The appliance that elicits anger and frustrated at it’s mere sight. The treacherous device that never worked right.
Do printers count? I fucking HATE printers.
After some half a century of existing they are somehow still annoying to use.
Try industrial label printers. They are like printers on hard mode.
I got a Brother printer. I hate it less than my HP and Cannon ones I used to use but it’s still a printer. A sin which cannot be redeemed
I’d enjoy my Epson Eco tank printer more if it wasn’t trying to constantly update firmware, apps, drivers, etc.
I’m not setting up faxing. Stop asking.
Stop buying shitty ink jet printers and get a laser printer. Pretty sure the Brother MFC my dad purchased a decade ago will outlive him.
I do think that most people would be happier with lasers, especially on the “clogged nozzle and requires regular use” front (though now there are also lasers that also do the “razor and blades” sales model, with a cheap printer and more-expensive toner).
However, there are legitimately some people who do need inkjets for one reason or another.
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Lasers, and especially inexpensive lasers where the manufacturer wants to shave down power supply costs, have a brief period of very high electrical draw when they are powered on. This is why you’ll typically see UPSes with warnings saying “don’t plug laser printers into this device”. This probably isn’t more than a minor irritation for most people, but I bet that it can overwhelm small inverters; there are probably people living full-time in RVs or something for whom this a problem.
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Even relatively-inexpensive inkjet printers today can produce what I’d call pretty impressive photograph prints if paired with fancy photo paper. Color lasers — and I’ve never bothered to even get a color laser — do not print photos that look remotely as nice as inkjets do. I don’t print photos — I have screens that can display photos perfectly well — and if I really wanted to do so, I’d go to one of the many stores around that do have the ability to do really fancy photo prints. But if someone were into that, they can’t really substitute a laser printer or most other types of printers for that. Maybe dye-sublimation printers, if those are still a thing. kagis Appears so.
Yeah some laser printers can for sure pop a circuit breaker in older houses
hPLJ4 gobbled 600w when firing up. You better believe it popped some breakers.
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Printers are a given, I figure.
I have a black and white samsung printer that is like a decade old with the only maintenance being adding the powdered ink and replacing the roller thingy a couple of times. Always works, never had an issue, printed thousands of pages over time in spurts of hundreds at a time and even not printing for like two years.
On the opposite end inkjet printers are the fucking worst computer accessory I’ve ever dealt with. They have always been a shitshow even before they started the ink pricing shenanigans because they are finicky and unreliable to start with.
mine has said that all the ink is critically low and I’ve just ignored it for the past few months and it just keeps going.
Nearly same here, but mine is from 2010 and all I’ve ever done is replace the original starter cartridge of toner with a generic one once, and that was 12ish years ago and 2 cross-country moves. I’ve maybe printed a thousand pages ever.
Inkjet printers clogging and requiring ink refills aside, I don’t think I’ve ever been unhappy with (2D) printers. I’ve used…continuous-feed dot-matrix printers, a thermal wax printer, laser printers, a text-only line printer, and a continuous-feed plotter. They all worked pretty well.
And honestly, I’m still kind of impressed at what inkjet printers can turn out on photo paper, even if I wouldn’t buy one for my own uses.
I had one very elderly Apple laser printer that I picked up once that someone was throwing out. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, laser printers were wonder printers that business users might have, but home users mostly didn’t have in their price range — fast output, sharp text, but expensive; always wanted one, but I wasn’t going to buy one. It didn’t have much memory, so there were some limitations on the complexity of what it could print. I rigged up the
lpdon my computer to do all the rendering of vector Postscript images and convert it into a fax-compressed raster image and hand it off to the printer, so aside from taking a while to transfer the resulting image to the printer, it could pretty much handle anything. It served for something like ten years, with the remainder of the original toner cartridge lasting something like five of that, and I only tossed it because I wanted a higher-resolution printer, not because it had any problems functioning. I could probably still be using that thing. Kinda have some warm fuzzies remembering that ancient thing still soldiering on.Came here to say this. F all printers ever made.
I have a Samsung printer that simply hates me. Whenever I need to print something urgently it will disappear from the wifi. It shows up for a few milliseconds when restarted and disappears again. However when you have the time and energy to investigate the problem it works flawlessly.
It’s not the printer, dude. It’s the radio.
Agreed. In the IT industry as a tech since 1997, and even now everything except for my iDevices and one wireless bridge to the far side of the house is hardlined. I absolutely despise WiFi, from long experience.
