepared to remove the speaker is to cover it with several layers of tape. It will muffle the sound and is somewhat reversible
What microwave and model is it?
Frigidaire FFMV164LSA MFG in 2012
Microwaves are the penultimate Norman Object (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things). They could have a standardized UI (cue up obligatory XKCD “Standards”). Instead, every manufacturer does it differently and usually in obscure, unintuitive fashion, often differently from the same manufacturer. Do you enter the time or power setting first? Oh wait, pressing a number launches it straight into running. That part that looks like a door handle is not how one actually opens the door; press the door button first. So. Much. Hate.
Yeah, I can see what you mean. Generally, they’re similar-enough, at least in basic functionality, that I don’t have an issue using someone else’s microwave though. The advanced functionality can vary a lot.
What does kind of annoy me is that they’re basically the one device — VCRs used to be the stereotypical holders of this position — that has a clock, but also is a device price-sensitive enough to both:
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Lack an internal battery to keep the clock powered when power is lost.
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Not have a network link, cell link — not that I really want those — or radio time signal receiver to automatically set the clock.
The result is that every microwave I see seems to wind up showing an unset clock.
I get irrationally upset over microwaves that don’t let you use the timer and cook functions simultaneously
looks puzzled
Hmm. What are you doing with that? Like, you want to be cooking for a certain amount of time, then after the cooking completes, have a timer trigger to start a second cooking period?
More like, I need to heat this frozen thing for 4 minutes. Also while that’s going on, I want to set a timer for my pasta which is cooking on the stove for 6 minutes to remind me to check it.
Oh, so this is like, a timer for an alarm rather than to control the microwave’s operation. Gotcha.
Exactly. I have a batch of cupcakes in the oven so the timer is set for 12 mins, but I also want to melt some chocolate for the ganache while that’s going.
Luckily, my microwave supports doing both, but I’ve cooked at other people’s houses and their microwaves are essentially bricked while the timer counts down which is so crazy to me it’s like they’ve made this appliance worse on purpose.
Didn’t they somehow send time info down the power line in some places? Or maybe I’m just misremembering this?
I can’t think of anything that quite fits that off-the-cuff, at least not in the US. A quick search doesn’t turn anything up. I can think of some related things:
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The AC signal is used as a clock in a number of devices. This isn’t a “clock” in the common-language sense of the word, but in the electrical engineering sense – it provides a reliable frequency over the long run. Some (common-language) clocks and timers have used this to keep them running at a steady pace, but it’s not really a time signal, wouldn’t help restore an on-device clock setting after power loss.
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X10 is a low-speed networking protocol that runs over local power circuits for home automation. I’m sure that at some point, someone has made some product that permits setting a clock with it. The limitation is that your signal doesn’t span across household circuits, which I suspect one would want for a “whole house time signal”.
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There have been powerline-based ISPs, where the power company shovels data over the line using high-frequency modulation. In theory, you could use one of various Internet time protocols over that. I think that that was kind of a dead end, technology-wise — there’s just not that much data that you can push over an unshielded, non-twisted-pair, metal power line.
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I would not be surprised if there’s some data protocol that power companies use to talk to smart meters that includes pushing a time signal out specifically for them – they do push and pull data over that – though I don’t think that that’s accessible to other devices.
That being said, could be some company out there that did that locally. Not technically impossible.
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You know, the worst part is, they intentionally make the interface shittier on the cheap ones. I’m very convinced of this.
I have a similar short fuse for microwaves but for the +30 seconds button. If the microwave doesn’t have this it should get tossed in the nearest dumpster. The +30 seconds button is the pinnacle of human achievement.
My partner took our microwave (an obnoxious thing I bought at a charity shop for $15) apart and wrapped the dinger-thing in a thick rubber band to muffle it, then put it all back together. It sounds so much more polite now, and he didn’t have to cut any wires or otherwise fuss with the basic function.
I have to try that, thanks for the idea!
And any remaining time on the cooking timer should automatically clear after say 10 minutes. Too many people that love leaving a few seconds remaining when retrieving their food. Then the remaining time stays there forever until someone comes along and clears it.
I want to open up my microwave and rip out whatever device makes the beep. Who has ever forgotten they have food in the microwave? I was hungry 3 minutes ago, I haven’t forgotten, and it’s not going to burn.
My parents used to have an old Amana Radarange. Built like a tank, wood paneling and chrome, warm incandescent lighting…I miss it. It didn’t have a beep or a bell or anything. Once it was done it would just…turn off.
My microwave thinks it’s a regular oven and keeps beeping if you don’t open the door. It doesn’t seem to understand it has stopped on its own and can shut the fuck up now.
i muted my microwave, almost every microwave i’ve used has been mutable
My microwave’s beeper only work in 10s increments. Meaning if I enter a cook time of 91 seconds, I get 91s at high power, 9s at low power, and a beep. If I listen for the power change, I have a 9 second window to open the door. It’s perfect; no annoying beeping, and the timer reads 0:00 so it doesn’t need to be cleared before reuse.
I keep buying cheap toaster ovens. I keep paying the price for it. At least I know my smoke alarms work
Get yourself a nice Panasonic one. $150-ish I have one that’s over 10 years old
We must’ve lucked right out because we bought the literal cheapest toaster we found ($12 about 9 years ago). No special features, not even a cancel button, just a little knob for the doneness. It worked so well for the 7 or 8 years we had it, and the only reason we replaced it was cause we wanted a 4-slice toaster.
Thing was a champ, I was trying to see if I could find it online but can’t see it anymore. I think it was Master Chef brand.
We have an Oster one now with a fancy touch screen that I can see is about $70. It works about as well as the previous one we had.
