When "Better" is actually worse

[Loren Pechtel]

Phones, remotes, cameras

Sometimes, especially when trying to buy a gift for one that is elderly and not tech savvy, better for many is frustratingly useless for others.

We purchased a kindle for my father last year, and he is having trouble learning how to drive it! Then he said he was interested in getting an iphone! I said - not until you can drive your kindle!

He had to get a new phone, and all it is set up to do is phone, camera and text. It is capable of other functions, but these have not been enabled and I don't think he will even attempt it.

I will go back to buying books for him from now on.

Yup, a Kindle is much easier than making any real use of a smartphone.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is bottled water which many seems to think they have to have with them at all times now. I've seen it cost as much as $1.50 for a half liter bottle - more expensive than milk, beer, or gasoline in many cases. And much bottled water is bottled from the city water system. The ones that aren't are not regulated so can not be treated to kill those little nasty organisms that could be in the source.

I'll certainly agree the expensive stuff is a total waste but bottled water has it's uses on the road--it usually tastes a lot better than the tap. At home we have a reverse osmosis, cheaper and greener than bottled.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is bottled water which many seems to think they have to have with them at all times now. I've seen it cost as much as $1.50 for a half liter bottle - more expensive than milk, beer, or gasoline in many cases. And much bottled water is bottled from the city water system. The ones that aren't are not regulated so can not be treated to kill those little nasty organisms that could be in the source.

When I worked at Yosemite tourists would buy bottled water from the store in the park. If there is one place to drink the water from the tap, it's Yosemite.

I always carry water with me. I use an orange juice bottle (Uncle Matt's Organic Orange Juice with pulp, I'll have you know) for about six months at a time. When the plastic gets cloudy, I swap it out for a fresh empty.

I've got one of the new-generation thermoses (a vacuum chamber but not bulky like the things we had back in school), if I fill it up when heading out it's normally still cold by the time I get back even without ice. I only use ice when I have something perishable in it.

 

[credoconsolans]

My wife was just griping last night about trying to find a store using a mall directory. They'd replaced the traditional ones with new electronic mall directories that made you go through menus and lists to get a graphic display of the route from the directory kiosk to the store you were looking for. There were, predictably, ten people in line waiting to use the bloody thing because it's no longer possible for several people to look for the stores they want all at the same time. God knows how much the mall must have paid for the idiocies.

I know, right? I ran across this. How stupid is that?

I am showing my plebian taste when I say that I prefer the Homebrand to all the Mocconas and "funky" instant coffees in the world. The latter seem to be trying to deny that they are just a warm, brown drink, and charging heaps for the pretence.

Homebrand potato chips are just chips; potatoes, oil, salt, without all the additives, for the most part. The same seems to be true of lots of foods.

Your post reminds me of the joke about the millions that NASA spent on producing a ballpoint that would write in zero gravity. The Russians used a pencil.

People get all attached to names and images and forget about the basics, like purpose.

Potato chips are a good one. Large bags of no-name or PC chips go for under 2 dollars in most grocery stores here, and the difference is indistinguishable.

I beg to differ. There are different kinds of chips as there are types. I like light thin chips, whether tortilla chips or potato chips. The no-name brand doesn't often make those types because it's easier to use the reconstituted potatoes or thick corn which don't break as easily during shipment. The difference is taste and texture is VERY noticeable. I prefer to spend the money on the better tasting chips.

There is bottled water which many seems to think they have to have with them at all times now. I've seen it cost as much as $1.50 for a half liter bottle - more expensive than milk, beer, or gasoline in many cases. And much bottled water is bottled from the city water system. The ones that aren't are not regulated so can not be treated to kill those little nasty organisms that could be in the source.

Depends on the water. I love mineral water as opposed to tap water. If I could afford it, that's all I would drink.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A few people have discussed homebrand versus generic on here and on the whole I will agree.

Some things; like sugar, flour, trash bags and chips, I don't have a problem buying homebrand. There is no difference. I will not buy homebrand baked beans though, as when I did do a comparison, I found them watery unflavoured muck! I will also not buy generic tinned dog and cat food because the ingredients aren't as food, though the dry food is.

I will buy generic aspirin and ibuprofen as, as it has been pointed out to me, the ingredients are the same. I will also buy chips and other products that have stood up to the named brand. I will also do a comparison of ingredients and cost and generally get what is cheaper and has less salt, sugar and sat fats.

It's the same as any other brand, you should buy the version you are happy with.

There are plenty of products for which the store brand is just as good as the main brand but I wouldn't consider trash bags one such (not that we buy many of them.) Most things you have to try both and see if they're equal or not.

 

[gmbteach]

Depends on the water. I love mineral water as opposed to tap water. If I could afford it, that's all I would drink.

Here in Australia, we buy Soda Water for 75c for 1.25 litres, and sparkling mineral water is the same price, both of which are CHEAPER than still bottled water.

 

[Artemus]

Anyone else have things that they cannot believe people spend $$$$ on when there is an alternative for $ that is clearly better for the designed purpose?

