products you hate

[Cerebus]

Some time ago in this thread (last winter) I described how my expensive "ecco" brand hiking boots had suddenly decided to catastrophically fail.

Well, yesterday, my (extremely comfortable) weatherproof ecco walking shoes also started showing a similar sudden failure mode.

It appears that they made a bad choice in rubbers. The rubber that they use inside the soles gives them their characteristic comfort but is also prone to this- crumbling.

They need to be clearer about this when they sell them to people.

They are selling what should be seen as essentially a disposable product at a non-disposable product price. The uppers last a very long time and are very well made so it is really a horrid waste of what could remain a functional shoe for decades longer when the soles just suddenly crumble away.

For reference, that's expanded EVA that Ecco use. Not something I'd expect used on hiking boots. I don't think I've seen expanded EVA last more than a few years if in regular use and it does indeed have a habit of crumbling, rather like old cork.

By comparison, my Scarpa hill-walking boots that I bought, if I remember correctly, back in 1987 are still going strong and have seen the worst that the English, Welsh and Scottish mountains could throw at them. They have a classic Vibram thermoplastic rubber sole.

[IanMacdonald]

I seem to recall a round-britain hike on which it was found that the boots they were using lasted about 400 miles, and had to be replaced several times on the way.
Can't remember what make of boots they were. They had the advantage in that case of knowing exactly how far each pair of boots got them, something which the average walker could only take a wild guess at. When you think about it, that's not much of a service life considering that car or bike tyres could cover much longer distances. The flexing of the foot is an obvious issue for creating points of failure which a wheel doesn't suffer to the same extent, but then again...

[Gregg]

Another thing I absolutely despise is Amazon's search engine (or lack thereof).  Certainly a big money grabber like Amazon can do better.  A simple Boolean search would be much better.

[IanMacdonald]

On which subject, searchengines that keep finding pages that don't contain anything that that you searched for. Google has been like that for a wile, Ixquick has unfortunately gone that way also.

[skarecrow]

On which subject, searchengines that keep finding pages that don't contain anything that that you searched for. Google has been like that for a wile, Ixquick has unfortunately gone that way also.

For the first several years Google existed they were the absolute WORST with that. Thankfully they're much better these days than they used to be. I've always wondered how the worlds worst search engine turned into one of the worlds biggest companies.

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

[Cerebus]

For the first several years Google existed they were the absolute WORST with that. Thankfully they're much better these days than they used to be. I've always wondered how the worlds worst search engine turned into one of the worlds biggest companies.

Quite easy to understand really. For the first few years most people online had some 'clue'. So, entering "reflection near (impedance or termination)" into Alta Vista would turn up pages that would be relevant to thee and me. The problem is that required one to understand what the brackets do and that 'near' and 'or' are boolean operators and Hoi Polloi* did not understand that. Thus when they descended onto the Net en masse they got better results from a naïve enquiry entered into Google than they did from a naïve query entered into Alta Vista and its like, even though with a little knowledge or training you could get better results, more quickly, with the older search engines. So the majority used Google and the others (i.e. us) didn't represent enough of a critical mass to sustain the other search engines.

* Also sometimes referred to as the masses, or the lumpenproletariat; not to be confused with our erstwhile corpulent mackerel tabby, who was the lumpy proletaricat.

[schmitt trigger]

Another thing I absolutely despise is Amazon's search engine (or lack thereof).  Certainly a big money grabber like Amazon can do better.  A simple Boolean search would be much better.

This is a major pet peeve of mine. Useless filters to narrow down the search. Of literally hundreds and hundreds of products.

Take for instance the search term"Arduino Shields".

What are the available filters?
Besides the Eligible for Free Shipping and Avg. Customer Review, the only other filters are Brand, Toys Age Range, and Industrial Material.
Toys age range, seriously?

[Cubdriver]

Another thing I absolutely despise is Amazon's search engine (or lack thereof).  Certainly a big money grabber like Amazon can do better.  A simple Boolean search would be much better.

This is a major pet peeve of mine. Useless filters to narrow down the search. Of literally hundreds and hundreds of products.

Take for instance the search term"Arduino Shields".

What are the available filters?
Besides the Eligible for Free Shipping and Avg. Customer Review, the only other filters are Brand, Toys Age Range, and Industrial Material.
Toys age range, seriously?

I love it when you add a term to the search and it filters out many that it should NOT.  A search returns 300 things.  You see several that are interesting, but don't want to wade through all the chaff.  Add a term.  You now have 7 things to look at, only one of which was among the original few you saw that interested you, and several are exactly what you DON'T want.   

