The "New Toys" Thread

[Matt2000]

Voices? Wat? Does it talk to you as it goes around? Having the vacuum spout endless streams of lines from Fawlty Towers (Cleese) sounds like something that would go from brilliant to annoying very quickly.

I bet someone could modify the old navigation voices, like Ozzy Osbourne and such.

 

[leviathan]

Yes, it does talk - "cleaning started", "navigating to charging station", "dust container removed/installed" and such. There's a language selection menu in the app, not sure how one could add custom voices in there though.

 

[Matt2000]

Yes, it does talk - "cleaning started", "navigating to charging station", "dust container removed/installed" and such. There's a language selection menu in the app, not sure how one could add custom voices in there though.

I had no idea there was a need for voice on such a thing, part of me would want to take it apart and use a Raspberry Pi to intercept the signal coming in, determine what voice clip it was and then play a clip from an SD card or something. Just because.

 

[GRtak]

And mount a Big Mouth Billy Bass to it.

 

[93Flareside]

And mount a Big Mouth Billy Bass to it.

 

[Matt2000]

Hmm, I don't have a Billy Bass or a Roomba but I do have a Rocky Lobster. This isn't mine because that would require effort.

 

[Perc]

Here are the voices in my Roborock 2 S5. English, german and some others and a whole bunch of voices that I assume are novel or fun if you speak Chinese.

 

[Perc]

I keep telling myself I would vacuum a lot more if I had a cordless vacuum to take care of the places my robot can't reach. so I got one. Let's see if it works.

Apparently the sky is the limit when it comes to prices on Dyson vacs but the V8 Absolute was within my price range. "Absolute" means it comes with a bunch of attachments.

It's currently charging and I haven't done much more with it other than to clean up the concrete dust that resulted when I hung the charging station on the wall, but it doesn't feel like there's much point in having a traditional corded vacuum cleaner anymore.

 

[gaasc]

This is now a vacuum thread.

I needed to vacuum my couches. Coincidentally, a relative offered me a vacuum that they had come to for fifty bucks. Tested, working, from a reputable brand. It didn't come with any accessories but that's fine. Problem is, I kinda misjudged its size.

I now own a giant, 1100W wet/dry shop back for very much domestic use.

 

[NecroJoe]

This is now a vacuum thread.

I needed to vacuum my couches. Coincidentally, a relative offered me a vacuum that they had come to for fifty bucks. Tested, working, from a reputable brand. It didn't come with any accessories but that's fine. Problem is, I kinda misjudged its size.

I now own a giant, 1100W wet/dry shop back for very much domestic use.

My girlfriend didn't believe me when I would complain about how loud her old Hoover upright vac was.

Then I got a 14-gallon, 6HP (I tried to convert in Google and it says 4500w...is that right?) Rigid shop vac, and it was about half as loud as her "house" vacuum...and then I got the exhaust diffuser, which made it even quieter. If I ever need to vac up anything in the kitchen, I go the garage and get my "shop vac". She's finally now laughing about how loud her old Hoover is.

 

[Perc]

Is a coffee mug a toy? Probably when it costs more than €30. My last paycheck included my vacation money so I decided to buy something stupid.

Pressing the grey button visible in the picture opens the hole on the other side. That's where you drink from. Letting go of the button makes it watertight. Flipping the rocker switch on top locks the button. Supposedly, you can throw this thing into a backpack without worrying about it leaking. It's also great for roadtrips and fits great into the cup holder. At almost 0.5L it's also great for cold drinks.

View attachment 3557750

Contigo says that the lid is dishwasher safe. The mug itself is too as long as you have the brushed stainless version. Mine is painted but since I don’t care if the paint wears off on something that isn’t a priceless heirloom, I put it in the dishwasher anyway.

The lid, however, seems to be too difficult for my dishwasher to rinse properly. I just took a nice big swig of freshly brewed coffee... which tasted mostly of dishwasher detergent. ??? and it’s not the first time this has happened.

This is annoying.

