Shitty Hardware Brands - Brands that you will regret buying

[WelperHelper99]

Seagate's higher end drives like Ironwolf Pro have generally been pretty good for me. Western Digital also pulled a fast one by making WD Red SMR and making the old better CMR ones the more expensive WD Red Plus or Pro.

What's the difference between SMR and CMR? Also good to know some Seagates are good

 

[Waifu Denier]

What's the difference between SMR and CMR? Also good to know some Seagates are good

Long story short, SMR is cheaper but is worse performance, most notably if you need constant drive access such as in a NAS, which is why enterprise NAS drives should always be CMR.

 

[WelperHelper99]

Long story short, SMR is cheaper but is worse performance, most notably if you need constant drive access such as in a NAS, which is why enterprise NAS drives should always be CMR.

So basically if you're a normie, CMR is fine, but SMR is for when you want to store tons of shit and have it run well. Good to know. I'll account for that in my future build

 

[HX-2]

I absolutely loathe my Dell Latitude E7440 with a fucking passion. Granted, I did get it second hand, but it sucks like shit. CMOS battery death, touching the screen causes it to die, it consistently fails to boot and it is slow as shit. Not to mention that the rubber around the display bezels is like shit-tier stuff.

God, I hate this stupid laptop.

 

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Don't buy Microsoft Surface shit. Ever.

I know it's everyone's favorite pastime to rag on Apple for making glitzy glass slabs that cost way too much money for what they do, but these days you pick up a thousand-dollar iPad and it feels sturdy enough to actually hurt someone. Pick up a Surface tablet, it feels so light and cheap you'll probably break it just by looking at it wrong.

I went through three Surface tablets that all developed the same fault: Some firmware update installed that bricked the touch and pen processor. Only fix was to send it back to Microsoft where they sent me another unit. Keyboard covers suck and never detect if I'm in keyboard or tablet mode. And the amount of pictures I've seen of other people having their batteries expand and shatter the screen? Yeah, no thanks.

Surface accessories are shit too. How does a AA battery powered mouse fry its Bluetooth chip? I don't know, but I've had too many Surface mice kill themselves like that to count.

 

[Hyperbola]

So basically if you're a normie, CMR is fine, but SMR is for when you want to store tons of shit and have it run well. Good to know. I'll account for that in my future build

It's more like SMR is a failed technological experiment, and is just shit in general.

Find CMR drives. SMR drives never stop screwing around with their IO activity (just powered on, no OS, no anything. They are sloooowly moving data to and from a buffer and around and around on the drive.) They also hang on writing once their buffers get full. They're garbage.

SMR - shingled magnetic recording
CMR - conventional magnetic recording

 

[TheDataHorder]

for those who give a shit i did do what flaming dumpster said and swaped to on device memory for my non-hero 502.
only problem was that every so often to would reset to some default profile, i tried storing my profile as the default and disabled the other two (just in case), but logishit was ahead of me and it'll reset back to some preprogrammed default in essence forcing you to use their shitty app regardless if you use on device memory or the app.
at this point I'd have better luck making a patch for the bloody firmware that disables this bullshit.
(yet another rabbit hole that i need to set aside sone time for)

 

[seri0us]

for those who give a shit i did do what flaming dumpster said and swaped to on device memory for my non-hero 502.
only problem was that every so often to would reset to some default profile, i tried storing my profile as the default and disabled the other two (just in case), but logishit was ahead of me and it'll reset back to some preprogrammed default in essence forcing you to use their shitty app regardless if you use on device memory or the app.
at this point I'd have better luck making a patch for the bloody firmware that disables this bullshit.
(yet another rabbit hole that i need to set aside sone time for)

your non-hero 502 likely isn't that far away from becoming an hero

 

[TheDataHorder]

your non-hero 502 likely isn't that far away from becoming an hero

i fucking hope not. it was $150 or so when i got it, i don't wanna waste time getting it to fucking work just because Logishit wants people to install their fucking spyware.

 

[thog]

Don't buy a new Thinkpad. I just wanted the trackpoint because I fucking hate touchpads but they use these elantech ones now that suck to use on Linux (stuttering, imprecision, etc). The bottom panel is made out of cheap plastic and held on with plastic clips and you can only remove it so many times before a clip breaks and you can't put it back on. The CPU and some of the RAM is soldered, but I suppose that's to be expected on a modern machine unfortunately.

Basically, I bought a chinesium laptop for $1000 and am regretting it deeply a few years later.

 

[PFM]

Don't buy a new Thinkpad. I just wanted the trackpoint because I fucking hate touchpads but they use these elantech ones now that suck to use on Linux (stuttering, imprecision, etc). The bottom panel is made out of cheap plastic and held on with plastic clips and you can only remove it so many times before a clip breaks and you can't put it back on. The CPU and some of the RAM is soldered, but I suppose that's to be expected on a modern machine unfortunately.

