There’s 3 things that really stand out for me that I would say made a massive difference to my life:
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Cordless screw driver. Bought the day after building a flat pack bed with a crappy screw.driver that just shredded my hand. Thought it was frivolous at the time, but I’ve used it so much since. It’s light, small enough to fit in my pocket and good for 90% of DIY tasks.
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Tassimo coffee machine. Bought it 9 years ago, use it every day. Nice quick easy coffee. What’s not to like.
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My first DSLR camera. It was a Nikon D50 back in 2005/6 and it sparked my interest in photography to this day. It gave me a hobby I can take lots of places and do it alone or with others. I never loved the D50 camera itself, but I did get some really nice shots with it
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inline skates - it is gift from god, period.
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Supersonic cleaner - it can clean anything, it is simply amazing.
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Lumix GX80, a M43 camera - it has everything right, the grip, the compactness, easy menu, the mechanical switches…etc on top of that, inexpensive. It allows me to carry it as if it is an action camera.
I tried searching for supersonic cleaner. Is it the same thing as an ultrasonic cleaner? Can I ask what kind of things you clean with it?
It is ultrasonic cleaner. I used it on bike parts, any mechanical parts, bearings, seafood, dishes…etc
Thanks!
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- A flight ticket out of the US (it’s been 7 or 8 years since… not sure if I will ever return until there is an important funeral)
- Wired IEMs with a Harmon target
- Tea kettle with variable temperatures to make green tea properly without burning it
-swinging couch -puppy -AAPL stock in 2008
3d Printer - I print lots of useful thing for work (brew beer).
Espresso maker that I use as a single cup coffee maker (no pods all steel).
eBike - makes me want to bike instead of drive my car around
Can I ask the brand/make of the espresso maker?
Sowtech similar unit to mine
Roomba. That is all.
I’m sorry but your roomba has decided to stay with me for a while
Kindle - all the books, all the time.
Sony WH1000-XM3 (I guess newer models are still good) - excellent noise cancelling, perfect for flights
Steam Deck - play almost any games, anywhere, and with a full desktop mode too.
In the past I’d have put the Acer Aspire One, I loved the netbook form factor, now I use either the Vivobook or Steam Deck like that.
The Aeropress is also great for quick, simple coffee.
I guess newer models are still good
Nope. The WF1000-XM4 have battery drain issues, and there is at least one explosion recorded…
Edit: To everyone saying they have XM4 or XM5 and see no issues, congratulations you are one of the lucky few. Just google “XM4 battery drain” and you will learn the Sony had to issue so many refunds they introduced new processes…
PS Boycott Sony until they address the issues. It’s not okay for major producer to release a product with such a major flow and then look the other way.
Had the XM-4, battery life was shit and I will now never ever buy another set of headphones without physical buttons. They were truly dreadful when you put them round your neck
Changed for Bose QC45 and will never buy Sony again
haha, I had the Sony XM4’s as well and my favorite day ever of owning them was when I finally got so frustrated I threw them off the mower I was riding on and mowed over them. It felt SOOOOO GOOD. By far the biggest waste of money I have ever spent. Never again Sony anything even remotely related to that. Also never again anything without physical buttons.
I used the refund money to buy Bose qc35 earbuds
I never tried the Bose ones, they have great reviews too though.
A bit too bass-heavy, but far more comfortable. The Sonys had slightly better noise cancelling, I have to admit, but the touch sensitive ear cups is a fucking stupid idea
I haven’t had any issues with my XM4, in fact the battery is great
Same here, I use them very heavily and I usually charge the headset once or maybe twice a week depending on usage. I haven’t calculated how long they actually last but I absolutely believe the 30 something hours on the box.
I should be clear that I mean the WH-1000XM4.
All true wireless in-ear headphones have an awful battery life of like only 6-8 hours or so.
The one problem I have with the headphones is that moisture from sweat and watering them seems to bring some annoying symptoms.
Got XM5 and the battery seems endless. Noice cancelling great, sound quality too, comfortable. The only con is the fact they are not suitable for conferencing at work via Teams etc. - you either can’t hear what you’re saying or can hear youself with an annoying delay.
My daughter got the steam deck and she does use it mobile however it has eclipsed the switch as our go to living room family/party/multiplayer console. Family library sharing works very seamlessly in steam.
I am regularly impressed how well PC titles run on it regardless of if they windows running under proton or Linux optimized.
There are also an impressive number of titles that have native or at minimum controller support to the point the onscreen prompts all show the correct buttons. We have a number of Xbox controllers now for up to 4 player multiplayer.
We regularly hook it up to hotel TVs when traveling as well.
Haaaa yeah the kindle. Both loved and hated in my case. Love the form factor, allowing me to indulge in new books. Hate it because I don’t get new physical books anymore. Not that I have any room left for books; that’s the reason I bought the kindle in the first place…
Yeah, it’s a shame for passing on books I guess - like my dad had loads of books by Hugh Cook, an obscure fantasy / sci-fi author, and they’re out of print completely now.