Is a printer an appliance? 🤔
I dont remember when but the printer was an evil demon sent from hell, then all of a sudden printers just got good.
I cant remember what the last serious issue I had with a printer was.
I cant remember what the last serious issue I had with a printer was.
I do, it was immediately before I switched to a Brother.
Not when I am done with it. From having to support them before I am so glad I don’t own one.
You need to look into something thoroughly classic, like an HP 4050DTN. I’ve had mine since 1999 and it’s lasted me through two degrees with only 3 toner cartridges. I get the ones that can do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage. And while yes, other parts like the fuser are now clamouring for replacement, to date the only things I have ever done are replace the toner cartridges and upgrade the JetDirect module to keep pace with my wired network.
Not bad for a printer that’s a quarter century old.
Edit: JFC I feel old now.
I think I will continue to not own a printer.
toner
This is why. You bought a laser printer. People balk at the upfront price but they last way longer and the price per page is a lot cheaper, not to mention better print quality
If it needs an app or internet connectivity - it can go fuck itself.
We’ve gone nearly a century of appliances that didn’t need this shit. Apps or the Internet itself will not and never will, make things easier to do tasks than they already were easier to do before.
Aside from security and privacy issues, and the issue of dependence on cloud services, a lot of those go obsolete. Like, a fridge from 1950 is still gonna work pretty well today. Networking has changed a lot more quickly, and I suspect will continue to change quickly.
I’d be okay if they want to have some kind of simple, industry-standard interface that lets me expose it to a computer’s control. Like, furnaces have that standard four-wire interface, and then you can just replace an (inexpensive) thermostat with a newer one as technology marches on, leave the furnace in place. But I don’t want a lot of short-lived technology being baked into longer-lived appliances.
Hm. Whoever made microwave ovens with an impossible to clean exposed resistance for broiling in the off chance you felt like making lasagna in a shoebox should be shot into space.
Everybody below pointing out that repeated beeping noises are unacceptable is also not wrong. It’s gotten to the point where half a dozen different things may be beeping in my kitchen, nobody knows which one it is and everybody is in a reverse-race to ignore them to see if someone else goes to deal with it.
I once had a dishwasher that opened the door by itself using magnets instead of nagging you like a needy cat and I miss it every day.
Magnets are brilliant. I had to go really high up the range for mine to have a motor that opens the door at the end of each cycle. It has good energy ratings too but I’m not sure the extra cost will be worth it in its lifetime because the “eco” cycle is like the cheating on the homologation run of cars: it uses so little power and heat nothing gets clean enough if it’s full.
I think mine got away with it because it was a small countertop model with a light plastic door. I don’t know if you’d be able to do that for a large embedded family-sized one where you don’t know how heavy the door is because it’s attached to a cupboard cover. You probably do need a motor for that. If not to smoothly open the door at least to give it a little push with a push rod or something.
The point is we have the technology to push a flippy door open automatically, my dishwasher doesn’t need to screech for attention every time it completes a task like a needy toddler.
I never know about “eco” cycles in dishwashers anyway. I mean, those things are efficient in the first place and if you use hot water to wash manually you may not be saving anything against a full cycle. I’m also surprised to hear people complain about them so much, presumably out of getting bad cleaning results. Mine is old and not that high end and I very rarely get a bad load out of it. If one thing was in a blind spot it’s just a matter of leaving it in to go for another run.
I think maybe people don’t know how to use a dishwasher? I’m torn about that one, because on the one hand well designed appliances should be impossible to use incorrectly, so it’s technically the dishwasher’s fault still, but at the same time dishwashers are awesome and having lived without one for a long time I’m never going back to that life. I would get one with an automatic door next time, though.
Washing machines.
My washing machine 15 years ago would wash my clothes with…uhhhh…fucking water.
Now you can’t buy washing machines that actually wash your clothes in water. They all spritz your clothes with a little water then jiggle around your damp clothes for a bit.
I don’t live in a desert. I live in a place with access to plenty of water. I should be allowed to buy a washing machine that actually fills up with soapy water and washes my damn clothes.
I could buy a Speed Queen washer for $2,000 from a specialty store, but that’s ridiculous. Why can’t I just buy a washing machine that washes my clothes? They’re ALL terrible now. All the washers in all the big box stores are just…bad.
That still make toploaders, you know. Even HE ones. Front loading washers only serve to break your back from all the bending over.
Even the toploaders do the same thing now. They don’t actually fill with water like they used to. I got frustrated with my modern toploader and that’s how I wound up with the highest rated frontloader I could find. Both garbage.
