Electric blanket!
It’s not high tech, but it’s so good.
Going from Sega Megadrive to PlayStation back in the nineties. True 3d graphics on a home console blew my little teenage mind. Lara Croft. Wipeout. Metal Gear Solid! Good times.
Going to get roasted for this, but Alexa devices. The video versions play Netflix, YouTube, Hulu etc and have much better sound than the standard little speaker orb version. They all sync together so you can stream music in each room that has one like having a whole house stereo system.
Being able to verbally add something to the grocery list at any time is a game changer. People aren’t taking advantage of that feature as much as they should IMO.
The shopping list feature is the most used part of my Alexa, followed by morning weather report while I feed the animals, and then occasional music.
The second part sounds like a thing phones should already be capable of, if it weren’t for trying to charge for something. Or snoop on me. Or something worse I just haven’t thought of.
Enshittification is such a downer. Oh, well, guillotines will fix it eventually, I guess.
I don’t know for sure, but we may as well try
A kneepad for my NC Miata. Kept digging my knee into the center console. A pad was the best upgrade I’ve made to that car.
I have an ND2 and I take a 1200 mile road trip annually. I really should get a pad for my driver side door. By the time I get to and from my destination, I’m all bruised up and sore on the outside of my leg.
A goddamn dishwasher. I used to wash a lot of dishes by hand growing up so it took until my 30’s before i realized that dishwashers are a wonderful invention.
My dishwasher broke and for a year, our dishes got progressively ickier and ickier. Then we got a new one and everything felt clean again.
Maybe it was all mental. But the hot wash kills a lot.
Lighting system as a wake up tool.
Have now been using a light or lighting system as a morning wake up for over 15 years. It’s life changing.
Lights start off dim and red/orange, and brighten very slowly to warm white. Works every time.
I wake up without the jolt of an alarm at home.
In fact - automated lighting in general - just so good.
What one do you use? I tried this but the one I bought even the dimmest setting wakes me up when it comes on.
Phillips Hue, 800 lumen colour bulbs. We have three in our bedroom.
It also depends on how they’re controlled. We do most of our control through HomeBridge/HomeKit but for wake-ups we’ve continued to use the Hue app-configured automations as the soft-on and ramp up are the most gentle.
We were using a dedicated Phillips light alarm clock before the automated lights.
Similar, but lighting system as a sleep tool. Lights start off warm white and slowly dim to amber / red, then off at the push of a button every night.
Same here - it just started as wake up. :)
Linux?
The question is about purchases.
Wait it’s suppose to be free? I still pay the 50$/m fee to guy who sold it to me.
Lots of us used to purchase Linux via floppies or CDs attached to a giant user manual that might hopefully help you get it working. I know we were purchasing the physical media itself, but I think people should remember how in those days you mostly couldn’t just easily download any distro and it would just work.
Winrar
Steam owen. Haven’t reheated my food un the microwave ever since.
Bicycle technology. Suddenly I could travel three times the speed of walking for the same effort.
Semi professional wifi(networking) at home (TP link omada or ubiquiti) and just buying excessive amounts of access points in my home.
Fuck you, low wifi signal. Fuck you, crashed router.
Agree with:
Dishwasher (really just toss dishes in as you use them, close and run at night, put 'em away in morning, it’s magic. I didn’t have one till I was almost 50)
Electric bike (I hate biking but this is like a dream of a bike)
Roomba (wood floors no grit)
And the mesh wifi system that lets me easily see and address the rare hiccups it has.
Electric bikes are so freaking cool.
I hate how they’re everywhere in Asian countries.
And in America, it’s like a luxury.
Internal SSD with the operating system on it. No other upgrade I’ve made to my PC has ever been so substantial.
I have my OS on an NVMe drive and it’s one of the best decisions I made when building.
But the jump from SATA SSD to nvme is much less noticeable than the one from HDD to SATA SSD
HDD, SSD and NVMe all have different versions. Later generations are normally 2x faster than previous version. Comparable generations are normally an 8x speedup. (Later generations are in parentheses).
HDD to SSD is like 80(160)->300(600).
SSD to NVMe is 300(600)->2400(4800, 14000).So, it’s likely a similar upgrade, unless you did HDD-g1 to SSD-g2 to NVMe-g1 (using G1/G2 to simplify).
It’s also likely possible that your computer is running so fast that a doubling or quadrupling in speed is a diminishing return as you don’t notice the difference.
When I got my first HD tv. I had previously been playing oblivion on Xbox 360 on an crt tv and when I setup the HD I was absolutely blown away by the clarity. I remember my stupid fucking ex-wife trying to tell me there was no difference between the two.
My first very small mp3 player, something from sony. It was amazing.
My first digital camera, just being able to see your picture after shooting them. being able to delete photos was revolutionary.
My first wifi access point, having Internet at home without cable.
My first phone that could load msn messager. Also pretty cool.
A temperature controlled pod for my bed. I used to sleep so hot all night long, constantly moving to find the cool part of the bed.
Now I keep it like as cold as can be all night, and my sleep has improved 10x. Plus my partner likes it warm so her side is nice and cozy. Both of us are happier for it.
Switched my polyester comforter for a wool blanket. It’s so much better for temperature regulation.