At least in the future digitisation should stop that completely though.
- Noise cancelling headphones and earbuds. By far the best quality of life improvement I have ever gotten from a single product.
- Whet stones for sharpening knives. It’s a fun process and my knives are in perfect condition.
- Mobile phones.
My recliner that I bought with one of the first Covid check. I have horrendous back issues (3 major surgeries and constant pain) and having another resting/sleep area has been a lifesaver many times. Currently pregnant and it’s one of the only places I can sleep.
This set of 2 grabbers from Amazon. They weren’t super expensive but nicer than other grabbers commonly bought by others. They have been used daily by me, my toddler plays with them, they get dropped, etc. and they perform so well. I can pick up the tiniest item off the floor, a piece of paper, etc. with no issues. Had them 3 years. I keep one on each floor of the house and they save my back so much. It’s one of the only ways I can do chores and keep the floor clean from a toddler.
Silly, but this last year I really appreciated having a laminator at home. It’s nothing fancy- just a simple one from Scotch from the store. I’ve laminated different rules for games (card games where we wrote out the rules) and my son absolutely LOVES when I draw him characters and items from his favorite shows, laminate them, and then he plays with them for months. It’s saved us a ton of money buying toys he doesn’t need, stores easily, and he loves it. It also gets out some of the creative side that I kind of lost the last few years.
Which recliner did you go with? I’ve been shopping for one for a while and haven’t had any luck finding one I like…
I bought a 97 Ford Taurus off a friend for $800 back in 2008. Her dad thought it was on its last legs at 155k miles so he wanted to sell it. I drove it for four years. It was running fine until someone blasted it out in front of my girlfriend’s house and drove off. At the time it had 206k miles. 50k miles for $800 was certainly one of my best purchases.
All my cars have been sub-$5k rust buckets or on their last legs.
$600 - 1993 Honda civic
$1300 - 1994 Volkswagen Golf
$3000 - 2003 Mazda 3
$1000 - 2007 ford escape
$2000 - 2012 Kia Rio
$3000 - 1994 Chevrolet s10
$4000 - 2009 Volkswagen rabbit
$4000 - 2009 Toyota Yaris
Almost all of them sold for what I bought it for. Im mechanically inept so probably could have kept them longer if I was good at that.
Good purchases, some adventures, but cheap cars that work out and are in that sweet spot of not dead but still cheap are great.
Boring answrs but… A computer. It’s the 2nd most expensive thing I own and it’s provided me thousands and thousands of hours of entertainment and use as tool.
A car. The most expensive thing I’ve brought and very useful. I’ve been able do a lot more with my time and get into many new hobbies.
Power rack. 3rd most expensive. Having a power rack in my garage allows me to safely lift heavy by myself which is awesome.
Bonus cheap thing. Screw driver set. Allowed me to fix many things around my house and easily saved me 10x the cost.
HP48GX scientific calculator, damn old, still works great still use it a lot
Steam Deck, handheld gaming computer, barely use PS5 anymore, this one is so quick and convenient to just pause and resume games and take gaming everywhere and the SteamOS Linux is awesome. I use the desktop mode with full KDE Plasma desktop as my portable computer a lot when on the go. Also with the dock station I can use it as a gaming console when going on holidays.
And the flat I live in. Good thing as I bought it quite a few years ago since the home prices are just criminal and highly unjust now. This stuff does not belong on markets to be sold for profits or some criminal short-time renting crap like AirBnB
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The best calculator ever made
As a fellow PS5 owner, and someone who would like to game on the go, the Steam deck interests me, especially as Sony refuses to release a proper handheld, but I’m finding it hard to pull the trigger on it, as the majority of my game catalogue is on PS5, and what games I have on PC are mostly not on steam platform. I have some games that are on steam that could be played on the go, but what is the Internet connectivity requirement like?
You can play non-steam PC games on it. It’s just a little less straightforward. You don’t need to be connected to he Internet to play most games. Some might require you to be connected when you launch it (I think RDR2 did that), but then you can just keep it running and put the steam deck to sleep.
Are steam library’s also shared? My wife shares her steam library with me on PC, would that still be accessible?
You’ll probably need to do the whole sharing thing again on the Steam deck
By order of lasting positive effects,
1. First vape (a cigarette-shaped item from the corner store, cherry flavor). I had been smoking with suicidal enthusiasm for 18 years. I was out of breath, coughing, stinking, and (at $7 a pack) broke. A decade later, I still vape, but I can breathe now.
2. First not-fully-depreciated used car (3-year-old 2012 Focus SEL hatch with 30K mi). Apart from warranty transmission work, the car’s been stable, and pretty. The real change was introducing me to finance and lending. I grew up poor with a debt addicted dad. At 32, I had never had a credit card. I’ve still never given the bastards a dime, but I’ve pulled in thousands in rewards and have an outstanding credit score.