When I asked my wife to contribute she said "trophy wife."

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

A few people have discussed homebrand versus generic on here and on the whole I will agree.

This kind of falls back into the as good as, but not costs more but is worth less.

Some things; like sugar, flour, trash bags and chips, I don't have a problem buying homebrand. There is no difference. I will not buy homebrand baked beans though, as when I did do a comparison, I found them watery unflavoured muck! I will also not buy generic tinned dog and cat food because the ingredients aren't as food, though the dry food is.

I will buy generic aspirin and ibuprofen as, as it has been pointed out to me, the ingredients are the same. I will also buy chips and other products that have stood up to the named brand. I will also do a comparison of ingredients and cost and generally get what is cheaper and has less salt, sugar and sat fats.

It's the same as any other brand, you should buy the version you are happy with.

In general, it is guess and check. I don't like the uber-cheap brand. I just don't trust it for whatever reason, but the store brand, probably produced by the same company who makes the name brand stuff.

 

[ZiprHead]

We got a couple of these for my FiL.
https://www.flipperremote.com/

Dad has the remote Sussed, which is good!

New technology drove my FiL crazy. He bought a used 2008 Impala after his 84 Buick gave up the ghost. He put the windows down after he left the dealer and had to go back to have them show him how to get them back up. And he never used the digital radio.

 

[Deepak]

I am showing my plebian taste when I say that I prefer the Homebrand to all the Mocconas and "funky" instant coffees in the world. The latter seem to be trying to deny that they are just a warm, brown drink, and charging heaps for the pretence.

Homebrand potato chips are just chips; potatoes, oil, salt, without all the additives, for the most part. The same seems to be true of lots of foods.

Your post reminds me of the joke about the millions that NASA spent on producing a ballpoint that would write in zero gravity. The Russians used a pencil.

People get all attached to names and images and forget about the basics, like purpose.

As an aside - that story is used as a 'stupid Americans' parable, but in reality pencils are a bad thing to have in space. Graphite powder and wood shavings don't mix very well with delicate electronics and crucial life support equipment. Both the Russian and the American space programs eventually switched to using 'space pens'.

It's not that they just that they don't mix well, both are also very flammable - and the graphite oxidation reaction generates a lot of CO2 pound for pound. The pens were also bought for a few thousand bucks by both agencies - the R&D costs were borne by Fischer who developed it independently from either space org.

Mechanical watches also get an unnecessarily bad wrap because of the testing methods used for watches. When you wear a mechanical watch it's constantly bouncing around which actually helps to cancel errors rather than when it's sitting on a pedestal in a temperature controlled environment where the errors accumulate. Quartz is the exact reverse - it does great in a controlled environment, but unless your watch has a temperature controlled oven in it bouncing around and constantly changing environmental conditions mean that it will never achieve the theoretical accuracy in practice.

 

[Valjean]

The traditional status markers are clothing and accessories. They signal that you can afford the flimsy, the purely decorative and items of extremely limited utility; that you can afford to ignore utility and durability.

 

[Artemus]

Mechanical watches also get an unnecessarily bad wrap because of the testing methods used for watches. When you wear a mechanical watch it's constantly bouncing around which actually helps to cancel errors rather than when it's sitting on a pedestal in a temperature controlled environment where the errors accumulate. Quartz is the exact reverse - it does great in a controlled environment, but unless your watch has a temperature controlled oven in it bouncing around and constantly changing environmental conditions mean that it will never achieve the theoretical accuracy in practice.

I synchronized my $100 Seiko solar with ntp time on March 13 with the onset of daylight savings time. I just checked and it is now 4 seconds slow. I don't know how that falls versus the theoretical performance, but it is about two orders of magnitude better than anything achievable by a $6K+ steel Omega or Rolex that it strongly resembles. (COSC certification, which those don't have, is +6/-4 seconds per day average.) And I don't need $500+ factory servicing every few years to maintain that accuracy. Sorry, but expensive mechanical watches are a tremendous waste of money if your goal is to know what time it is.

 

[beero1000]

Mechanical watches also get an unnecessarily bad wrap because of the testing methods used for watches. When you wear a mechanical watch it's constantly bouncing around which actually helps to cancel errors rather than when it's sitting on a pedestal in a temperature controlled environment where the errors accumulate. Quartz is the exact reverse - it does great in a controlled environment, but unless your watch has a temperature controlled oven in it bouncing around and constantly changing environmental conditions mean that it will never achieve the theoretical accuracy in practice.

I synchronized my $100 Seiko solar with ntp time on March 13 with the onset of daylight savings time. I just checked and it is now 4 seconds slow. I don't know how that falls versus the theoretical performance, but it is about two orders of magnitude better than anything achievable by a $6K+ steel Omega or Rolex that it strongly resembles. (COSC certification, which those don't have, is +6/-4 seconds per day average.) And I don't need $500+ factory servicing every few years to maintain that accuracy. Sorry, but expensive mechanical watches are a tremendous waste of money if your goal is to know what time it is.

