Doc martens are not so great quality now. The general consensus is that Solovair are the spiritual successor (in terms of quality) to what Dr Martens were. This video has more info: youtu.be/vkhCcvfVHRs?si=21bH9fSvkNgmjwm1
For laptops O would recommend framework laptops. The idea is that they have upgradable and repairable.modules. You can follow them on mastodon too: @frameworkcomputer And we have a Lemmy community too: !framework
I have known and seen so many people make that mistake, and the story always ends with them replacing it with another brands, the smart ones under warranty, the stubborn ones out of pocket.
It might be dead when I get home this afternoon, but I’ve been lucky with my Samsung fridge. I got it as a deeply discounted discounted floor model 9 years ago.
Hosted a party and someone had leaned up against the ice/water buttons and put it into store/demo mode so everything looked fine but the compressor was disabled. The button combo should have been impossible to trigger accidentally but they did. I had defrost problems after that until I took the back panel out and cleaned the drains. That was 6 years ago and it’s been good.
I think all French door models are designed to die. Run far, far away from those.
I think it was Technology Connections that did a video on French door fridges. One major problem with them (among the countless others) is airflow. Refrigerators have one refrigeration unit for both the fridge and freezer. The air is cooled in the freezer and moved to the less cool fridge. Cool air is denser than warmer air so it falls. Conventional fridges (freezer on top) were designed that way on purpose. When the freezer is on bottom you add levels of complexity and work against what has already been proven effective. That’s not a problem, per se, because humans are ingenious. But in order to compete with traditional fridges these companies have to do this at the mercy of the lowest bidder.
I’ve had a bonavita electric kettle for 5+ years and it’s been great. I just use it for heating up water ~daily and have zero complaints (not sure if there is anything else that you would be looking for an electric kettle to do). I’m pretty sure it was like $50 on Amazon.
Thanks, I’ll check it out. Yeah, there’s not much features to expect from a teapot other than maybe specific cutoff temperatures for brewing exotic sorts of tea. Other than that, reliability is the main concern, and I’ve had even the seemingly well built ones suddenly die on me for no particular reason.
The one I have you can set temperature that it heats to and tell it to either hold that temperature or get to it and then it’ll just cool off if you don’t use it. It has more settings but I’ve just had it set to 194 for forever.
I will say that I swear I spent closer to $50-60 for mine but it’s at like $105 on Amazon right now which is absurd. But looking at the price history on camelcamelcamel the price really has climbed a bit over the past few years. It used to drop around $60-70 a bit. Ridiculous how expensive things are getting.
We’ve been through half a dozen fridges at least in the last 10 years. They’re all horrible now. The best one we’ve found Medea convertible. You can change it from upright freezer into a refrigerator if you want. We use it as a fridge, and got a chest freezer. I’ve tried every other brand i can get my hands on, and none of them last. It’s horrible.
We’ve replaced our Samsung washer, dryer and dishwasher with LG. Which has been pretty rock solid so far, our Samsung range finally died recently and all the LG ranges we looked at were absolute trash using the cheapest metal imaginable. We ordered a whirlpool this time, not sure how well it’ll work out… Find out tomorrow I guess
If there’s one brand I’m not buying again it’s LG.
I know of two LG dishwashers (mine and my parents) that have… issues.
My fridge from them is okay but I’m fairly confident there have been a few times that freeze portion had gone significantly above its set temperature because some popsicles melted. I’ve also had issues with the ice maker design not actually knocking down the ice so I have to open up the door and bang on it to break it loose, at which point a few pieces of ice fly onto the floor.
My oven/electric range from them well … so far so good on that one. I do wish there were actual knobs/buttons instead of the weird “touch” buttons but that just seems to be the trend these days.
We bought a bag less vacuum 4 years ago. The turbo brush for pet hair stats showing some wear but the whole thing works solid to this day. Even the flimsy feeling handle is still fine Edit: EU - Germany
I’ll throw a weird one in here. If you want to do any smart home automation stuff, Lutron. Their stuff is famously bulletproof and generally “just works” and almost never needs troubleshooting.
It can be a little pricy for a light switch, but it will work with just about any platform you want to use. Also, all of their wireless switches work without internet.
The door from my driveway opens into my office. The light switch in my office is in a really shitty place. When coming into my office at night, I have to navigate to the light switch in the dark to turn on the light.
Or, at least I did. Now when the door opens at night, the light in my office comes on at 10%.
WiFi is really handy because it’s easy and accessible, but as you add devices, you wind up with WiFi network issues.
Because these devices can just talk to the internet, they can talk to their manufacturer’s websites and tell them everything they learn about you from your network, such as all the other devices on your network, any open file sharing protocols (and the files on those devices), any other devices that are willing to talk to the WiFi device. So - literally - everything on your network becomes exposed to the manufacturer of the device. It’s unlikely the manufacturer would be nefarious, but they would extract all your data.
