Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
BogDew
Jun 14, 2006

E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli
Printers just know when something is due for submission.
Without fail it will cheerily print off 10 pages and then decide to not work when you send off one page of revision. Or just stop printing mid-way through for no reason, even when you turn everything on and off again, reshuffle the paper, restart every network thing and lug the beast across the house and plug directly in, nope won't behave because it knows you have something due.
And then the next day it's finished having an existential crisis and works without flaw. :argh:

Or other chicanery involving genuinely dreadful drivers that have to be forced through arcane network pathways to even get working and then randomly fall off the face of the earth despite fixing everything to have a static IP to try and stop random conflicts, you often end up having to completely delete and re-install the printer's drivers to get it back up.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.
Around 2007 someone at work brought in a Sony CLIÉ PEG-UX50 that they had bought second hand, rather beat up. It was interesting looking but otherwise a worthless piece of poo poo that didn't want to perform any of its basic functions. She ran me ragged trying to get it to work with wifi, sync with Exchange, etc. Goddamn I hated that thing.



EDIT: And while I'm at it gently caress the Motorola Q. Also had to deal with several of them at that same job and they were terrible.

Dick Trauma has a new favorite as of 16:59 on Sep 2, 2015

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.

Bicycle dynamos! I don't miss them.

I never see them anymore because they're fussy when it rains and the wiring wears out or is vandalized.

Battery powered LED lights have replaced these because they are cheaper to replace than to repair, and the batteries last forever. Plus they still work when you're not moving. And you avoid that minute bit of extra friction.

They're not as bright but it's fine for most well-lit areas anyway, which in the Netherlands is almost everywhere. It's more about visibility than being able to see where you're going. For some, it's only about avoiding fines and you can get these really crappy tiny ones that are the bare minimum legal requirement of a light. Some are even disposable with no way to replace the battery, like these:



Only 4 euros for both. They use a tie-rip like feature to attach to the bike.

Jmcrofts
Jan 7, 2008

just chillin' in the club
Lipstick Apathy

Dick Trauma posted:

EDIT: And while I'm at it gently caress the Motorola Q. Also had to deal with several of them at that same job and they were terrible.



I loved this phone at the time. I could play Solitaire on it, which was pretty novel considering my phones up to that point could pretty much only do Snake.

Instant Sunrise
Apr 12, 2007


The manger babies don't have feelings. You said it yourself.
I bought a cheap HP laserjet like 8 years ago, and I've only ever had to change the toner once. Got me through uni without problems, even when I had classes give me tons of PDFs to read that I had to print out. (and then after uni, I just didn't have as much of a need to print stuff)

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Stick Insect posted:


I never see them anymore because they're fussy when it rains and the wiring wears out or is vandalized.

I see them all the time because they're not failed or obsolete.

BOOTY-ADE
Aug 30, 2006

BIG KOOL TELLIN' Y'ALL TO KEEP IT TIGHT

Last Chance posted:

And they were all poo poo.

Agree with this, some of the first gen I worked with were quick at first but didn't have much for drive space or memory, and the CPU would get really hot in that tiny chassis. When they say "netbook" they really mean "yep, this is good enough to browse the web and maybe run a couple programs, anything more will slow it to a crawl or lock it up tighter than a nun's butthole"

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

My first and last netbook was a netbook-2-in-1. Single core atom piece of poo poo.

Ralph Crammed In
May 11, 2007

Let's get clean and smart


Jerry Cotton posted:

I see them all the time because they're not failed or obsolete.

Yeah, the bike I bought when I moved the the Netherlands, has one and I've used it for the past decade or so. I'm a big spoiled whiny American baby princess when it comes to having to ride my bike further than a few kilometers or so, but that's more because biking in the rain/wind/general apathetic Dutch malaise is lovely and not because of the tiny little bit extra it takes to make the light go on.

But if you want to talk about obsolete Dutch tech let's talk the strippenkaart.



