The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by Renate

I'm always for hardwired even when it costs a bit of effort to run cables.

Me too.
I hardwired cat6 into my home about 8 years ago. Two switches each serving half the house and I run everything except ipad and iphone through it and never have problems, no dropouts, no weak signal.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

One of my headphone earpads just disintegrated. I'd already ordered a new one a few days ago thankfully, but its shipping from China.

My Koss Porta Pro pads dissolved. I ordered some Yaxi pads from Japan. Also came with a really good bag to put the headphones. The Porta Pro now sound even better then with the original pads.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My Koss Porta Pro pads dissolved. I ordered some Yaxi pads from Japan. Also came with a really good bag to put the headphones. The Porta Pro now sound even better then with the original pads.

Mine got porch-pirated. Thankfully they're sending a replacement. I will put vaguely threatening note in apartment lobby (well, if I can get my handwriting readable enough).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Mine got porch-pirated. Thankfully they're sending a replacement. I will put vaguely threatening note in apartment lobby (well, if I can get my handwriting readable enough).

How about a handwriting font and a printout?

[ownedbycats]

No printer.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My Koss Porta Pro pads …

Sounds like a product targeted at incontinence sufferers.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Sounds like a product targeted at incontinence sufferers.

Koss Porta Pro pads... now with extra absorbency!

[ownedbycats]

CKTO-FM. Based in a town about as far inland as you can get in N.S. For some reason, the new owners decided to brand it as "the Wave" (which is the also name of Halifax-based CHNS-FM, where it actually makes some sense).

I'm also annoyed that they returned the original pre-Bell rebrand name to the sister station CKTY-FM, but not this.

[Renate]

The existence of any keyboard in this universe with any keys that are not rectangular.
I'm looking at you, stupid "L" shaped Enter keys.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

The existence of any keyboard in this universe with any keys that are not rectangular.
I'm looking at you, stupid "L" shaped Enter keys.

Excessively large Right Shift instead of another character key.

Diminishing space bar due to MS Ego: two window keys, menu key and now they want a co-pilot key. MS should have just reused Scroll Lock and Pause/Break keys and made it an option. Not used those for 30 years?

The Insert Key could optionally be the (stupid) Co-pilot key. Hardly used it in 30 years.

Personally I reprogram Caps Lock as Compose and if I really want Caps Lock, I press both Shift.

The USA Keyboards that have one character key less, or even no AltGr.

Keyboards sold claiming to be UK, but have a key missing (really US keyboards with UK legends on the keycaps).

Keyboards with no lights (Scroll, Num, Caps)

IBM for basing the PC keyboard (1980-1981) on a 1928 teleprinter layout derived from the 19th C. typewriters that invented " and ' instead of “ ” and ‘ ’ because the number of keys was limited (The typewriters also often doubled up on 0 O and I 1). Mechanical typewriters do need a Shift Lock, which does CapsLock and punctuation instead of numbers. The Carriage is too heavy!

Text entry should not accept Tab. It and Shift Tab should be navigation (maybe per word on text), not a tab character. Only mechanical typewriters should have tabs (you set the tab stops for start of each column or margin.

[ratinox]

Web sites/web applications which hijack the right mouse button.

[ownedbycats]

I guess I hold down the alt key with my toe.

[Renate]

I use (shift, control) Insert all the time in preference to ^C, ^V, ^X.

I use ALT-0-1-2-8 €
I'm not sure if things changed. Did you used to be able to key in three digits?
Now you get Ç if you skip the zero.

Yes, I deplore stupid additions of an "AI key".

One of the stupidest decisions ever was to use Tab a character for GNU make.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Attachment 214966

I guess I hold down the alt key with my toe.

I do the same thing to type the high-bit ASCII characters (from 128-255). It allows me to type characters like é (Alt-130) and ä (Alt-132) that I often need to.

Related: I recently purchased a keyboard and didn't notice that it didn't have a numeric keypad. Due to that, I couldn't type any of the high-bit ASCII characters since you can't use Alt with the numbers at the top of the keyboard. I ended up getting another keyboard with a numeric keypad. It's one of those things that you don't really notice until you don't have it.

[Renate]

Logitech used to (maybe?) be half decent but now it seems to be over-priced junk.
I bought a clickety-clackety, not cheap Logitech keyboard and returned it within five minutes.
And usually I just "suck it up" when I do a stupid purchase.
But not that time.

Microsoft (surprisingly) used to have a nice quality, quiet, clean design for a keyboard.
They sold the design to Incase and stopped making them themselves.
https://www.incase.com/collections/p...desktop-900-eu
But it's still not available.

Right now I'm using a $10 piece-of-junk wired keyboard that only has two things going for it:
1) Numeric keyboard
2) Rectangular Enter key