What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?

I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.

  • fubarx@lemmy.world
    10·
    3 days ago

    Trying to solve wifi dead spots across my then house. It didn’t have wired conduits, so no ethernet between floors. Went through a series of range-extenders, multiple routers, everything from cheapo no-names, to TP-Links, Netgears, and Apple Airports. All sucked. Terrible reception in all the places that people hung out.

    Then mesh routers showed up. Got a 3-pack and never looked back.

    Edit: runner-up was an HP Inkjet printer. Every time someone needed a color print, one color ink was either out or dried out.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 days ago

      Damn I know hindsight is 20/20 but I feel like you could have just ran some wires yourself (it’s pretty easy tbh) with how much effort you went through to avoid it.

      But yeah I hear you on network stuff in general. I know a little about that stuff and it still is basically magic to me. Sometimes I swear my modem and router just choose to misbehave until I give them a little reset. I think they might be alive…

      • fubarx@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 days ago

        Haha, yes I actually did get those back then. Didn’t work. Turned out the wiring between floors was really old and there was a lot of noise. Place was also a rental, so I couldn’t drill big holes into floors and walls to draw ethernet.

        The thing that ultimately solved it was mesh. It’s worked pretty well since then and on to the new place where wiring is even worse. With mesh repeaters, we can even reach far corners of basement storage.