And if the device has poor security, opens a port to the outside world, or - as I discovered this weekend on my soundbar - just has a root ssh shell with no password requirement, it could pose a security risk to you and your devices.
…. And I just remembered outbound federation is currently broken on my instance and maybe one person will actually see this comment. Fuck.
I have my lights set to turn on slightly before I am supposed to wake, turn off after I go to work, before I return from home, and after I go to bed. I’ve recently added mmwave sensors to turn them on and off based on my presence within a room. I can do all kinds of automations that I could do manually sure but if I don’t need to and can minimize the amount of excess energy waste then why wouldn’t I want a wirelessly controlled switch and or lights?
And yes most everyone can do this. Google Home Assistant and get lost in the rabbit hole.
Flexibility. A hardwired switch is choosing your lighting configuration at build time, but when you have light bulbs that can all be controlled individually through software, then you want a switch that can interact with that software.
For instance, let’s say you do something crazy and unprecedented like add a lamp to your room, with hardwired switches now you either have two switchs in two different spots to deal with every time you enter a room, or you need to call an electrician to wire up a switched plug. If your switch was instead a software switch you could just reprogram it to also control the lamp.
-Good year welt leather boots in general last a very long time. I have a pair of chippewa boots that have lasted me since 2016 and they’re still good. Haven’t needed to resole them, they’re very comfortable. I’ve worn them maybe 20-30% of the time(I let them rest at least a day between wears). -Straight razors and DE razors last a very long time, and they can both be significantly cheaper than regular disposable razors and electric shavers. -PIAA silicone windshield wipers (I think many silicone based wipers in general) are as BIFL as can be for windshield wipers. I think I have the same pair on my car from 2016.
PIAA silicone windshield wipers (I think many silicone based wipers in general) are as BIFL as can be for windshield wipers. I think I have the same pair on my car from 2016.
I was very disappointed with PIAA wipers when I got a set.
Expensive, and while they did last slightly longer than the 1-1.5 years I usually expect from wipers, from day one, their performance was noticeably worse than all but the cheapest common brands. Basically they never, ever actually cleanly wiped away all the rain. Streaky and leaving trails of water from day one.
So yeah, they lasted longer, but it was at the level of half-worn-out blades anyway, so to me, it was basically a wash on price of one set of PIAA vs two sets of some other brand…and with the other brand, at least I’d get the two honeymoon phases where they were brand new and working fantastically.
I think you should try another pair and complain to PIAa. My wipers wipe water amazingly, even now. I can imagine some wear over time, but the fact that yours were not wiping well to begin with tells me it may have been a faulty instance (or their quality has dropped significantly recently). Regardless that’s a shitty experience
Since then, I went back to Bosch, which are consistently great, then two summers ago I had a windshield crack that led to replacement, and the replacement company (Safelite) also recommended new wipers (to avoid any glass reside embedded in the wiper scratching the new windshield) and I took them up on buying their own brand to replace…and they’ve been oddly good.
Not as good as Bosch to start, but better than PIAA, and then they’ve gone on to last almost two years at a pretty good performance level.
While I’ll probably go back to Bosch in the spring, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend these Safelite wipers to anyone.
(My luck: it’d turn out that Safelite uses PIAA for their wipers. 😝)
Used to be a fan of Benchmade; kinda seems like they went cheap more recently.
For footware, I’ve had pretty good luck with Danners - they had an ABU compliant stitched sole boot that was super comfortable; one pair got me through 4 years of active duty, and remain my go-to pair of work boots. The ABU uniform was phased out since I separated, so if you’re lucky you might be able to find a crazy good deal at at military surplus store; otherwise I’m sure they’ve got a newer OCP boot now.
I didn’t think about military surplus stores. There seems to be some items that people really enjoy, like the army poncho liners or old ammo canisters for containers.
I’ve been looking for a genuine army poncho liner but can only find knock offs online and cant find a reputable surplus store online if it exists
I was Air Force, so no idea if our rain gear was comparable to the Army poncho. Ours didn’t strike me as anything special, but then again the one I was issued was several sizes too large, so I kinda hated that thing by default.
The best military surplus stores are going to be the ones near military bases - they have constant stream of new inventory coming in from folks who separate and want to make a quick buck pawning off their issued shit.
And while there are definitely a few gems among military inventory, don’t make the mistake of thinking military = high quality or even high durability. To the contrary, most of it’s the result of bidding wars for a government contract, resulting in the absolute cheapest shit available.
Idr the brand, but sticking with the boots example, the ones I was issued in basic training barely made it to the end of basic training. Those things were absolute trash.
The poncho liner is often referred to as a woobie if you know that name. Afaik the “on brand” ones are made by the blind kids. Something something school for the blind or whatever it is.
I’m actually having a hard time finding a shot the ABU rain gear liner that I was issued… closest I’m seeing is the pic below, but that thing actually looks decent.
Ours was a material that looked similar to that, but shaped more like a vest - nothing went over our arms. It was completely nonfunctional outside of the actual raincoat shell though - you couldn’t just wear like a vest or put it under the ABU top for a little extra warmth. It was cut in a way that it’d just fall off without being buttoned into the shell.
…I wonder if there was some supply issue, and the ones we were issued were a shitty backup. /shrug.
The Body Buffer by Manscaped. I don’t like any of their other stuff but my goodness that scrubber is legit. Easy to clean, doesn’t harbor bacteria, easy to grip, very durable, and it creates a nice lather
I bought an old model in 2013 and it lived in my backpack through 7 years of school and university. It was dropped hard enough to permanently bend the heatsink, the disk drive cover snapped off, and it regularly overheated from throwing it in my bag without turning it off. It ran windows, dozens of Linux distros (up to 3 at once) and now it’s a hackintosh for when I need a Mac. I’m confident I could buy spare parts and repair it myself if anything important broke.
I was extremely skeptical when IBM spun off that division but time has proved me wrong. The Lenovo rinkpads have been much better than I ever expected them to be.
This is no exception. Thinkpad used to be great years (decade?) ago. The stuff they have produced in recent years is crap. I had two work laptops in the last 4 years and both are absolutely terrible compared to the old stuff.
Yeah when I took my issue to Lenovo customer service, their first response was that my laptop has reached the end of its usable lifespan. 5 years!? I’m not wealthy and that thing cost me $1,500 and I will never be able to afford another laptop again.
Buy yourself a used T400-T430 (and models of that age) if you don’t have very big computing requirements, they are 10+ years old and they will last you another 10+.
If you buy a Lenovo from the last 7-8 years you will get an overpriced piece of junk.
It really depends on the job, I guess. I wore the Danner Reckonings for about 2 years straight and they were a little rough looking but still in great shape. The tip of the boot where the sole curves up the front was starting to peel. The worst I did with them was mountain climbing and some very wet environments.
Some of the dudes I worked with were sent to an area with a lot of lava rock, which absolutely shreds boots.
My opinion is they were garbage in the 80s/90s too. I would wear the soles down like an eraser in a matter of months. Warranty or not, that’s not bifl to me.
I have that problem with all kinds of shoes and trainers, regardless of the price tag. I bought a pair of Adidas Men’s Hoops 3.0 a few months back and to my surprise, the soles haven’t worn down on them yet.
But I feel like it’s only a matter of time until a hole starts developing in the soles, which means they’re gonna be waterlogged in any kind of wet weather.
That’s kind of the nature of the soles they use, but there’s not really such thing as a sole that won’t wear (and if there were, it probably wouldn’t be comfortable to walk on). Instead high quality boots are made to have the sole be easily replaceable using constructions like Goodyear welt, stitchdown, and Blake.
Doc Martens got sold and moved the production to Asia. The dip in quality is very noticeable.
The people who used to produce Doc Martens now work for the company called Solovair. I haven’t tried their stuff butt apparently they’re as good as Doc Martens used to be.
Having worn Doc Martens most of my life i’ve now switched to Solivair, last pair of ‘Docs’ i bought wore through the upper in 6 months and ripped my feet to shreds, the Solovair i replaced them with are still like new after a year and are the comfiest boots i’ve ever worn.
The only downside is explaining why you’re wearing ‘knock off Docs’ to hipsters, but i generally go with ‘They’re Doc Martens with all the Vietnamese Child Labour taken out (allegedly)’
i would loooove to get a pair of solovairs, but i can’t get over the slight silhouette change where the “ceiling” part of the boot (i know nothing about shoe anatomy terms) has a slight bend inwards as it reaches down and connects with the “floor” :(
I’m not sure what bit you mean, I have the classic 8 hole boots and the shape is the same from my perspective?
There are differences as i went Matte finish for the Solovairs and obviously the stiching is a different colour (smooth sided sole too) but i’m more concerned about the quality/fit/longevity of my boots than the Docs aethetic anyway.
Same thing happened with Blundtstone. Production moved from Tasmania to Vietnam. They swear everything is the same, but I’m looking at these two different pairs of boots …
You’re probably better off wearing something like Red Wing’s Iron Rangers, though there’s multiple brands that are pretty good. Meermin comes to mind for Europeans. Solovair if you’re really into the Dr Martens look.
/r/goodyearwelt used to be a good resource for shoe stuff, not really sure if there’s something comparable on Lemmy yet.
I’ve kept a pair of Docs around because I still think they make a great fashion staple, but having a pair that could actually be comfortable/good again would be amazing
Yes, they got rid of the lifetime warranty and I personally haven’t worn them, but people tell me their old ones work well and have a similar opinion as yours.
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