OTOH, now that phones (and some watches) use network time synchronization, there's no real reason to deal with time errors worse than milliseconds.

 

[Artemus]

I synchronized my $100 Seiko solar with ntp time on March 13 with the onset of daylight savings time. I just checked and it is now 4 seconds slow. I don't know how that falls versus the theoretical performance, but it is about two orders of magnitude better than anything achievable by a $6K+ steel Omega or Rolex that it strongly resembles. (COSC certification, which those don't have, is +6/-4 seconds per day average.) And I don't need $500+ factory servicing every few years to maintain that accuracy. Sorry, but expensive mechanical watches are a tremendous waste of money if your goal is to know what time it is.

OTOH, now that phones (and some watches) use network time synchronization, there's no real reason to deal with time errors worse than milliseconds.

The convenience of the wristwatch is a good reason, and the reason pocket watches went out of style in the first place. A phone will never replace my wristwatch. When/if the Seiko ever dies (or goes horribly out of style) I will consider a wristwatch that syncs with ntp, provided that they are affordable and don't look ridiculous. But I would not ever consider a mechanical watch.

 

[TSwizzle]

Technology, as implemented by fuckwits, often makes commerce more difficult than it need be. A customer wanted some "re-tooling" done which would cost a couple of grand. A purchase order would be required. They were unable to raise a purchase order in their ERP system for this type of work. We asked them, just type up the PO on letterhead, fax it in and we will start today. They can't do that for reasons that make no sense. The hoops we now have to jump through to get a PO are unbelievable, not to mention the cost. Getting the invoice to them and payment will be just as bad.

 

[skepticalbip]

I synchronized my $100 Seiko solar with ntp time on March 13 with the onset of daylight savings time. I just checked and it is now 4 seconds slow. I don't know how that falls versus the theoretical performance, but it is about two orders of magnitude better than anything achievable by a $6K+ steel Omega or Rolex that it strongly resembles. (COSC certification, which those don't have, is +6/-4 seconds per day average.) And I don't need $500+ factory servicing every few years to maintain that accuracy. Sorry, but expensive mechanical watches are a tremendous waste of money if your goal is to know what time it is.

OTOH, now that phones (and some watches) use network time synchronization, there's no real reason to deal with time errors worse than milliseconds.

Not quiet so. My telephone provider routinely takes five or six days to update when the time changes to/from DST. So twice per year my "clock" can be off by an hour for almost a week.

 

[beero1000]

OTOH, now that phones (and some watches) use network time synchronization, there's no real reason to deal with time errors worse than milliseconds.

Not quiet so. My telephone provider routinely takes five or six days to update when the time changes to/from DST. So twice per year my "clock" can be off by an hour for almost a week.

That's ... ridiculous. I've never heard of anything like that - every smartphone I've ever had handles DST changes essentially instantly.

 

[bilby]

GPS is ubiquitous, and the signals include a very accurate timestamp - it should be pretty easy to configure a quartz watch to sync to the GPS signal whenever it is detectable, and get accuracy well under a second for anyone who doesn't spend weeks at a stretch underground.

There's no real need for much sophistication, if you just want to grab the timestamp, and don't care about triangulating your position, or about errors on the order of less than a few milliseconds.

Of course, you could get snazzy, and have the system triangulate your position, and adjust for timezone and DST changes automatically too - you can buy such a watch for less than $100 retail.

But for a cheap and accurate wristwatch, that's not required - all you need is a way to receive and decode the timestamp from any available GPS signal, plus a manually user-set offset from UTC for their current timezone. You could likely make a profit retailing such a thing for less than $50, and it would be far more accurate most of the time than any user-set watch (unless the user is obsessive about re-setting the exact time every few days).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

GPS is ubiquitous, and the signals include a very accurate timestamp - it should be pretty easy to configure a quartz watch to sync to the GPS signal whenever it is detectable, and get accuracy well under a second for anyone who doesn't spend weeks at a stretch underground.

There's no real need for much sophistication, if you just want to grab the timestamp, and don't care about triangulating your position, or about errors on the order of less than a few milliseconds.

Of course, you could get snazzy, and have the system triangulate your position, and adjust for timezone and DST changes automatically too - you can buy such a watch for less than $100 retail.

But for a cheap and accurate wristwatch, that's not required - all you need is a way to receive and decode the timestamp from any available GPS signal, plus a manually user-set offset from UTC for their current timezone. You could likely make a profit retailing such a thing for less than $50, and it would be far more accurate most of the time than any user-set watch (unless the user is obsessive about re-setting the exact time every few days).

GPS is a battery-eater.

 

[credoconsolans]

The traditional status markers are clothing and accessories. They signal that you can afford the flimsy, the purely decorative and items of extremely limited utility; that you can afford to ignore utility and durability.

Or the exact opposite. Status markers are of extreme quality and durability. That Rolex will last longer than the plastic watch from China. That Bentley will outlast the Ford Fiesta. Your leather riding boots will outlast the fake leather boots from China.