Tech Purchases You Feel Guilty About?

[poofyhairguy]

I know that as nerds we are all supposed to only purchase the best product possible in the category without caring about hype or marketing, but lets be honest we are people too.

Are there technology purchases/brands you feel guilty about buying? And if so why?

Like for me, I feel guilty every time I buy an Intel CPU or a Nvidia GPU. I know AMD is hurting. I know that if AMD goes away it will be bad for us. But I just can't find a way to work AMD CPUs or GPUs into my life, they always suck at something I care about.

Also I feel guilty about all my Polk speakers. I know there are better speakers, probably at the same price. I know some audiophile could take my speaker budget and get way more out of it, but then I would need their help making it all work together. Polk just makes it easy to work together if you only buy their stuff.

Oh and I am sucker for Antec stuff. I know other companies are better in most cases but I keep going back to the well, and will pay extra for their brand for some reason (even though I actually like Fractal more).

What about you? What have you bought that gives you nerd guilt? A pair of Beats headphones you love, or Bose speakers? Maybe that "new" Macbook that everyone knows is an overpriced netbook?

This is a safe place, share with us your guilt.

 

[TallBill]

Don't buy much in regards to techie stuff anymore.

 

[lxskllr]

Nothing really. Closest would be the usb floppy drive I thought I might use, but never did. I've generally aimed for second or third place in jumping on new tech, and aim for upper middle range on cost. That's served me well, and has been a decent use of money.

 

[TallBill]

Nothing really. Closest would be the usb floppy drive I thought I might use, but never did. I've generally aimed for second or third place in jumping on new tech, and aim for upper middle range on cost. That's served me well, and has been a decent use of money.

Same, built my PC for $1000 3 years ago thing still rocks. Would maybe consider a new graphics card this year or next but no issues.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I sorta felt bad when I built my 24 bay Supermicro file server. When all was said and done it cost me like 3 grand to build that beast. So I kinda felt bad for spending that much money on a server. But several years later it's still serving me well and it has lot of room for expansion by swapping drives for bigger ones, so it was a good purchase in the end.

 

[MongGrel]

Not sure if I really feel guilty about buying anything in general.

I do tend to research things myself, but I am a bit of a fan of some things.

Antec is one of them myself, but if it is something like a PSU, I check to see who actually made it. Have a couple of their cases and bought a Coolmaster last time.

Some brands I buy just because I feel comfortable using them these days, I buy Intel CPU's just because, the last GPU I bought was a R9 280X.

Probably the last thing I bought just because I liked it was a Sony AVR, just because I had used them in the past I guess, even though were Dennon and various ones people rated higher maybe.

 

[Crono]

Surface Book, bought about a month ago. Base model (integrated graphics, not the NVIDIA version) and still $1,500.

I feel a little guilty because I haven't owned a laptop pricier than $500 in the past. Not that I've ever been a major, regular laptop user, but it's also more expensive than my desktop ($800 when I first built it, but upgraded a few parts and currently has a FX-8350 with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and a R9 270).

I'm building a higher spec desktop that will be maybe $2,000 in parts total, but building it myself (including the case) I don't think I'll feel as guilty... it feels like work and an investment of time rather than splurging.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh I almost forgot: Blackberry Playbook.

They went on sale, so I only paid $300 for it. It was cool at first, but I did not really buy it with any purpose in mind so it was pretty much just a toy, but since it was Blackberry there were barely any apps to even put on it, no games either. Could not even get angry birds on that thing. (that might have changed now, I don't know). Eventually the wifi started acting up and I kept having to reload the OS on it, then I just gave up when I got my smartphone, and it's been sitting in a drawer since. The battery is completely gone on it.

I like to support a Canadian company, but... that thing was a piece of crap. Their phones were good but that thing was rushed to try to compete with the ipad and it failed.

 

[IronWing]

Bought a Lenovo X220 about four years ago. I've gotten a good solid eight weeks of use out of it. Last spring I upgraded the HDD to an 850 Pro 512. It is still a fast machine and I still hardly use it.

 

[dullard]

I usually buy when I have a strong need and when it is a generation or two old, so that the cost is quite low. This means that I don't usually regret any purchase. However, two tech purchases come to mind though that I should have done better:

1) A Zip drive and a bundle of 10 Zip disks. These were a lifesaver for about a year (so I don't regret buying the drive). But then shortly later rewritable CD disks and then a bit later USB drives came out. The Zip disks were so expensive and so prone to becoming bricks, that I should have just bought one Zip disk.

2) My Lenovo Q190 HTPC. I really like the thing, but I waited too long. Lenovo came out with a different flavor of it every week (varying hard drive size, CPU, etc). I waited and waited until a model that come out with a Blu-Ray drive, fast CPU, and low price. That took about 4 months of waiting. The problem is, a week before it arrived, Microsoft started charging $100 for Windows Media Center. So, I never bought Windows Media Center and have to keep an entire Windows 7 computer running to record TV. Then I just stream it to my HTPC. It is really a clumsy method of doing things. Luckily, Windows 10 can play Media Center files recorded on a different computer (other Windows versions would garble the screen image for copyright issues). But if only I hadn't waited so long, then I could have a great HTPC instead of needing 2 computers. And I've never yet purchased a Blu-Ray movie, so the wait was not even needed.