You'd buy these from grocery stores, train stations, convience stores, whatever, so instead of having to buy a ticket at the train station you'd have to stamp your own ticket with this



or the bus driver would stamp it for you after you told him where you where going. They started phasing it out about six years or so ago, and now we just use cards to check in and out at stations. I don't know if they had it in other countries, but I imagine they did. Moving here from the rural American west to this sort of system was pretty jarring at first though.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Instant Sunrise posted:

I bought a cheap HP laserjet like 8 years ago, and I've only ever had to change the toner once. Got me through uni without problems, even when I had classes give me tons of PDFs to read that I had to print out. (and then after uni, I just didn't have as much of a need to print stuff)

Same I have a Brother wireless laser printer I picked up a couple years ago. Still on the same toner. It's not the fastest, but it has a duplexer and it works with everything.

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.

Jerry Cotton posted:

I see them all the time because they're not failed or obsolete.

Agreed, I still see them.

They're still attached on all three of my bicycles. But they don't actually work anymore. I went to the bicycle shop to get them fixed, but they just told me to have them replaced with LED battery powered lights because it's cheaper and less error-prone.

Arsenic Lupin
Apr 12, 2012

This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.


I loved my (HP, I think?) netbook because I could tuck it into my purse and take it with. All I wanted the netbook to do was run a browser, Scrivener, and OpenOffice. It was great for that. It was lightweight, reliable, and fun. Until it broke. And I bought another one. Which broke.

Then I tried a Chromebook and was happy for a bit, but thanks to this year's ballooning Chrome memory leaks, it became next to useless. I was running the task manager and killing processes, but it flat-out would not run acceptably with any ad-blocker installed and yes, I was using uBlock. Great, being captive to a single app that way; I also got heartily sick of not being able to set anything on the system unless Google thought I ought to be able to. (See: telling it never to hibernate so I could run things all night.)

Now I'm on a 13" Macbook Pro, and the freedom to actually *install software* is unbelievable. You don't know what you'll miss until you give it up.

Tablets are a different niche from laptops. I type blindingly fast on a physical keyboard, and painfully slowly on a popup screen keyboard. If you do a lot of writing (or flaming), you want something with a keyboard.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Stick Insect posted:

Agreed, I still see them.

They're still attached on all three of my bicycles. But they don't actually work anymore. I went to the bicycle shop to get them fixed, but they just told me to have them replaced with LED battery powered lights because it's cheaper and less error-prone.

LED bike lights (the ones that are actually cheap) are poo poo when it's dark. First of all you can't see poo poo and second of all other people can't see you. (As a person who has driven a lot in the dark, you know what a tiny white led on a bike looks like to a driver? Nothing.)

George RR Fartin
Apr 16, 2003




Stick Insect posted:


Bicycle dynamos! I don't miss them.

The Dynahub was a much smarter implementation of this same concept, IMHO. I could be biased cuz one of my bikes came with one and I didn't have to price such a thing brand new, but I see no drawback to the way it's designed (for those who are unaware, it's a dynamo build into the front hub of the bicycle with a pos/neg set of terminals to wire to lights -- wheel spins = electricity).

Pierre Chaton
Sep 1, 2006

kith_groupie posted:


But if you want to talk about obsolete Dutch tech let's talk the strippenkaart.




Something pretty similar was in use in Stockholm until a couple of years ago.

They were arguably better for tourists because you could buy them from most anywhere, unlike the new access smart cards.

re: dynamo chat, we bought a new bicycle from Biltema last year that came with a hub dynamo as standard. It also has the weird to me 'pedal backwards to engage rear hub brake' thing that I almost kill myself with every time I come across it.

ArcMage
Sep 14, 2007

What is this thread?

Ramrod XTreme
I was very happy with my VAIO network for its entire tenure as my primary portable computer, although possibly because it replaced a 20" fuckoff desktop replacement laptop.

It lacks the guts for even Vista, so after XP's end of life it got a Debian install, and does media duty on my TV.

Its replacement is a Lenovo 'ultrabook', which fills the network's role pretty exactly, except while being usefully powerful.

I've tried a tablet as a primary device and I really can't dig it. Perhaps it's just inertia, though.