 

[Perc]

I'm one of those weirdos that need to print and scan at home since my hobbies include a bit of office work. I've been using a HP Color Laserjet multifunction machine for a number of years but genuine toner cartridges costs an arm and a leg. I've been using Chinesium eBay cartridges in it but the last set didn't produce very good printouts. The HP also didn't do double-sided printing or scanning.

Enter its replacement, a monochrome Brother MFC-2750DW that cost less than a set of genuine HP CMYK cartridges... and yes, it came with a full toner cartridge in the box. It's faster, quieter and less bulky than the HP it replaced and can deliver scans directly to a number of cloud services including Google Drive and Dropbox. It even has OCR scanning built in.

The "full software package" for Mac was like 10MB and consisted of a wizard that installs the printer and a link to the Brother app on the Mac App Store. Installing a new printer on a Mac takes like two mouse clicks from within the print dialog of whatever app you're printing from and I had already done that by the time I got around to installing the software. The Brother app is only really useful for scanning photos and the like.

The touchscreen UI displays the fax feature front and center, which is beyond my understanding considering we are living in 2020. Other than that it's well thought out and easy to use. Can recommend.

 

[NecroJoe]

I'm one of those weirdos that need to print and scan at home since my hobbies include a bit of office work. I've been using a HP Color Laserjet multifunction machine for a number of years but genuine toner cartridges costs an arm and a leg. I've been using Chinesium eBay cartridges in it but the last set didn't produce very good printouts. The HP also didn't do double-sided printing or scanning.

Enter its replacement, a monochrome Brother MFC-2750DW that cost less than a set of genuine HP CMYK cartridges... and yes, it came with a full toner cartridge in the box. It's faster, quieter and less bulky than the HP it replaced and can deliver scans directly to a number of cloud services including Google Drive and Dropbox. It even has OCR scanning built in.

The "full software package" for Mac was like 10MB and consisted of a wizard that installs the printer and a link to the Brother app on the Mac App Store. Installing a new printer on a Mac takes like two mouse clicks from within the print dialog of whatever app you're printing from and I had already done that by the time I got around to installing the software. The Brother app is only really useful for scanning photos and the like.

The touchscreen UI displays the fax feature front and center, which is beyond my understanding considering we are living in 2020. Other than that it's well thought out and easy to use. Can recommend.

View attachment 3558455

I have a small Brother laser printer, and it's been the most low-effort printer I've ever owned. It just...works. No paper jams, no weird errors, no strange software...

 

[gaasc]

My employer is swapping phones, which means my old company phone is now mine

64GB iPhone XS Max.

 

[93Flareside]

My employer is swapping phones, which means my old company phone is now mine

64GB iPhone XS Max.

Nice! I still call that model name “Xtra Small Max.”

 

[Perc]

Once upon a time, there was a tax return. ?

I was just going to get the air pump, because I tend to never be arsed to check my tires and maybe that will change now. I was pawing the chainsaw when the salesman started talking about knocking €100 off the €399 it lists for on their own site, so it was a done deal.

Pros: I can store it in my flat without the smell of fuel (and the fire hazard) and it’s obviously quiet and there’s no cord ripping and swearing.

Cons: i need to remember to take the battery out when there are kids around. For a tool this dangerous it’s way too easy to “start”.

View attachment 3558096

It took me a while but I finally got to put the chainsaw to use. It did fine for taking care of windfalls, the largest being slightly thicker than the bar on the Makita. My 2-3 year old 4Ah batteries didn't last very long though, power dropped off rather quickly and you could feel the batteries getting warm after making like 10 cuts of that size. This was at full "throttle" and cutting through the wood as fast as the saw could manage.

I'll going to need some new batteries for my collection anyway at some point, so I'll probably get a pair of 5Ah ones. I should really have picked up one of those deals they had last spring with a 2x18V push mower, a dual charger and a pair of 5Ah batteries for more or less the price of the batteries alone. Buying just the batteries (179€ at the hardware store next to work) feels like such a ripoff now.