3. Passport / first international airline ticket. I mean, yeah. I hadn’t had any desire to leave my state, let alone see the world. At 20, I grudgingly flew to Europe to visit my girlfriend who was studying abroad. We didn’t last, but the travel bug did.
Honorable mention, only because it isn’t technically a purchase would be my first union payment. Best deal ever.
Edit: how do you add line breaks? It worked, magically, when I made the list heading bold, but that was hella annoying.
I might be misunderstanding your edit question, but I think you did it?
It’s just Enter twice to force a new paragraph using Markdown.
No. it’s really strange and only happens with numbers. I entered everything just like one would, with double spaces, each item starting with 1., 2., etc. Nothing I did would make it come out with a gap.
It only worked after I changed the first letter of the section to an asterisk (to make the subject bold). Also, like you see here paragraphs that start with anything other than a number work fine.
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It’s
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Only
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Numbers
4. Asterisks
5. Work
6. Fine
I’m using sync, but I doubt that matters.
Numbers at the start of a line followed by a dot signifies a numbered list item. If you just want the numbers without it being considered a list item, you need to escape the dot like this:
- This is a list item
With line break
1. This is not
With line break1. This is a list item With line break 1\. This is not With line break- This is a list item
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People that say “vaping isn’t good for you!” etc etc are people that are missing the point and people that have clearly never tried both.
Firstly, no one is saying it’s good for you, just that it is better for you than smoking is.
Secondly, maybe listen to people like yourself who have extensive experience with both options, the different in you personally health is night and day.
The statements “vaping isn’t good for you” and “vaping is a lot better than smoking” do not conflict with another; they can both be true.
Whether vaping is an improvement or not depends on what you were doing before. If you were smoking before and are substituting cigarettes for vaping, you hurt yourself a lot less and it’s an improvement.
If you weren’t smoking before (the case for most teens for example) and would start to vape, you’d be hurting yourself significantly more than before.
You should be advocating to never touch a vape (or cigarette) to non-smokers and to try vaping to get out of smoking addiction to smokers.
Fair point.
It’s obvious that the best thing for your lungs is clean and fresh air and the best thing to do with nicotine is never try it.
But some people are always going to be attracted to that sort of thing and it’s sensible to not fear monger the option which is clearly the healthier choice.
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My house. Bought it in 2019 right before the market went completely wacky. More of a lucky timing situation, but I’m extremely thankful to not be renting anymore.
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A really high quality mattress. You’re supposed to spend about a third of your life sleeping, and the quality of that sleep has a huge impact on your physical and mental health.
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A really good set of kitchen knives. I hate having to cook at other people’s places because of it, so many people have cheap, dull knives that do not do the trick. At my in-laws house I basically have to hammer tomatoes in half with their knives. FYI, you’re more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife rather than a sharp one.
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Smart vacuum cleaner - you pay a reasonable amount once and don’t have to vacuum anymore
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Vaporiser - switched to vaping weed instead of smoking joints which is not only nicer in many ways but also allowed me to quit smoking cigarettes
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PlayStation - after sitting 8h by the desk moving a mouse for work, I didn’t want to sit in the same position another few hours playing games. With PS I can comfortably sit in my armchair and play on a big tv scrreen using a controller
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Ergonomic mattress - healed my hurting back. This should be on the top of this list.
What vacuum are you using?
Xiaomi Mi Vacuum Cleaner. I’ve had it for almost 5 years so there are likely better/cheaper options.
Me too! Over 6 years here. Damn fine vacuum.
How bad are the privacy concerns?
The app doesn’t have much information about you. The vacuum does map the area as it goes so I guess worst case China might have a rough sketch of my house layout. It uses lasers to map so there’s no camera to worry about. I figured the benefits outweighed the risks with this particular purchase.
I’m sure china is super interested in you lol
And interestingly, I haven’t replaced a single brush or anything else despite notifications.
How often do you have it vacuum?
Once a day Monday<->Thursday on automatic schedule. Sometimes additional cleanups when needed or when I’m out and remeber to run it.
What vaporizer are you using?
Pax 3
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1987 ford “exp”: bought it for $500, drove a few years, got hit and insurance paid out $500 and let me keep it, drove it with damage for another few months, sold it for $500.
Breville oven. Found it at a consignment shop for $17, looked to have been used once.
House: bought in 2017 in a rural area to get away from the city occasionally. Moved there permanently during Covid.
The countertop Breville? Those are the most useful things you can buy for your kitchen.
Yeah. It’s having some issues with the start/stop button but if it ever stops working i have no issues paying full price for a new one.
I have the ANOVA countertop oven myself. I use it way more than my regular sized oven. I had the Breville before that and I could even dehydrate fruit in it. Terrific appliance.
