I saw this post and wanted to ask the opposite. What are some items that really aren’t worth paying the expensive version for? Preferably more extreme or unexpected examples.
Phones. Cheaper chinese phones already give one everything they need in their day-to-day life. I don’t really see much benefits for most people from buying an expensive phone
Medicine. The house brands and generics are the exact same, tested the same, made the same.
Often made by the same.
But real Advil has the candy coating on the outside, and I haven’t found a generic that does =(
Otherwise 100% identical yes.
Problem with the candy coating is you can’t enjoy it, unless you want to suddenly learn what pure poison tastes like. It’s such a tease. Doesn’t help that they look like scrumptious little caramel-y morsels.
Oh I suck on them first. It lasts long enough.
Wait, what? I have no idea what advil is, but sugar coating any drug is a recipe for disaster.
Sugarcoating pills is fairly common, especially for pills which are frequently ingested or target older demographics. It’s because sugar coatings are much gentler on the esophagus (i.e.: less likely to cause esophagitis, “pill burn”). Advil (i.e.: ibuprofen) is a cheap, well tolerated, and non habit-forming pain reliever – it’s about as safe as such a thing could possibly be, so hopefully that helps to explain why a sugar coating might be warranted given the aforementioned upsides (for the love of all that is holy; always read the directions on the label, it’s still quite possible that Advil is not safe for you specifically). FWIW: the bottles also have childproofing mechanisms built into the caps (… at least in U.S. markets. Not sure about elsewhere?)
I’ve never heard of sugarcoating pills, is it a US thing maybe?
I think you have a wrong image of how this looks/works. It’s not like there is a cany-shell or something. It’s a regular, smooth pill. You usually do not notice this coating because you don’t keep a pill in your mouth. If you were to, the pill would taste sweet.
If you ever have gotten a pill of some sort that dd not feel chalky on the outside but smooth and looked kinda shiny, that probably has been a sugarcoated pill.
I think you’re right then, and honestly I can’t say I’ve noticed.
many birth control pills are sugarcoated for example. Or anti-histamine allergy medication like Cetericine
A few years ago, I wondered why that was and googled it. I came to an Advil site with an expandable FAQ, and one of the questions was “why does Advil taste sweet?”
So I expanded it out to reveal this shocking answer (or something similar): “Advil tastes sweet because it is lightly coated in sugar.”
Thanks, I guess. I just closed the tab in mild irritation and moved on with my day.
Yep
There may be a difference in things like pill shape, texture, release mechanism / time to absorb (if it’s not very important for how the medication works)
So it’s ok to have a preference for one brand over the other when one of those points is relevant to your situation. I know some people also prefer the generic brand version over the regular (even if prices were the same)
Not exactly. Just a fun fact and disclaimer that I use generics if at all possible. But my pharmacology class taught that generics can have higher tolerance of error in % of active ingredient. Not usually a big deal unless the drug has a very narrow therapeutic range, meaning too little doesn’t work and too much will harm you. 99.9% of generics is fine. But if you ever wonder if one batch of your med doesn’t seem to work as well this it’s likely that batch was on the lower end of acceptable.
Aspirin and paracetamol I don’t think are patented by any one company now. Supermarket brand is super cheap.
Depends on the meds. I take concerta for ADHD and as I understand it, the generic doesn’t use the same release mechanism.
I’m also on concerta (ADHD highfive) and I’ve found lower efficacy with the generic… I sure wish it was the same though.
Also, a cheaper alternative is to eat less and eat healthier. I know we can’t all afford expensive healthy foods but just simply cutting out excess fats, sugar and empty carbs from your diet will add years to your life and also add better years to your life.
A lot of generic foods. Safeway’s in-house brand, for example, has better crackers, pasta sauces, a handful of other items than the expensive name brands do. And yes, that includes Rao’s. I’ll never understand why that brand is so popular when Safeway Select exists and tastes better with perfectly good ingredients at a fraction of the cost.
On phones; while you don’t need a flagship model if you are privacy conscious it is worth seeking out a platform that will work well with degooglified OSes; ironically the Pixel is one of the best thanks to GrapheneOS.