-Pat

[Yansi]

I fakin h8 the new youtube design. That must invent some stupid idiot. Such garbage... 

I am using a desktop PC, not a freaking tablet! Neither do I need a half meter text line spacing, nor three quarter meter buttons with other total screen space wasting features! 

[RoGeorge]

I fakin h8 the new youtube design. That must invent some stupid idiot. Such garbage... 

I am using a desktop PC, not a freaking tablet! Neither do I need a half meter text line spacing, nor three quarter meter buttons with other total screen space wasting features! 

Indeed, using a desktop, especially if it happens to be a design station with a 4K monitor 32 inch or maybe more, makes everything looks funny. Some buttons are 0.2 inch, others are 2 inches. Everything is without delimiting borders but with huge spaces between them, like a stop motion of a normal page in the process of exploding. And with cutting sharp square edges. And everything needs to take half of the screen for no reason, like for retards or something.

Pretty funny. 

[razberik]

De-zooming by 10% helps a little.

[technix]

I fakin h8 the new youtube design. That must invent some stupid idiot. Such garbage... 

I am using a desktop PC, not a freaking tablet! Neither do I need a half meter text line spacing, nor three quarter meter buttons with other total screen space wasting features! 

Indeed, using a desktop, especially if it happens to be a design station with a 4K monitor 32 inch or maybe more, makes everything looks funny. Some buttons are 0.2 inch, others are 2 inches. Everything is without delimiting borders but with huge spaces between them, like a stop motion of a normal page in the process of exploding. And with cutting sharp square edges. And everything needs to take half of the screen for no reason, like for retards or something.

Pretty funny. 

Maybe it is your browser not doing a good job at making the screen scaling work properly. I also have a 4K monitor (a 24-inch Dell P2415Q, but still 4K) but it looked okay to me. I am using Google Chrome browser on macOS Sierra, which treated my 4K monitor as a Retina Display.

[skarecrow]

I fakin h8 the new youtube design. That must invent some stupid idiot. Such garbage... 

I am using a desktop PC, not a freaking tablet! Neither do I need a half meter text line spacing, nor three quarter meter buttons with other total screen space wasting features! 

Indeed, using a desktop, especially if it happens to be a design station with a 4K monitor 32 inch or maybe more, makes everything looks funny. Some buttons are 0.2 inch, others are 2 inches. Everything is without delimiting borders but with huge spaces between them, like a stop motion of a normal page in the process of exploding. And with cutting sharp square edges. And everything needs to take half of the screen for no reason, like for retards or something.

Pretty funny. 

Maybe it is your browser not doing a good job at making the screen scaling work properly. I also have a 4K monitor (a 24-inch Dell P2415Q, but still 4K) but it looked okay to me. I am using Google Chrome browser on macOS Sierra, which treated my 4K monitor as a Retina Display.

Actually your monitor is only 185ppi, FAR below the 300+ppi required to be considered a "retina" display. I still wish I had a couple of them though. Just as long as they've never touched an Apple product. I wouldn't want them to catch anything. :-P

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

[technix]

I fakin h8 the new youtube design. That must invent some stupid idiot. Such garbage... 

I am using a desktop PC, not a freaking tablet! Neither do I need a half meter text line spacing, nor three quarter meter buttons with other total screen space wasting features! 

Indeed, using a desktop, especially if it happens to be a design station with a 4K monitor 32 inch or maybe more, makes everything looks funny. Some buttons are 0.2 inch, others are 2 inches. Everything is without delimiting borders but with huge spaces between them, like a stop motion of a normal page in the process of exploding. And with cutting sharp square edges. And everything needs to take half of the screen for no reason, like for retards or something.

Pretty funny. 

Maybe it is your browser not doing a good job at making the screen scaling work properly. I also have a 4K monitor (a 24-inch Dell P2415Q, but still 4K) but it looked okay to me. I am using Google Chrome browser on macOS Sierra, which treated my 4K monitor as a Retina Display.

Actually your monitor is only 185ppi, FAR below the 300+ppi required to be considered a "retina" display. I still wish I had a couple of them though. Just as long as they've never touched an Apple product. I wouldn't want them to catch anything. :-P

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

What might a display being used on an Apple product carry? (Speaking of, my workstation is a Hackintosh.) Apple does have the best DPI scaling and software-based SSD cache support among all operating systems.

Speaking of Retina, it is now defined as more than 57.6 pixels per one angular degree from typical viewing distance of the monitor, or about one angular minute per pixel or smaller. For my display it is in the neighborhood of 80+ pixels per angular degree from a typical viewing distance of 50 centimeters.

[tooki]

I fakin h8 the new youtube design. That must invent some stupid idiot. Such garbage... 