George RR Fartin
Apr 16, 2003




The drum brakes in bicycle hubs? Now those are obsolete tech. Unless you're on a bicycle made for a child, foot actuated hub brakes on bicycles exist to confuse people, barely slow anything down, and eventually fall apart several miles from home.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Instant Sunrise posted:

I bought a cheap HP laserjet like 8 years ago, and I've only ever had to change the toner once. Got me through uni without problems, even when I had classes give me tons of PDFs to read that I had to print out. (and then after uni, I just didn't have as much of a need to print stuff)

My Epson 740i and my Laserjet 2100TN are still soldiering on after 16 years of use and abuse. That Laserjet is a goddamn tank.

photinus
Apr 27, 2008

kith_groupie posted:

But if you want to talk about obsolete Dutch tech let's talk the strippenkaart.

I don't know if they had it in other countries, but I imagine they did.

They had something like that in Vienna, when I visited in 2007 - for €24 you could get eight days of travel on any form of local public transport; you had to punch the card for every day you travelled. Frankly, I hope they never phase them out (perfect for a week's holiday!)... even though I don't ever recall seeing a sign telling you you had to punch it in one of the unlabelled yellow machines in the underground. The only reason I didn't get in trouble was because I noticed people punching them a split second before I saw the ticket inspectors.

Pierre Chaton
Sep 1, 2006

Shlomo Palestein posted:

The drum brakes in bicycle hubs? Now those are obsolete tech. Unless you're on a bicycle made for a child, foot actuated hub brakes on bicycles exist to confuse people, barely slow anything down, and eventually fall apart several miles from home.

Every bike I've ridden with a coaster brake has merrily locked up the back wheel when I accidentally engaged it. They seem to work OK, but if you habitually backpedal to adjust pedal position it's real hard to get over the habit.

I think there's a strong element of 'if you grew up with it you want one'. We bought that bike in Sweden and brought it back to the UK in large part because coaster brakes aren't really a thing here.

It does also have rim brakes front and rear.

auzdark
Aug 29, 2005

Mercy is the cry of the soul that stirred,
Mercy is the cry and it's never heard.

kith_groupie posted:

Yeah, the bike I bought when I moved the the Netherlands, has one and I've used it for the past decade or so. I'm a big spoiled whiny American baby princess when it comes to having to ride my bike further than a few kilometers or so, but that's more because biking in the rain/wind/general apathetic Dutch malaise is lovely and not because of the tiny little bit extra it takes to make the light go on.

But if you want to talk about obsolete Dutch tech let's talk the strippenkaart.



You'd buy these from grocery stores, train stations, convience stores, whatever, so instead of having to buy a ticket at the train station you'd have to stamp your own ticket with this



or the bus driver would stamp it for you after you told him where you where going. They started phasing it out about six years or so ago, and now we just use cards to check in and out at stations. I don't know if they had it in other countries, but I imagine they did. Moving here from the rural American west to this sort of system was pretty jarring at first though.

These are still being used in Denmark, theirs clip a 'zone' or fare from the ticket and can still be used but almost gone now - Sydney Australia still uses paper tickets, but more for the journey/day than clippers/stamp

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Shlomo Palestein posted:

The Dynahub was a much smarter implementation of this same concept, IMHO. I could be biased cuz one of my bikes came with one and I didn't have to price such a thing brand new, but I see no drawback to the way it's designed (for those who are unaware, it's a dynamo build into the front hub of the bicycle with a pos/neg set of terminals to wire to lights -- wheel spins = electricity).

I have one of these and it truly does kick rear end. No noticeable drag and it powers a really bright set of lights.

TotalLossBrain
Oct 20, 2010

Hier graben!

Jerry Cotton posted:

LED bike lights (the ones that are actually cheap) are poo poo when it's dark. First of all you can't see poo poo and second of all other people can't see you. (As a person who has driven a lot in the dark, you know what a tiny white led on a bike looks like to a driver? Nothing.)

Define 'cheap'. You can get an 1100 Lumens front/600 lumens rear light setup complete with batteries for about $60-$70. Those are brighter than most automotive headlights.

I still see dynamos with old folks back home where I grew up. They don't want to bother with batteries. Just push the lever to engage dynamo, and go. It's not like it's slowing them down any further.
Personally, I need the lights ON and as bright as possible even from a stand-still (don't get that with a dynamo). It sucks trying to use a cross walk and being nearly run over the cars turning left because they can't see you or aren't paying enough attention. However, shine a steady 1100 Lumens and a 2 Hz, 1100 lumens strobe at them and they stop.