Youtube premium
Shoes.
Going to have to disagree with this. Never cheap out on things that get between you and the ground. Mattresses, tires, and shoes are good examples. A good pair of shoes will last a lot longer and will be better for your feet and posture overal in my personal experience.
Headphones/ear buds. It really comes down to your use case. If you listen to podcasts and audiobooks 90% of the time then you only need good enough which is typically around $40.
If you listen in noisy environments, I’d bet active-noise cancellation is good for your hearing though
For podcasts and audiobooks and even incidental music listening $10 panasonic buds go the distance for me.
When I’m sitting down to enjoy music at home, then it’s the $80 sony studio monitors. Still excellent value.
Give me my headphone socket back, phone makers :(
makeup removing coton pieces
Electric toothbrushes. Don’t get the cheapest one either, get a mid range one from a good brand but the top end models of the good brands are just scams, they just look a bit nicer and have some shitty “AI powered” app you’ll never use.
Expensive Cars. If you have to have one, buy a cheap one. One of the worst lifetime financial decisions you can make is spending money on cars, all of them get you to A to B. A used Prius is just about the most economical car you can buy for total cost per mile travelled. It would be nice if more cities had good public transportation systems, but unfortunately most don’t. I love long island, getting around on public transportation is so convenient.
Edit: Something like this example prius is the way to go if you are trying to maximize your dollar. Drive it until the wheels fall off:
Medicine in a pharmacy, similar to the pregnancy tests.
Digital cables, like HDMI and USB. If they meet the spec, they should operate identically.
ETA: It’s a digital signal: either it works or it doesn’t. There’s no “higher quality” version of the same image. Sure, if you have a 4K 120hz HDR signal you might need an HDMI 2.1 spec cable, but as long as it meets that spec, it’ll either work or need to be returned. The signal won’t be washed out, or crackly, or static-y (all the concerns we had with analog video cables back in the day); the signal might not work, or it might drop out from time to time, which means it doesn’t meet spec.
Same with USB-C. If it doesn’t charge your phone correctly, or have the transfer speeds you want, because you bought it at a Dollar Store and it isn’t in spec, the problem isn’t USB-C, it’s the fact that the manufacturer sold you an out-of-spec cable.
Shaving foam: its so much worse for the environment and always with horrible perfume. Shaving soap is amazing, like in the old days.
Safety razors: the old one-blade ones are sometimes more of an investment (10-15€) but the blades are way cheaper and standardized. You never need to buy overpriced stuff again.
Agree on Soap. All the fluid stuff with perfume is money waste.
New tech. Wait 2 years and get some used ones for ⅓ the price.
Clothes: there are cheap quality brands, but expensive ones are often made in the same factories. Nike, Adidas, Gucci, LV, …
Toilet paper: simply buy recycled. Its the last process of paper recycling (lol) so why?? Why would you buy brands that have weird contracts with logging companies and destroy forests?
Conventional Food brands doing fruit Joghurt, dairy products, meat, with only fake seals. Its literally the same bullshit in there. Same for Crisps, …
Flour, sugar, electricity, coffe, … they are all different cathegories. If you buy ecological, full-grain etc. they have different growing standards, so its a huge difference.
Often its about investing more one time, and then keeping it. Capitalism prevents that, as it doesnt make much sense for companies today, to survive.
I buy good brands from China for my professional tools, phones, laptops, and gadgets. The key is knowing which brands in China are good. Nothing else can compete in terms of value for money.
Motorbikes (for commuting). My midrange motorbike cost under 2k USD brand new, and it gets me to work at the same speed as an expensive one (Asian traffic, haha).
I would be careful with gadgets that have software on them like phones and laptops. God knows what kind of Chinese spyware they come with.
I am sure China established NSA in 1960s and started global surveillance programs in 70s. And Snowden and Assange exposed Chinese government.
Oh wait.
This is classic whataboutism. You should try to avoid it because it’s an incredibly poor defense if nothing else.
I’ve been bitching about the PATRIOT Act since less than a week after 9/11 happened. The Act’s continued existence doesn’t excuse China’s well-documented bad behavior.