The washing machine I bought in 1996 for $250 cleaned clothes better than any machine I’ve had in decades.
I just want to wash my clothes. In water.
Mine does, and it’s only 2 years old. Make sure you’ve set the water level knob to either “auto”, or “fill tub/XXL” if you like wasting water.
That said, I can assure you that modern washers use enough water, even if you disagree. You’re probably just using too much soap. Ditch the softener too. It collects at the bottom of the washer and turns into a hard wax, which will eventually clog your drain pipe.
What brand/model # are you using?
I’m at work; if I don’t respond in about 3-4 hours, please remind me to follow up.
Agree, I’ve used both top/side loaders and side loaders are perfectly fine despite their lower water usage.
Get your washers used from thrift stores, the older the better
Don’t fall into the aesthetics trap, you don’t need to swap your appliances out every five years for new
My crappy electric Philips toothbrush from the internet of shit era. If you press the single button it has slightly wrong it goes into some Bluetooth pairing mode or whatever that you can’t take it out of until it gives up 2 minutes later.
Gas stove. Literally playing with fire every time I need to light the front left burner. Usually I have to let enough gas come out to have the neighboring burner’s igniter light it up. I keep my distance just in case.
Just get a long refillable butane lighter? Or one of those electric arc lighters? (Some of those have a long extension)
And it slowly poisons you!
I have to “prime” one of my burners. I’ll turn it on the power boil setting for a second or two to let gas out and then back to the ignite setting to spark it
…and once it’s ‘fixed’, it starts doing it again within weeks. Always the same one…
I have a camp stove that I got for really cheap because someone returned it because the igniter didn’t work. The spark gap was too high, so all I had to do was poke the wire over a little, and it works perfectly now.
For me, the “power burner” is so weak it can’t bring a pot of water to boil or properly saute anything. Everything online says that it must be because the gas outlets are dirty, but they are spotless.
Microwaves are allowed one proud “ding” or three “beep” before they are on my hate-list.
My microwave has an un-interuptable 6 shrill beeps, that then repeat if the door is not opened in 10 seconds. There is no mute option, and it can be heard everywhere in the house. I have seriously considered just ripping the speaker out of it. It is, without a doubt, the appliance I hate most in my house.
Perfect this is the type answer I was looking for!
I moved from the US to Europe and I keep joking that the largest QoL upgrade has been my unbelievably dumb microwave. It has a power knob, a timer knob that is spring wound, and when it hits 0 it physically hits a bell like an older toaster.
I fucking love it. It was like 20€
Wait what do US microwaves do? Play the national anthem?
Newer ones have way too many digital buttons and a loud repeating beep when finished. Even newer ones, probably Bluetooth or something
https://homemicrowave.com/microwave-with-alexa/
Want to set up your microwave with Alexa for plenty of cool tricks, but didn’t know how to pick the best microwave that works with Alexa?
Having an Alexa compatible microwave in your kitchen, you can control the microwave and adjust the cooking setting simply via Alexa’s voice control feature.
Speaking for myself, I don’t really want Internet dependency, much less a microphone sending data to the Internet on my appliances.
Yeah, you still have to put the food into the microwave, might as well just press the button there too.
I could maybe see connecting it to Home Assistant to deliver a silent notification, instead of waking everyone up at night for example.
This is the only use case I could possibly think of for networking a microwave. An enhanced mute feature.
Open the door to your microwave and see if it has instructions for written on its body. Mine has a secondary menu where you can turn it off.
Checked there and searched online for any demo modes/ testing codes that would allow me to mute it. Evidently, a lot of folks online absolutely hate my microwave as well, because no one can mute it. That said, the community of microwave haters has provided me with instructions to rip out the speaker if I choose to silence the wailing banshee for good.
One thing you can do if you’re not fully prepared to remove the speaker is to cover it with several layers of tape. It will muffle the sound and is somewhat reversible
Mine is not nearly as bad as yours, but it is loud and doesn’t stop beeping when you open the door, just continues until its preprogrammed three loud beeps are over. I muted it when my kids were babies and have never looked back. I think a lot of people worry about muting their microwave because they think they won’t hear when it’s done or something. I’m here to tell you that you won’t miss it. Go forth and rip that speaker out with no regrets.
What microwave and model is it?
Frigidaire FFMV164LSA MFG in 2012
Sounds like mine. Shrill beeps that can’t be cancelled, muted, or interrupted, although I think mine is 30 seconds before the reminder beeps.