 

[93Flareside]

It took me a while but I finally got to put the chainsaw to use. It did fine for taking care of windfalls, the largest being slightly thicker than the bar on the Makita. My 2-3 year old 4Ah batteries didn't last very long though, power dropped off rather quickly and you could feel the batteries getting warm after making like 10 cuts of that size. This was at full "throttle" and cutting through the wood as fast as the saw could manage.

I'll going to need some new batteries for my collection anyway at some point, so I'll probably get a pair of 5Ah ones. I should really have picked up one of those deals they had last spring with a 2x18V push mower, a dual charger and a pair of 5Ah batteries for more or less the price of the batteries alone. Buying just the batteries (179€ at the hardware store next to work) feels like such a ripoff now.

I’m coming to the realization now with my Milwaukee M12 drill. Batteries are from the first M12 drill that died a firey/Smokey death by the motor dying. I kept the batteries and got a new drill. The original set is from 2010 when I was doing seamless gutters. One of battery housings are cracked because I dropped one off a 3 story house. It slid off the roof and took a dive. Somehow, still works.

 

[Tram]

As I already announced in the Random thoughts [Tech Edition] thread, I recently bought a used Dell Precision T3610 workstation for 182€ shipped. How did I achieve that? Well, the GPU is, to be fair, utter shite. It has Nvidia Quadro NVS 295 graphics, which are, to be honest, good for absolutely nothing nowadays. Also, as far as userbenchmark.com is concerned, I could do with a better SSD as well, but that's less of a problem:

Anyway, the specs are as following:

• Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 processor @ 3.70 Ghz, 3.90 GHz turbo boost
• 16GB DDR3 1866 MHz RAM (presumably registered ECC, I didn't check yet - they are four 4GB sticks in total of eight RAM spots, though)
• Aforementioned Nvidia Quadro NVS 295 GPU with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
• 100GB Dell SSD + a 500GB WD HDD
• 685W power supply unit

I am planning to get a better GPU as soon as the finances allow, and upgrade the storage and boot drives once it becomes necessary, but this being my very first desktop PC, I think I did well. Everything I tested so far seems to work, I didn't check some thing such as most of the I/O or the hard drive health. Hopefully, it will last me through uni, and do things my laptop can't do once the GPU is upgraded. Also, I'll be uprgrading the components as my finanaces allow and as my uni tasks require.

One thing I am curious about, a friend told me to upgrade the CPU cooler, as the processor TDP is quite high. I'll be changing the thermal paste soon, but from what I saw, it has a pretty beefy CPU cooler already. I'll post a pic of it in Random thoughts [Tech Edition] once I check the insides again.

 

[Matt2000]

That's a great base for a gaming machine, as any modern Precision would be. Unless you want to carry it around that is, the T7600 at work dwarfs the other Precision and Optiplex machines we have.

Look up the price of a replacement power supply now so it isn't a surprise later, they don't go wrong very often but we had a shock at work when we had several T3500 PSUs die quickly and they're unique, this one has a card edge connector to make it removable too so there are no off-the-shelf alternatives.

I'd be surprised if the cooler needs upgrading, these machines are made to crunch numbers. Our i7 was hammered constantly with 3D rendering up until recently and never had an issue. If it gets loud then it might be a sign that it needs an upgrade.

 

[Perc]

With the COVID situation getting worse where I live, I figured that Zoom meetings would continue to be a thing for the foreseeable future. I've been in too many meetings recently where participants look like they're streaming from a fridge freezer from 1977 that's connected to the internet via a teletype machine. Here's me doing my part to improve things.

Decent quality webcams have been unobtainium since spring but last weekend I found a place that had a handful of Logitech C922's and I yoinked one before they went out of stock again. It has a tripod mount and even came with a surprisingly solid little tabletop tripod that I'm assuming is for the customers that aren't wearing clothes during their online meetings.

And yes, every device I own has at the very least one camera in it, EXCEPT the Lenovo monitor my laptop is tethered to most of the time.