I am using a desktop PC, not a freaking tablet! Neither do I need a half meter text line spacing, nor three quarter meter buttons with other total screen space wasting features! 

Indeed, using a desktop, especially if it happens to be a design station with a 4K monitor 32 inch or maybe more, makes everything looks funny. Some buttons are 0.2 inch, others are 2 inches. Everything is without delimiting borders but with huge spaces between them, like a stop motion of a normal page in the process of exploding. And with cutting sharp square edges. And everything needs to take half of the screen for no reason, like for retards or something.

Pretty funny. 

Maybe it is your browser not doing a good job at making the screen scaling work properly. I also have a 4K monitor (a 24-inch Dell P2415Q, but still 4K) but it looked okay to me. I am using Google Chrome browser on macOS Sierra, which treated my 4K monitor as a Retina Display.

Actually your monitor is only 185ppi, FAR below the 300+ppi required to be considered a "retina" display. I still wish I had a couple of them though. Just as long as they've never touched an Apple product. I wouldn't want them to catch anything. :-P

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

As technix said, "retina" is dependent on viewing distance. 300+ppi applies for phone viewing distances, which means as close as about 30cm. For a desktop display at normal distance (arms length or more) around 150ppi suffices. Apple's own retina Macs have just over 200ppi.

[skarecrow]

Other than all Apple products I can't believe I forgot to mention the products I hate more than anything else. Phones that don't have a physical keyboard!  Someone in another thread mentioned how useless tablets are for the same reason. Unfortunately I'm stuck with a touch screen only phone at the moment, and my productivity han been cut by half or more because I have to continuously fix typos that I never made with a physical keyboard. Bluetooth keyboards are NOT a solution. My job requires me to get in and out of a truck many times a day and I can't be lugging around any more hardware.

Whoever decided people didn't need keyboards in their phones anymore must not use a phone.  Sure not everyone needs a keyboard, but there's definitely enough of us out here for them to make a huge profit off of.

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

[glarsson]

Sure not everyone needs a keyboard, but there's definitely enough of us out here for them to make a huge profit off of.

Ask Blackberry about their huge profit.

[skarecrow]

Sure not everyone needs a keyboard, but there's definitely enough of us out here for them to make a huge profit off of.

Ask Blackberry about their huge profit.

I keep forgetting about Blackberry. I almost bought one years ago, but after using someone elses I'm so glad I didn't. I guess I should have been more specific and said Android phone with a physical keyboard.

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

[glarsson]

Blackberry have tried to sell Android phones for quite some time now. Still no huge profit.

[skarecrow]

Blackberry have tried to sell Android phones for quite some time now. Still no huge profit.

Because it's Blackberry. Nuff said.

My Samsung Stratosphere with sliding keyboard is the best phone I've ever used. Very slow by todays standards though. All Blackberry Androids have the tiny useless screens. My Stratosphere screen took up almost the entire front of the phone, so was very useable along with its huge keyboard compared to Blackberry.

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

[eugenenine]

The Blackberry Priv doesn't have a tiny screen, its decent sized.  By all the specs its a good phone, but BB fubar'ed Android somehow.  It worked great the first 6 months but then I got a big update in March of this year.  Now its always laggy, battery life is as bad as an iphone, etc.  I've had several other androids and none have had the problems the priv has.

[IanMacdonald]

Whenever anyone bought a Blackberry I would grit my teeth and wait for the call, 'My computer's crashed!'

They wouldn't connect over USB unless special software was installed on the computer, and that software was flaky as hell.

'There is no substitute for span' <div style='display:inline'>   

[isaiahA]

I hate
- windows 10, seems it self destructs randomly, first on my desktop and now today on my new laptop. My windows xp, vista, 98, 7 & linux work just fine on my computers
- cell phones, everybody expects you to have a smart phone, had an iphone and have an android didn't like them. Used a flip phone for 3 years until it broke and now have another cheap cell phone, always needs charging, and isn't much of a use for me, my land line works better.
-most new popular "music"- not something i want to hear, the new "rap" is the worst.

[skarecrow]

The Blackberry Priv doesn't have a tiny screen, its decent sized.  By all the specs its a good phone, but BB fubar'ed Android somehow.  It worked great the first 6 months but then I got a big update in March of this year.  Now its always laggy, battery life is as bad as an iphone, etc.  I've had several other androids and none have had the problems the priv has.

I've never even heard of that phone, but after a very quick search I actually want to play with one. That screen resolution blows EVERY other phone away! (assuming the specs I read are correct.

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

[Circlotron]

the new "rap" is the worst.

Rap music = complaining to a beat.