My favorite part, though? It beeps when you open the door. Like, just as a sound effect. I, the user, your god and your master, am the one who opened your door. There is no status to notify me of, there is no input to confirm. It’s just useless racket that can’t be eliminated without hardware modification.
Microwaves are the penultimate Norman Object (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things). They could have a standardized UI (cue up obligatory XKCD “Standards”). Instead, every manufacturer does it differently and usually in obscure, unintuitive fashion, often differently from the same manufacturer. Do you enter the time or power setting first? Oh wait, pressing a number launches it straight into running. That part that looks like a door handle is not how one actually opens the door; press the door button first. So. Much. Hate.
Yeah, I can see what you mean. Generally, they’re similar-enough, at least in basic functionality, that I don’t have an issue using someone else’s microwave though. The advanced functionality can vary a lot.
What does kind of annoy me is that they’re basically the one device — VCRs used to be the stereotypical holders of this position — that has a clock, but also is a device price-sensitive enough to both:
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Lack an internal battery to keep the clock powered when power is lost.
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Not have a network link, cell link — not that I really want those — or radio time signal receiver to automatically set the clock.
The result is that every microwave I see seems to wind up showing an unset clock.
Didn’t they somehow send time info down the power line in some places? Or maybe I’m just misremembering this?
I can’t think of anything that quite fits that off-the-cuff, at least not in the US. A quick search doesn’t turn anything up. I can think of some related things:
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The AC signal is used as a clock in a number of devices. This isn’t a “clock” in the common-language sense of the word, but in the electrical engineering sense – it provides a reliable frequency over the long run. Some (common-language) clocks and timers have used this to keep them running at a steady pace, but it’s not really a time signal, wouldn’t help restore an on-device clock setting after power loss.
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X10 is a low-speed networking protocol that runs over local power circuits for home automation. I’m sure that at some point, someone has made some product that permits setting a clock with it. The limitation is that your signal doesn’t span across household circuits, which I suspect one would want for a “whole house time signal”.
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There have been powerline-based ISPs, where the power company shovels data over the line using high-frequency modulation. In theory, you could use one of various Internet time protocols over that. I think that that was kind of a dead end, technology-wise — there’s just not that much data that you can push over an unshielded, non-twisted-pair, metal power line.
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I would not be surprised if there’s some data protocol that power companies use to talk to smart meters that includes pushing a time signal out specifically for them – they do push and pull data over that – though I don’t think that that’s accessible to other devices.
That being said, could be some company out there that did that locally. Not technically impossible.
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I get irrationally upset over microwaves that don’t let you use the timer and cook functions simultaneously
looks puzzled
Hmm. What are you doing with that? Like, you want to be cooking for a certain amount of time, then after the cooking completes, have a timer trigger to start a second cooking period?
More like, I need to heat this frozen thing for 4 minutes. Also while that’s going on, I want to set a timer for my pasta which is cooking on the stove for 6 minutes to remind me to check it.
Exactly. I have a batch of cupcakes in the oven so the timer is set for 12 mins, but I also want to melt some chocolate for the ganache while that’s going.
Luckily, my microwave supports doing both, but I’ve cooked at other people’s houses and their microwaves are essentially bricked while the timer counts down which is so crazy to me it’s like they’ve made this appliance worse on purpose.
Oh, so this is like, a timer for an alarm rather than to control the microwave’s operation. Gotcha.
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You know, the worst part is, they intentionally make the interface shittier on the cheap ones. I’m very convinced of this.
My microwave’s beeper only work in 10s increments. Meaning if I enter a cook time of 91 seconds, I get 91s at high power, 9s at low power, and a beep. If I listen for the power change, I have a 9 second window to open the door. It’s perfect; no annoying beeping, and the timer reads 0:00 so it doesn’t need to be cleared before reuse.
i muted my microwave, almost every microwave i’ve used has been mutable
I have a similar short fuse for microwaves but for the +30 seconds button. If the microwave doesn’t have this it should get tossed in the nearest dumpster. The +30 seconds button is the pinnacle of human achievement.
My partner took our microwave (an obnoxious thing I bought at a charity shop for $15) apart and wrapped the dinger-thing in a thick rubber band to muffle it, then put it all back together. It sounds so much more polite now, and he didn’t have to cut any wires or otherwise fuss with the basic function.
I have to try that, thanks for the idea!
My microwave thinks it’s a regular oven and keeps beeping if you don’t open the door. It doesn’t seem to understand it has stopped on its own and can shut the fuck up now.
