I saw this post and wanted to ask the opposite. What are some items that really aren’t worth paying the expensive version for? Preferably more extreme or unexpected examples.
I saw this post and wanted to ask the opposite. What are some items that really aren’t worth paying the expensive version for? Preferably more extreme or unexpected examples.
I will go the opposite route here, and tell people to instead make an exception for certain things, and never go for cheap unknown brands.
Edit: fuck you GrapheneOS, for almost 2 months now, they are mass downvoting my comments, and doing voting manipulation, also abusing federation
What is the problem with GrapheneOS?
See https://lemmy.ml/comment/7103845
I’ve heard before Graphene is toxic. What did they do?
I do not think that the user above you is being brigaded by GrapheneOS.
Look into their history to see if they might’ve said to see if there was anything in their “most controversial” that could elicit a retaliation, and I found nothing.
I did find them often strongly saying unpopular opinions (or sidestepping a question), which people then downvote, and them sometime blaming the downvotes on outside actors.
“I didn’t say something that wasn’t true or not well received, I am clearly being attacked!!!”’
I’ll copy the comment you are replying to so it can’t go away:
Reasons people might downvote:
Reasons people are probably not downvoting:
See https://lemmy.ml/comment/7103845
he told people to buy cheap ass china phones and run some adb commands to disable google stuff, instead of buying a pixel and installing graphene or calyx
You can check my history for the past month and a half, all with 4-7 downvotes. They habitually downvote when they sleep and wake up according to Canadian timezone. I ruined their non-existent careers by constantly recording and dishing out proof of their brodude asshole attitude, voting manipulation, targeted witch hunting that the “lead dev” told people to do on Matrix, and so on.
Some people will think that may be conspiratorial, but my comment history with consistent downvoting speaks volumes, apart from a very few 4-5 comments people did not generally like. And they want that I look deranged, conspiratorial and get out of their way to do nasty things, which they keep failing at. 😂
I mean, you did do the opposite of what an AskLemmy post asked. And the post itself is a follow-up or response to a previous post that asked the question you wanted to answer…
It would sound plausible but is not, and its more like I told people to just focus on not cheaping out on this small list of goods, rather than all the people trying to list the goods people should cheap out on. Infact, my answer was in line with what’s being proposed as some famous quote, that buy cheap option of any good first until it breaks, and so on.
People can safely cheap out on most goods, its the ones that should not be, that are important. Concise knowledge is far easier to store in head and apply. And I have a tiny brain lol. I missed OP mentioning this is an opposite of that AskLemmy, and I kinda wanted people to know in this easier way.
I’d say for the oxymeter it depends on what you want it for. If your health depends on it, yes spend more for a good one. If it’s just for general interest the cheaper ones will likely be “good enough”.
For batteries, generally true. Except the Kirkland non-rechargeable packs are very good batteries and good value too. Not that I often need non-rechargable. Just for those few devices that are not happy with the lower voltage of rechargeable batteries.
Otherwise, definitely a good list. I’d also say in general for electronics, be very wary of Chinese brands you’ve totally never heard of selling items for less than half the price a reputable brand sells the same thing for. They are generally putting fake CE/FCC labels onto devices that are definitely not certified and will almost certainly be underrated for the requirement in a best case scenario. I am currently especially suspicious of the 100w+ PD supplies that are ridiculously cheap compared to known brands for the same rating.
An important exception to electronics are Chi-Fi audio IEMs and audio gear/accessories, and most kinds of cables/adapters. A lot of Chinese electronics are good if you know how to look for it, and any type of electronics has an enthusiast community that notes down a lot of good Chinese brands, that simplifies the job for anyone.
Infact, Omron certifies a Chinese medical equipment maker Contec, and their Oximeter is accurate for medical purposes. Just an example.
China has colossal logistics and manufacturing ecosystem, where $1 earbuds are produced and in the next factory, some $5000 headphone or 6 figures car is being built. Its all about being smart.
Yeah it’s why I qualified it with the “too good to be true” prices and names you don’t recognise. The odds are far greater that a brand name you’ve never heard of undercutting at more than half the price of a brand you do recognise is very likely cutting corners somewhere and stamping invalid certifications. With electronics that can end pretty badly.
Not writing off all Chinese companies. Just the ones that have a new name every month and are selling at too good to be true prices. I think they’re suffering the same as Japanese electronics did in the 80s. There were enough bad examples to make people assume it was the same for all (you’ll see it in movies of the era, with people referring to “jap-crap”). But as we know, some very big companies today rose from that situation to be extremely trusted today. I suspect over time the same will be true in China.
