Google Home. Bought them for $40 CAD and back then they were great. Responsive, did quick google searches, played my music all over the house.
Over the years they’ve lost functionality. Mine no longer accurately respond to voice queries and no longer complete google searches. I can still play music on them manually from my phone but when I ask it something, it responds back in French or does something completely different than what I had originally asked.
Worst part is that I ask it something, it does something different, and then when I say “hey Google stop” it just keeps going and going. Have to manually pull the plug for it to stop.
I have the ring doorbell and a home blob which I only use to play the doorbell tune in the house. It is 50/50 luck if the tune plays when someone presses the doorbell button.
Used to love it, had too many weird promptless experiences, unplugged it and now it’s gathering dust on a shelf.
Though it was nice to say “Hey google, tell me today’s news” and get a few different news updates while making coffee.
Edit: Out of sheer curiosity, have you tried factory resetting it?
I’ve factory reset every Google home of mine multiple times over the years. Never had any effect.
Have you tried “arrete?”
Any and all dishwashers and refrigerators I’ve ever owned. Fuck planned obscelence.
hp wireless bw laser printer
gigabyte motherboards
Manual lawnmower.
The surface RT and windows ME machine computer were both a close second.
A Surface RT … Slow, barely any software support. Totally lost whatever trust I had for Microsoft.
That garbage tablet gave me lasting resentment for ARM processors.
The wonderful result of Microsoft and Qualcomms exclusivity agreement.
Welcome to the Abandoned By Microsoft club. For me it was Windows Phone 7.
I used mine for GBA emulation for a while, and it ran flash for some reason.
August wifi smart lock. Originally wanted the zigbee version for my home but apparently they stopped making those in favor of wifi, however wifi needs more energy to communicate and would go through they special batteries in a week’s time. Even replacing the unit with another one didn’t solve the issue, so I just returned it and deleted my account.
I have the same lock. I didn’t want it but it was the only lock I could find that would work on my sliding door. The key is to buy rechargeable batteries. Mine last maybe a month before they need to be replaced.
That is fucking dumb that you have to replace the battery every month.
We have low power mcu that can go down to a few uA and make battery last for years, but this company decided that it was beneath them.
Bad engineering overall.
I think it is more about the power required to run the lock motor.
I have several z-wave door locks as well. They all need battery replacement within a few months. Unless I don’t open/close them very often. They can go much longer.
But it really isn’t to big of a deal. Home Assistant tells me when they are getting low and I just swap the batteries in a few minutes.
The motor runs only for a second or two each time. In the moment, it takes more current, but otherwise isn’t that active.
If I had to change the batteries once or twice a year, I could probably live with that. But every month or so? Bad engineering
Honestly the most any smart door lock las lasted us before the low battery has been 1-2 months. I ended up just going to a old fashion lock and key
No wonder. The hassle of changing the batteries so often is not worth it.
To this day I don’t know what problem smart locks are supposed to solve that hasn’t already been solved by the good old lock and key combo. Requires no electricity, no internet, just works.
Letting people in without giving them a key (or if they forgot their key) is the use case. Also if you have smart home stuff like home assistant, you can program it to lock on its own based on conditions (like night time or your phone leaves the house).
Re the first part: nobody enters my house if they don’t have a key and I’m not present. Re the second part, I don’t trust any software-based technology near enough to rely on that kind of stuff without double-checking. . Turn the key, done.
I think the Thinkpad X130e with the AMD E-240 CPU. That processor, really, was the bad part. Every little single thing you wanted to do was absolutely CPU-bound, even when it was contemporary and new (c. 2011-2012). The amount of time I wasted waiting for the fully hammered CPU to do literally anything was too much.
I bought the laptop used because I figured a tiny Linux laptop would be great. And other aspects of it were fine, such as the display, keyboard, trackpad, build quality, etc. But that stupid CPU totally killed the device. Such a regret.
My Seat Leon car. VW really shat the bed with their latest gen cars.
I back a running trainer on Kickstarter called Vi. When I got it is was insanely uncomfortable, drained my phone battery on an hour via the companion app and did not work for runs longer than 10 minutes. It was absolutely dog shit.
Should have used Vim
Watch out, you might upset the emacs crowd.
The WD TV Media Player was pure garbage.
Also hated the Macbook Pro with the Butterfly Keyboard.
And probably a lot of smaller tech that I forgot about.
Not sure if it is was the worst but I had a Ngage Q. You know the taco shaped gaming phone? Only that it was the less taco shaped version. And it was in 2009, several years after those things failed. It was a decent phone actually and it had tony hawk pro skater, very playable.
But yeah ugly as fuck and hard to hold as a phone plus lack of colours on the screen unless it was a game.
For society? A smartphone
Any device produced by the Transsion company, a company which exists only to scam ppl out of their hard earned money and create e-waste. They’re the owners of the Infinix, Tecno and Itel mobile lineups
if you want a 2gb ram device produced this year that can get so hot and burn the flesh off your palm, get one of these devices, they’re so prevalent in Africa, India and other developing countries
the marketing budget for each lineup outweighs the RnD budget for the three collectively
Samsung appliances. Fridges. Washing machines.
Got them as part of the rental unit. They’re very new looking. But every month is some new mess up.
God I would replace them if I owned this place.
I used to be a big fan of Samsung, but over the past couple years it has become a do not buy brand for me. They keep doing anticompetitive stuff with their phones so my next phone won’t be one.
Start of 2024 my Samsung TV that wasn’t that old up and died. And my less than a year old Samsung monitor is flickering.
My watch 6 classic is my favorite smart watch I’ve ever had, but in order to get it working well on a non Samsung watch you need to go through a bunch of bullshit hassle.
I used to be a Samsung galaxy note diehard, but I stopped at the 10+. The quality just gets worse every time.
Got a Xiaomi Redmi Note and it’s basically everything I used to love about Samsung phones.
The adds and lack of support is worse though
I’ve only had ads in the themes app, which samsung also has.
The friggin ice maker on the fridge. Plus the drawers are falling apart and it’s only been 7 years.
I don’t understand fridges with ice makers. You can just make ice in the freezer without any further complex machinery.
Yeah it being broken is definitely a first world problem, hence why it has stayed broken for 5 years.
An iBook. I had the GPU replaced twice under warranty. I sold it after the second time. Never again.