 

[Linux23]

Anova Sous Vide machine.

 

[MongGrel]

Anova Sous Vide machine.

Kinda wish I had one, but yeah, I'd probably not really use it much.

Was looking at em awhile back myself.

 

[natto fire]

Considering it is mostly made in sweat shops with deplorable working conditions, pretty much all of them.

 

[YBS1]

Are there technology purchases/brands you feel guilty about buying? And if so why?

An nVidia Shield....Worthless purchase. There are brands I'm fiercely loyal to though (no guilt) given reasonable similarity to competitor's products. Mushkin memory for example, I'll nearly always opt for it over other brands. Razer mice as well, I've purchased more mice of other brands than Razer, but my actual gaming pc nearly always has a Razer mouse attached to it.

 

[DigDog]

spending nearly a grand for this piece of s***

 

[DrPizza]

I've never been able to figure out if I regret it or not - some of my computer purchases in the early to mid 1990's. Holy cow, they were expensive back then. I spent a couple months going through issue after issue of Computer Shopper - that monthly catalog was nearly 2 inches thick. Learned all I could, then found a great price from yet another start-up computer company. But, back then, a decent desktop cost thousands of dollars. If I recall, hard drive prices were in the neighborhood of $1.00 per megabyte. That's right - a single gigabyte; something that they give away on freebie flash drives these days... it would have cost $1000 back then for that much memory. And, I remember when I finally did hit 1GB a couple years later; memory prices were down to about 25 cents per megabyte.

In hindsight, I can't tell if it was worth it.

 

[Craig234]

Too much to list, but I have not found a use much for my Amazon Kindle Fire HDX other than a few Android games.

 

[Craig234]

I've never been able to figure out if I regret it or not - some of my computer purchases in the early to mid 1990's. Holy cow, they were expensive back then. I spent a couple months going through issue after issue of Computer Shopper - that monthly catalog was nearly 2 inches thick. Learned all I could, then found a great price from yet another start-up computer company. But, back then, a decent desktop cost thousands of dollars. If I recall, hard drive prices were in the neighborhood of $1.00 per megabyte. That's right - a single gigabyte; something that they give away on freebie flash drives these days... it would have cost $1000 back then for that much memory. And, I remember when I finally did hit 1GB a couple years later; memory prices were down to about 25 cents per megabyte.

In hindsight, I can't tell if it was worth it.

A classic I remember is that outside a computer Swap I found a seller of what was then an incredible bargain - a 300MB hard drive for only $500, and bought it.

Or there is my NEC 21" CRT, which cost about $2300 - after it came down some. Which was ok until after leaving it on for years I turned it off overnight and, poof.

 

[shortylickens]

That sure-grip suck machine.

 

[MongGrel]

I've never been able to figure out if I regret it or not - some of my computer purchases in the early to mid 1990's. Holy cow, they were expensive back then. I spent a couple months going through issue after issue of Computer Shopper - that monthly catalog was nearly 2 inches thick. Learned all I could, then found a great price from yet another start-up computer company. But, back then, a decent desktop cost thousands of dollars. If I recall, hard drive prices were in the neighborhood of $1.00 per megabyte. That's right - a single gigabyte; something that they give away on freebie flash drives these days... it would have cost $1000 back then for that much memory. And, I remember when I finally did hit 1GB a couple years later; memory prices were down to about 25 cents per megabyte.

In hindsight, I can't tell if it was worth it.

Yeah, many things were really high priced compared to today.

Time marches on.

 

[holden j caufield]

bought a 3rd Note 4. First Note 4 died on me. I bought a replacement. Then I bought a Note 4 just so the wife and I could use it in the Samsung VR. Was just too lazy to take my Note 4 out of it's case each time we used the VR so I splurged on a spare one. Oh the Vmware ESX desktop I built with a 12 bay case, 32gb of ram, etc. Never used it just collecting dust.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Same, built my PC for $1000 3 years ago thing still rocks. Would maybe consider a new graphics card this year or next but no issues.

7 years strong with mini upgrades here and there. :thumbsup:

 

[Paladin3]

$2k+ for a Packard Bell Pentium 60 system with win 3.11 from Sears.
$199 each for 4mb memory sticks to go in it.
$99 for Netscape Navigator after someone told me about this new thing called the "Internet."


Playing MechWarrior2 and Diablo on it = priceless.

 

[HeXen]

There's certainly a lot of things I could have done without. I have regrets but not sure about guilt.
My biggest regret was in the early 2000's after I got the first Xbox, I bought a head mounted LCD. Around $120, I was told from marketing that it was like sitting 6ft from a 60 inch TV. Since I only had a 19" crt TV at the time, I thought it would be epic to play Xbox on......well, minus the dead pixels, the color was almost nonexistent, it was very blurry with the lowest pixel density that any 480i could provide.

 

[ultimatebob]

My XBox One. I'm not a big fan of console games, but it does a great job streaming Netflix