The big reason for that kind of bashing for Japanese electronics in 80s and Chinese since a few decades stems from xenophobia in West, and their hatred towards them creating cheaper and/or more resilient, better goods.
Japan became an electronics pioneer back then, and many of us know what USA did to Toshiba in late 80s, crippling them forever. Same story with French company Alstom because they were crapping on GE, and recently, Huawei because they crapped on Apple, Google and Samsung (SK is US vassal). Japan no longer competes in goods territory that USA makes, and Japan is also a US vassal state, so they are left alone, but now China has already surpassed USA economically, and by next year militarily, so I doubt it will ever end. China ensures democratisation of goods and the near-abolition of fat capitalist margins with cheap mass goods.
Huawei has also been found to have back doors in their 5G towers. Now, I’m not saying western companies don’t have back doors, but since I live in a western country (which has also likely suffered from political interference by China) I’d rather not be tracked by yet another nation more than I already am.
Can you source your claims of Huawei 5G tower backdoors? US government has given none in years.
There were numerous articles in 2020 and earlier talking about vulnerabilities in their products, including hard-coded encryption keys. Vehement denial isn’t a good look with such flagrant and obvious failures. I have yet to see any announcements or articles saying this has changed. Until I do, I will assume Huawei doesn’t have anything substantial to add to the discussion.
US propaganda on Huawei has been unsubstantiated to date. There is zero evidence on the “evils” of Huawei. It was all about 5G race, and NATO countries got salty Huawei and ZTE shat all over the 4G monopoly of West, and that West could no longer leech money off off patent royalties like Qualcomm does in USA on smartphone SoCs. China holds like 70%+ patents on 5G.
My fully decked out ThinkPad T16 Gen 1 I got for work last year is a piece of shit. Lenovo keeps messing up the BIOS (sometimes it took up to 2 minutes to reach the Windows loading screen), it sometimes has trouble with the Lenovo Monitor (which has a docking station with USB-C), or a colleague who had the same model it refused to charge.
Don’t get me started on thermals, that thing either sounds like a jet engine or throttles down to 1.4 GHz on a damn 6 core CPU. That’s partly Intel’s fault too of course (The AMD counterpart would likely run cooler/faster).
I always thought ThinkPads are awesome, now that I actually use a $3000 one I’d never buy one myself.
You should buy AMD ones, but some of the newer models need to be selected a bit more carefully, as unfortunate as that sounds. ThinkPads were the gold standard, but they are now becoming the least bad one. That is all I can say, with my L470 pretty strong after 6 years, a HDD change, battery change and base cover change.
Unfortunate to hear you got a bit burnt.
Well, my new workplace selected it and paid for it, I just have to use it.
Personally I’d have gone with the AMD CPU, at home I rock a 5800X3D :)
Intel’s power consumption is off the charts unfortunately. Those e-cores didn’t help at all.
Intel is a joke, and it will only stop when they actually use lower nanometre node process, instead of stacking a + every year on top of +++++++ marketing stack.
Yep, even “efficiency” cores are a scam. They were forced to go that way because their current process simply can’t support all full cores without drawing 300W+ and taking too much space.
Cut down E-Cores aren’t even efficient power wise, just space efficient so they could fit them on the die.
Besides power consumption my trust for Intel is down the gutter with half a dozen security issues. Which were patched with performance degradation. So they fucked up, patched it in software, now your hardware runs slower than when you bought it.
Maybe the downvotes are because you wrote your post in the opposite route. Of you read OP again, you will see that there is a whole post for that.
Thank you for your quality post anyway!
See https://lemmy.ml/comment/7103845
They want to rely on people’s ignorance so that I start looking like a lunatic, and unreliable for 5 years worth of documentation I have on the shenanigans of “security” cultists in FOSS/privacy community.
Well, you’re doing an admirable job at making it look like that.
Surely not if anyone can look at my comment history from the past month and a half, with a weird downvote pattern. But go on, whatever makes you look cool hipster (with 2 digit IQ) on the internet.
Your last sentence isn’t helping you any.
Help yourself first.
Hahaha, I don’t think you understand.
Its unfortunate you are a victim of yourself. One day…
In general, never go for the cheap option on anything where flaws have the potential to destroy something much more valuable (either more expensive or your health, life,…).