I want to open up my microwave and rip out whatever device makes the beep. Who has ever forgotten they have food in the microwave? I was hungry 3 minutes ago, I haven’t forgotten, and it’s not going to burn.
My parents used to have an old Amana Radarange. Built like a tank, wood paneling and chrome, warm incandescent lighting…I miss it. It didn’t have a beep or a bell or anything. Once it was done it would just…turn off.
And any remaining time on the cooking timer should automatically clear after say 10 minutes. Too many people that love leaving a few seconds remaining when retrieving their food. Then the remaining time stays there forever until someone comes along and clears it.
Printers. There is no excuse for (consumer) printers to be as shitty as they are.
There are reasons, but none of them are excuses: If patent hell wasn’t a main obstacle put in place by the large printer manufacturers, I am sure open source hardware alternative would’ve forced industry improvements ages ago.
For me, it’s specifically the HP printer my wife has. It has one of those subscription models where you pay per page (or per some unit, I forget) and you can’t use it without an account and an internet connection.
I bought a Brother that offers but does not mandate a subscription and tried to get her to use it, but she is convinced the awful disgusting subscription model is easier.
Every time I see it it makes me a little sad and a little mad, but I had her put it on my network that has guest isolation, so it can’t touch or spy on any of my other devices and only impacts her.
(My feelings about it aren’t quite that strong in reality, but this is a thread about appliance beef. If her printer weren’t isolated, I might actually feel pretty strongly about it.)
US patents only last for 20 years. Technically, nothing is stopping you from making a part-for-part copy of a good laser printer from 2005 and selling it the same way some companies do replacement toner.
It’s just that making a cheap and reliable appliance is HARD if there are dozens of distinct parts that all have to move together. Heck, id expect a near-clone of a Cuisinart stand mixer before I’d expect a printer.
(And, even then, i doubt it’d be much cheaper than just buying one used.)
Edit: patents, not parents.
US parents only last for 20 years.
Jeez, I’m way past my warranty. Almost at 27 years.
even enterprise grade printers are shitty
And there is a very good reason: Good Mechanical engineers are epxensive, so instead they hire crappy mechanical engineers
Don’t worry, commercial printers are equally bad but in a different way.
Every vendor feels the need to inject their own special secret sauce into the drivers instead of making a tool that Just Works.
Yeah, there is no true rage like trying to get a Xante to work properly. “YOU HAD NO PROBLEMS 2 HOURS AGO WHEN I FED YOU 2,000 #10 ENVELOPES! WHY WON’T YOU PRINT THIS LETTERHEAD!”
Or my Canon 8000 that has decided it doesn’t want to print double sided on satin paper anymore. Or that is will staple a booklet, but only if i have the paper size down as 12x9 portrait instead of 9x12 landscape.
Brother printers to the rescue. I think they are still untainted by crap bloatware and just do the thing.
Their mobile app is crap but the printer rocks!
OS people need to make the drivers. Once.
The driver is only “I bake you a PDF, and you will eat it and you will like it”
I’m not sure about PDF specifically as a printer language but yeah basically.
Printers
any fucking thing with touchscreens or touch buttons. those stupid things barely ever work and imagine not being able to use your appliance once that shit breaks.
WE WANT BUTTONS
It registers when my thumb brushes against the screen for a nanosecond but when I want it to register a press I have to tap the screen like a maniac.
Touch screen at work highlights the button I press. And then proceeds to not count it as a button I pressed. Fucker I saw the animation, you know I’ve pressed it, input the fucking number.
I keep buying cheap toaster ovens. I keep paying the price for it. At least I know my smoke alarms work
We must’ve lucked right out because we bought the literal cheapest toaster we found ($12 about 9 years ago). No special features, not even a cancel button, just a little knob for the doneness. It worked so well for the 7 or 8 years we had it, and the only reason we replaced it was cause we wanted a 4-slice toaster.
Thing was a champ, I was trying to see if I could find it online but can’t see it anymore. I think it was Master Chef brand.
We have an Oster one now with a fancy touch screen that I can see is about $70. It works about as well as the previous one we had.
Get yourself a nice Panasonic one. $150-ish I have one that’s over 10 years old
Everything with a built in lithium battery that isn’t easy to swap. Phones, headphones, vapes, the weird gameboy thing I got offa aliexpress.
My fridge’s ice machine has never worked and instead just made my fridge piss itself on multiple occasions.
I’ve wrestled with mine a time or two. Tons of troubleshooting tips online for that exact issue, shouldn’t be too hard to figure.