TotalLossBrain has a new favorite as of 22:36 on Sep 2, 2015

Stick Insect
Oct 24, 2010

My enemies are many.

My equals are none.

Jerry Cotton posted:

LED bike lights (the ones that are actually cheap) are poo poo when it's dark. First of all you can't see poo poo and second of all other people can't see you. (As a person who has driven a lot in the dark, you know what a tiny white led on a bike looks like to a driver? Nothing.)
I agree. Many people use those crappy LED lights just to avoid the fines. But I'd prefer a tiny white led to no light at all. Having to tell a cyclist is riding somewhere because they're passing in front of other lights is mighty unreliable. :downs:

Those dynahubs seem to be the way to go, on modern bicycles. But do they power the rear light too? Or is that one still running on batteries? The rear light is not used to help the rider see better, so I suppose it doesn't need to be bright.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Stick Insect posted:


Bicycle dynamos! I don't miss them.

I never see them anymore because they're fussy when it rains and the wiring wears out or is vandalized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kgzgcqe5s

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Bart auf dem Weg zu Skinner...

Keiya
Aug 22, 2009

Come with me if you want to not die.

Collateral Damage posted:

It's because while most everything else in computing is clean and neat with purely electronic innards, printers are finicky electromechanical beasts that get greasy and dirty and have things that can go out of alignment. Then add the fact that printer consumables and spare parts is a cash cow for the manufacturer and you end up with a device that everyone in IT hates.

Of course, but you'd think by this point it'd at least be easy to get your computer to talk to the drat thing...

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

Collateral Damage posted:

It's because while most everything else in computing is clean and neat with purely electronic innards, printers are finicky electromechanical beasts that get greasy and dirty and have things that can go out of alignment. Then add the fact that printer consumables and spare parts is a cash cow for the manufacturer and you end up with a device that everyone in IT hates.

Eh ours are fine - we lease them and pay per page so if anything goes wrong a tech comes out and fixes/swaps the offending machine same day.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

TotalLossBrain posted:

Define 'cheap'. You can get an 1100 Lumens front/600 lumens rear light setup complete with batteries for about $60-$70.

Cheaper than a dynamo.

JediTalentAgent
Jun 5, 2005
Hey, look. Look, if- if you screw me on this, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, you rat bastard!
On the subject of netbooks, what is the status of the whole "One Laptop Per Child" movement and associated devices of about about 5-6 years ago? Pretty much defunct? More or less just tablets now?

They were huge news, everyone was was talking about them, they were going to change the world, people wanting to get them for personal use because they were so neat at the time, and then it seems like the entire thing has vanished to the point that one of the OLPC operations I think closed down last year.

Mu Zeta
Oct 17, 2002

Me crush ass to dust

The poor kids just used them for porn and games.

Redrum and Coke
Feb 25, 2006

wAstIng 10 bUcks ON an aVaTar iS StUpid

kith_groupie posted:

Yeah, the bike I bought when I moved the the Netherlands, has one and I've used it for the past decade or so. I'm a big spoiled whiny American baby princess when it comes to having to ride my bike further than a few kilometers or so, but that's more because biking in the rain/wind/general apathetic Dutch malaise is lovely and not because of the tiny little bit extra it takes to make the light go on.

But if you want to talk about obsolete Dutch tech let's talk the strippenkaart.



You'd buy these from grocery stores, train stations, convience stores, whatever, so instead of having to buy a ticket at the train station you'd have to stamp your own ticket with this



or the bus driver would stamp it for you after you told him where you where going. They started phasing it out about six years or so ago, and now we just use cards to check in and out at stations. I don't know if they had it in other countries, but I imagine they did. Moving here from the rural American west to this sort of system was pretty jarring at first though.

You can still buy paper tickets on buses in Holland, although you pay a few cents more than if you use a card to check in.
That's a pretty neat thing about Holland: you can use the same card for buses and trains all over the country.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



JediTalentAgent posted:

On the subject of netbooks, what is the status of the whole "One Laptop Per Child" movement and associated devices of about about 5-6 years ago? Pretty much defunct? More or less just tablets now?