Well-documented deeznuts. China’s bad behaviour mostly has only one source, that anonymous CIA or Pentagon guy who does not wish to be named, and it almost always turns out to be either false or a dishonest interpretation.
Whataboutism is a dog whistle word used by Westerners for deflection used to abrupt or end the argument when there are no real counterpoints. And since US government loves to demonize their “near-peer competitors” (official term) China and Russia, its perfectly fair to argue with US in perspective.
If you spent any time reading the articles, you would see Australian sources for incidents dating back to 2012, Lithuanians reporting in 2018, and various private security companies also weighing in.
If the only defence you have for bad behavior is that other people do it, then I guess slavery, mass murder, torture, and theft are all okay. I don’t accept when people do those things, and not because I haven’t done them but because I believe they are damaging to society no matter who does them. That applies to various acts on the national level, as well.
Too bad I know the kind of anti-China drivel Australia (deputy sheriff of NATO) pushes out with 60 Minutes and via their Murdoch media network, and surely enough you are not convincing me with Lithuania, the country that thinks Taiwan is a country, and the same country whose military lied about Xiaomi spying a couple years ago on behest of US government.
I made a mistake, not in anything I said but in assuming you were willing and able to discuss this in good faith.
When it comes to hardware, isn’t the situation usually…
- American company is spying on customers through hardware it sold
- American government is actively trying to spy on citizens through hardware (American-made or not), but the company blocks them unless they have a warrant
- Chinese company freely shares data back and forth through the Chinese government using their hardware thanks to “backdoors”
the company blocks them unless they have a warrant
Heard of FISA courts and gag orders? Every single company involved in Snowden leaks had one for PRISM, and for every single NSA ops conducted since 1970s. This is an open thing.
You may go read pages 63 and 64 here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.152.0_1.pdf
Chinese company freely shares data back and forth through the Chinese government using their hardware thanks to “backdoors”
I never get evidence from US government for this, despite the bullshit propaganda they invent and disseminate via media. Even Germany and UK’s GCHQ declared Huawei 5G gear to be clean, until USA nudged them to quietly align with the “narrative” and protect NATO’s xenophobic interests, if they do not want consequences. What are these Chinese hardware backdoors, that I barely see anything on, compared to that on Cisco routers, Intel, AMD, Siemens, Nokia and other US/Europe tech companies?
How else is China collecting all its data on its citizens?
Very, very basic userspace level software methods. Methods that do not even need to go as deep as Facebook/Google/Apple or others.
Spying on people is easier than you think. Create fear and citizens will comply with just about anything for their “safety”. But in China’s case, the two Opium Wars lost against the 8 Nation Alliance is far too traumatic, and that serves as the fuel for current and old people to never see their children in the same world. The “Century of Humiliation” is a phrase easy to notice, and they are quite keen on regaining their global financial position they had before Western Industrial Revolution and Britain’s “laissez faire” colonialism happened.
And the rest of the world will say the same with respect to American spyware.
As a foreign nation, why would you use a core piece of software on all your government computers? I’ll never understand why Windows is used in any secure government installation, let alone non-American ones.
Because Microsoft forces itself on countries with deals. Its how they have always done things. Contractual lock in until folks are stuck needing windows for proprietary software.
Microsoft actively goes to schools and governments using linux or mac and makes cheap contracts, at first, to move them all and they bribe too.
Monopoly is their goal always
Actually, that’s super exciting! I would have a fun time taking it apart, analyzing it, and publishing it. Would be great publicity, and would probably make me more money than the laptop/phone/whatever cost me.
That being said, the USA has the most established history of compromising cryptography and security. It’s not so much that I trust China or don’t trust the USA, it’s that I don’t trust any superpower, am fairly wary of nations in general, and in fact don’t have much trust for organizations of anything over a handful of people.
Speaker wire. Expensive speaker wire will not sound any better. You could use a coat hanger and get great sound. Tip: every few years cut the wire ends and expose fresh wire to use. Over time the wire can oxidize if I recall correctly.