Basically, I bought a chinesium laptop for $1000 and am regretting it deeply a few years later.

Pick up a t480. I'm on my second one after the motherboard on my old one took a shit but it's a fine laptop.

 

[crowabunga]

Pick up a t480. I'm on my second one after the motherboard on my old one took a shit but it's a fine laptop.

I've heard some rough things about (Amazon) refurbished Thinkpads coming loaded with malware; OS-level stuff doesn't frighten me, as I'd intend to wipe that shit the minute I get it and drop a clean install in. However, I'm wondering if I also ought to be concerned about UEFI malware. Am I being too paranoid? I'm unsure of what level of sophistication shady refurbishers might reach.

 

[PFM]

I've heard some rough things about (Amazon) refurbished Thinkpads coming loaded with malware; OS-level stuff doesn't frighten me, as I'd intend to wipe that shit the minute I get it and drop a clean install in. However, I'm wondering if I also ought to be concerned about UEFI malware. Am I being too paranoid? I'm unsure of what level of sophistication shady refurbishers might reach.

I just ordered from a reputable Ebay seller and immediately install my linux distro of choice.

 

[burntwater]

Pick up a t480. I'm on my second one after the motherboard on my old one took a shit but it's a fine laptop.

I just got an L14 Gen 4 AMD and yeah the bottom cover is clipped on at least the screws are captive though. The L series has dual RAM slots. Just load it up and hopefully never open it again.

The trackpoint works fine on Linux for me.

 

[macrodegenerate]

decided to start this thread because I bought a Dell Inspiron after my old Thinkpad T420 apparently kicked the bucket. Literally this piece of shit had problems from the get go: shitty Linux support, garbage keyboard and mousepad and worst of all, the bastards at Dell force you to use a first party AC adapter to charge the damned thing.

The problem here is that you bought a model that fills an entirely different market segment than the Thinkpad. You bought the Dell version of an IdeaPad mass produced consumer trash with inferior hardware and build quality.

If you want to go with Dell, there's nothing wrong with that. You just need to get something from their business line which will have universal USB-C support. Those would be their latitude and precision lines. I would recommend one of the 2019 series of 19" Precision Mobile Workstation. Clocked a year on that thing at my old job, and the build quality is rock solid.

What brands do you recommend in "gaming" chairs? I'd never heard there even were ones with built in massagers. Amazon assaults you with a bunch of basic streamer-tier chairs.

A Herman Miller Aeron or a Steelcase Leap V2 will be better for you in the long term than any gamer chair. Just buy them on eBay Craigslist or when a business closes.

 

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

Don't buy anything Acer. I've had two Acer laptops and they both died in a couple of years.

 

[Waifu Denier]

Basically, I bought a chinesium laptop for $1000 and am regretting it deeply a few years later.

Never pay full price for a Thinkpad, only a business will, and then dump it 2 years later on the used market for less than half the price.

I just got an L14 Gen 4 AMD and yeah the bottom cover is clipped on at least the screws are captive though. The L series has dual RAM slots. Just load it up and hopefully never open it again

If you are going for a Thinkpad, it's always the T or P series. L and E have always been lower end versions with lesser quality, at least historically. And older T and P series like the T480 or P51 go for extremely low prices and hold up well

 

[WelperHelper99]

It's more like SMR is a failed technological experiment, and is just shit in general.

Find CMR drives. SMR drives never stop screwing around with their IO activity (just powered on, no OS, no anything. They are sloooowly moving data to and from a buffer and around and around on the drive.) They also hang on writing once their buffers get full. They're garbage.

SMR - shingled magnetic recording
CMR - conventional magnetic recording

Interesting. I'm planning on building a PC soon, now more than ever that I've come into some cash and got a old HP micro atx case. This info could come in handy building it. Really I just want to store a lot of memes, a few games, have around 5tb of storage, and burn CD's/ DVD's. Having reliable storage is important.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

Not sure what the consensus is on Gateway as they tend to make cheap products, but a recent Gateway laptop has caught my attention with its sale price. If any of you fellow kiwis are near a microcenter, the Gateway gwtc71427 on sale is really well specced for a sub $350 laptop. It has the i7 1255u, ssd and 8gb ram, though because it's a cheapo computer it's only a sata ssd. No pcie nvme and no expandable ram. Currently taking it through its paces.

 

[Madre Muerte]

Grado. All of their headphones under a thousand dollars don't have detachable cables despite some of their models being available for over 20 fucking years. They have an overabundance of shielding on the cables. Which inevitably leads to the cables being so tangled that the headphones are unusable.