They were huge news, everyone was was talking about them, they were going to change the world, people wanting to get them for personal use because they were so neat at the time, and then it seems like the entire thing has vanished to the point that one of the OLPC operations I think closed down last year.

1. The first-world people who got so excited about them realized the keyboards are sized for children, and the software is super limited but the hardware is too weak to run regular Linux distros well.

2. The adults in the third-world countries took their childrens' OLPCs and sold them, presumably to Americans who then realized they sucked.

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
They were a good idea if only to just get word processors into the hands of more people but they were specced waaaaaay too low to do anything good. Also they just came at a bad time for Laptops. We crossed a line in 2012 or so where the average cost of really good refurbished consumer grade laptops plummeted hard and stuff like the AMD APU chips really pushed what you could do with low power draw onboard video options. It was a bad time to be in the cheap lappy business because within three years we had laptops that were ultra cheap and absolutely demolished that generation in specs.

2008-2011 was a really bad period for laptops. Too many were leaning on really awful core 2 duo processors (instead of the superior for the time AMD offering) and the ultra lovely Nvidia 9800M chipset, which was just an awful fit for a laptop. That whole series ran too hot in normal towers, IDK why they thought cramming a card with the average temp of a blacksmiths forge into tiny laptop bodies was a good idea but it reduced them all to ash in a short time.

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.

SLOSifl posted:

Printers are somehow the most annoying technology even though they've been part of computing forever. There's probably a Printer Illuminati trying to implement a new wireless parallel port standard right now.
SPARCprinter with NeWSprint fonts. Citrix WinFrame printing to an LP queue. AppleTalk printer on ATM. I think just writing those words caused me to have some kind of seizure.

GOTTA STAY FAI
Mar 24, 2005

~no glitter in the gutter~
~no twilight galaxy~
College Slice

SubG posted:

SPARCprinter with NeWSprint fonts. Citrix WinFrame printing to an LP queue. AppleTalk printer on ATM. I think just writing those words caused me to have some kind of seizure.

All these moments will be lost in time, like toner in the wind.

Time to spool.

DigitalRaven
Oct 9, 2012




SubG posted:

SPARCprinter with NeWSprint fonts. Citrix WinFrame printing to an LP queue. AppleTalk printer on ATM. I think just writing those words caused me to have some kind of seizure.

:psyboom:

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

SubG posted:

SPARCprinter with NeWSprint fonts. Citrix WinFrame printing to an LP queue. AppleTalk printer on ATM. I think just writing those words caused me to have some kind of seizure.

gently caress YOU ATM!!!!!! This software was the Devil's own spawn and the happiest day of my old IT life is when I didn't have to support it anymore.

mostlygray
Nov 1, 2012

BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH

El Estrago Bonito posted:

They were a good idea if only to just get word processors into the hands of more people but they were specced waaaaaay too low to do anything good. Also they just came at a bad time for Laptops. We crossed a line in 2012 or so where the average cost of really good refurbished consumer grade laptops plummeted hard and stuff like the AMD APU chips really pushed what you could do with low power draw onboard video options. It was a bad time to be in the cheap lappy business because within three years we had laptops that were ultra cheap and absolutely demolished that generation in specs.

2008-2011 was a really bad period for laptops. Too many were leaning on really awful core 2 duo processors (instead of the superior for the time AMD offering) and the ultra lovely Nvidia 9800M chipset, which was just an awful fit for a laptop. That whole series ran too hot in normal towers, IDK why they thought cramming a card with the average temp of a blacksmiths forge into tiny laptop bodies was a good idea but it reduced them all to ash in a short time.

The OLPC project had no idea of how service part supply chain management worked. I tried to reach out to them years ago to explain why the business model wouldn't work. There was an assumption that kids would figure out how to fix them on their own but that's not possible without a distribution system for service parts.

All I got back was lip service emails from the assistants. It is bad technology, poor model, and not sustainable.

The OLPC project refused to consider logistics and that was it's downfall as far as I can see. I think they were over-focused on the do-gooder portion of the project.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

SubG posted:

SPARCprinter with NeWSprint fonts. Citrix WinFrame printing to an LP queue. AppleTalk printer on ATM. I think just writing those words caused me to have some kind of seizure.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply