The "I Just Bought" thread

ilm said:

I does not happen very often but I have treated myself to a more expensive toy. A LG OLED 65 inch GX. As an OLED, and with HDR finally working, gaming just took on another new level. It is just fantastic, and big. Boy, is it big. I wanted a more reasonable 55 inch first, but the 65 inch was only 200 euro more. I hope I don't regret it with all the talk about burn-in (hoping to do 15 years with it). I sit about 3.5 meters away which seems to be ok.

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Yes, I think the top screens with true HDR levels are genuinely impressive, with the proper source. I'm still a bit wary of burn-in for using one as a gaming monitor. I suspect you could get away with it for some games, but for an RPG fan, where there's a lot of static elements, I think it could still be a problem, even with the mitigations. As you say, I don't mind spending a bit of coin on the good stuff, but I do want good equipment to last.

I bought a medical-style waterproof keyboard for the kitchen.

I've added Grocy to my web server, an open source app for managing groceries, meal planning, and household tasks. There's a phone app for scanning bar codes, to easily check things in and out as you buy/use them. You can define your recipes and their ingredients, and then when you schedule them for a mealplan, you can see your stock levels and what's needed. I think it makes shopping much more efficient, and reduces waste. I'm a fan of systematising everyday trivial tasks. I find they take up far less thought-time when you've planned things out, and can just look up the simple tasks that are required today.

I've put a monitor in the kitchen, to make it convenient to check things in and out, and so recipes and videos can be easily pulled up while cooking. The keyboard is convenient when a bit of typing is required, and can just be washed like anything else.

Ripper said:

I've added Grocy to my web server, an open source app for managing groceries, meal planning, and household tasks. There's a phone app for scanning bar codes, to easily check things in and out as you buy/use them. You can define your recipes and their ingredients, and then when you schedule them for a mealplan, you can see your stock levels and what's needed. I think it makes shopping much more efficient, and reduces waste. I'm a fan of systematising everyday trivial tasks. I find they take up far less thought-time when you've planned things out, and can just look up the simple tasks that are required today.

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That's a nice idea

It requires enough discipline to keep using it though, I would quickly buy something on a whim and postpone its encoding ... indefinitely.

Redglyph said:

That's a nice idea

It requires enough discipline to keep using it though, I would quickly buy something on a whim and postpone its encoding … indefinitely.

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Lol, yes - we'll see how it goes.

Buying things you fail to check in is bound to happen, but doesn't harm the system too much - you might just end up with some waste in your system. I think we can manage to mostly stay on top of it. I'd imagine in a busy house with teenagers, it would be an exercise in frustration.

Got some bokashi buckets, to upgrade the recycling system.

It's a system for processing nearly all food waste, in a way that other composting systems can't. The idea is, the organic waste is placed in the airtight container, which allows anaerobic bacteria to start thriving. This causes the waste not to rot, but to ferment - a sort of pre-digestion.

When one bucket is full, you leave it to ferment for three weeks, and rotate in another one. When it's ready, it can be dug directly into the garden, or fed to a wormery. Ours will be going mainly to the worms. A wormery produces excellent fertiliser, but it is very restrictive in terms of what food waste you can put in it - it's more about feeding the worms than using up all waste. The bokashi process turns almost all food waste into excellent worm food - you just have to add a sprinkle of alkalising mix to prevent the fermented foods making the medium too acidic.

Thought some recyclers/home-growers might be interested.

A new picture disc, my new favorite...

I just bought some RAM and NVME drives for a new computer because I'm paranoid about the rest of this year. Still no GPU though.

An absurd story. I need a new laptop, the old one is done.

Ordered on the Dell site, together with a wireless keyboard / mouse, which was already awkward, most are out of stock. Only the keyboard / mouse part was confirmed and delivered. Where is the laptop? It's not even visible on the order anymore.

I spent about 3+ hours trying to reach anyone at Dell because it's an automated system which ultimately hangs up saying to check their website, whatever support I request. Nice voice recognition, by the way, works pretty well. Finally, I found a hole in the automated system and could get hold of someone. It appears Visa refused the part of the payment for the laptop, they can't do anything until I clear that with Visa.

Fine, I call Visa, and they tell me that for those amounts of money, the payment must be secured by an online signature. Which Dell doesn't do. And of course, they can't unblock the payment themselves, even though I'm authenticated and speaking with them.

Back to Dell (another half-hour), who of course doesn't have another solution at the moment. They reported the problem to their financial department, which is reassuring. By the time it's solved, I'm pretty sure this series will be out of stock too…

Bottom line, Dell uses an antiquated payment method (and a very obscure site). If you order anything more than, say 500 EUR, don't use a credit card. Or buy somewhere else.

(does that kind of things only happen to me?)

Redglyph said:

(does that kind of things only happen to me?)

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In fact I had a very similar experience a few years ago and it was also with Dell. I had ordered a desktop system and payed by credit card. At the time of ordering, the feedback from the website was, that the payment was ok. So I waited for the PC to be delivered and started wondering after two weeks, why it didn't arrive. I checked my order and saw that it was cancelled because payment didn't arrive. I checked and in fact the anti-fraud system of my credit card provider had noticed that I had made payments here in Germany at the same day I made the payment for the PC, which was obviously registered as a local payment somewhere in the US, where Dell had their office. So the bank stopped the payment because of probably fraud, but neither my bank nor Dell informed me of that, the transaction was simply cancelled without my knowledge.
I then bought my PC in a local store and do that ever since then. (This is also better in case of repairs and so on, I believe now, and it supports local small businesses.)

So no, you are not alone…

That seems pretty stupid in this day and age, when even dinosaurs like me are ordering most things via online stores. Well, if nothing else this sad story well-informed me as to where NOT to go when my computer needs fixing.

Nothing against Dell products, but their service is terrible. I once needed a new battery and after the hassle of ordering, it took 3 months to arrive!! Never again will I buy Dell.

Goodbye ye-olde "Dude you're getting a Dell".


Rest in peace you were once the #1 source for new PC's.

Their products are usually fine, but yes, the service has really been going down.

It's strange not to have any feedback on a payment problem, it's even weirder not to see the order itself online. Most people would think there was a glitch and order the same again, and run another time in the same problem, or be delivered several times what they wanted. It's also a pain when you can't call them, they've got all the tricks to lower their support budget.

Amazon used to have the best service. I don't know if Bezos changed his mind about that, but now it's abysmal. Many problems are popping up with the site, the prices changing slightly on the invoice (ever seen that? really suspicious), payments that are allegedly refused when it's their own system that fails to get through, poorly packaged items that are damaged (sometimes I hard to reorder a book 2 more times to get it in relatively good shape). And for the last 2-3 years, I never could solve any of those problems with the support. Anyway, it's bad for the other sellers so I'm trying to avoid Amazon.

Ah well, sorry for the rant.

Yeah, you could easily tempt me into a rant on this sort of thing. The massive corporates all seem to go the same way in the end - sooner or later they turn to cost-cutting, and making their support services as "efficient" as possible. Which, typically, results in the absence of anything resembling a service at all. One of my personal favourites is being given the run-around by a phone system for a few minutes, before being told to consult the website, and cut off.

I think one of the problems is that people just put up with too much crap - we don't punish them enough for their abysmal service, and so the logic of slashing it down to almost nothing works for them.

For me, I find that small is beautiful. Pretty much all the services I use, from banking to utilities, are chosen because they provide an actual service, with sensible humans that answer phones.

Corwin said:

Nothing against Dell products, but their service is terrible. I once needed a new battery and after the hassle of ordering, it took 3 months to arrive!! Never again will I buy Dell.

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I have used Dell products a lot since the late 90s and had never had any issue until a few years ago ... when I had:
1 - a Alienware 13 laptop that had logic board issues ... it was under warranty, but getting decent service took months, and it was still never 100% right and they dragged their feet so long that eventually it ended warranty and now sits on a shelf basically unusable and not worth anything.
2 - we bought my wife a mid-range Inspiron laptop that was really slow from initial startup ... and again, they couldn't find anything they would accept as 'their problem' (sorry, 5 minutes to open up a new page on Chrome on a 1 week old laptop?) and now it sits in a drawer and she uses her Chromebook.

So yeah, I am now with the 'it either works 100% right away or you are basically doomed and out your money' folks.

I just grabbed a couple of the new Apple things.

I've had the M1 MacBook Air since it came out ... it is insane. My top-line 16" MacBook Pro from 2018 hasn't been touched - this runs circles around it, the Surface Pro 7, and most everything else I have ever used.

So with the new iPad Pro with M1 ... bought it straight away. I got the 11" WiFi model with lower storage - it is replacing my 4 year old 10.5" iPad Pro (they give a trade-in credit that cuts the price basically in half). Since I use my iPad all the time at work, I am thrilled for this!

Also bought one of those AirTags ... got for me as a 'try it' ... but plan to get one for my wife who leaves her keys everywhere!

I've never had an issue with getting refunds or monies back. Speaking as someone that worked in a bank for years, THAT is where the important relationship needs to be. When I have an issue I might contact the retailer, yet if I don't get satisfaction there, I know my credit union will have my back. I've gotten refunds for as little as two dollars, and once for four thousand because an airline company pissed me off so much I demanded refunds for all four tickets, and my bank did it. Instantly. With no fuss or muss.

Alienware products are made by Dell?

Speaking of shitty PC makers, do you guys remember Packard Bell? They were big here in the mid to late 90's for budget PCs. Talk about some junk...

JDR13 said:

Alienware products are made by Dell?

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Only for the last 15 years or so ...

Packard Bell ... ewwww ... always think of them as the crap you would see at CompUSA or Circuit City ...

txa1265 said:

Packard Bell...ewwww ... always think of them as the crap you would see at CompUSA or Circuit City ...

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Yep, and Best Buy. I miss CompUSA though. I used to love that place back in the day. Bought a lot of games there and even the occasional part.