If you look on Amazon, you’ll see tons of back braces and posture correctors. Many of them rebranded but the same item. Not only that but all of them with tons of 5 star ratings. And those 5-star ratings are fake. It’s pretty easy to tell, often times the reviews are all around the same time period of a few days or the same month. Sometimes they sprinkle them out more evenly, but often times it seems a bit fishy. Many reviewers even admit to being given the product for free to review, so of course they are going to give it 5 stars, because many times they are given a gift card also, that they don’t tell anyone.
Possibly Amazon’s Biggest Scam – Back Braces and Posture Correctors
December 9th, 2019Posted in Web
We’ve Entered The Dark Ages of Operating Systems
November 29th, 2019Posted in Computers
With Windows 7 being discontinued, I feel we are entering the dark ages of operating systems or at least desktop computing. I hate Windows 10, because of telemetry/spying, the slowness, the UI, the forced reboots, settings lost. The interface is a mix of typical Windows and the Metro design, none of which matches up. Metro is way too minimalistic and confusing. Windows 10 has ads and crap dumped everywhere I don’t want. I had to use it at work and was in the middle of typing and the message came up asking if I wanted to reboot, but I was typing and hit the “Enter” key when it popped up by coincidence as I making a new paragraph. And guess what, it took that as a yes and rebooted and starting installing updates, forcing me to lose my work and waste time, while it did its thing. So with Windows 7 going away, I’m forced to ask myself, now what?
Mac
- Expensive machines
- Limited upgrades if any (meaning the life of the machine is hampered big time, for no reason other than profit)
- Forced to buy a machine with the highest specs because no upgrades are allowed because everything is soldered to the board
- New hardware sucks (keyboards on laptops is bad, easily broken screens from being too thin and fragile, etc)
- Not enough ports (for no reason other than aesthetics)
Linux
- Complicated to troubleshoot, install software
- No professional software support (Office, Adobe Creative Cloud) – This isn’t there fault, but it’s a chicken and the egg type of deal as more people won’t switch over until this happens and companies aren’t going to waste resources until the userbase grows significantly.
I wish I could just keep running Windows 7. And I suppose with a good firewall and antivirus, I could run it for maybe another year or so. But I have to make some kind of decision on what to do. Only solutions I see are:
- Build a Hackintosh
- Use Linux and a Virtual Machine of Windows 7 (that isn’t connected to the internet and has no networking setup)
- Use Linux and VM Thinapps of Microsoft Office, Adobe software, etc
- Dual boot (not likely as I don’t like having to close all my programs every time)
Ikea Desk Hack – Adding Drawers
November 29th, 2019Posted in Uncategorized
These days most computer desks have no drawers or top shelf. This allows for a lot of versatility since the days where people only had 1 big monitor are gone. With multiple monitors, its hard to put shelves above a desk as it might not have a big enough space. Plus there is no storage. I recently bought some under the desk sliding drawers to put under my desk, 2 infact and its helped keep my desk neater. So if you got a desk from Ikea something like this will work pretty good. I’ve tried to find an adjustable shelf that clamps onto a desk, but with no luck, so shelving probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
Amazon Seller Tactics – Lower the Quality
November 27th, 2019Posted in Web
To be fair this isn’t a tactic only used by Amazon. I’ve seen Walmart lower the quality of products as well. I once bought a magnetic curtain rod about 10 years ago that worked well. Recently I needed a new one, so I bought one that looked exactly like my old one, same brand and design (except for the fancy ends of the rod). However the magnets weren’t even strong enough to hold anything but maybe sheer curtains, making the entire product worthless.
I’ve seen this on Amazon. A seller makes a good product, builds up many high ratings and good reviews, then after a year or two or three, they change the manufacturing to reduce their costs. However this also ruins the quality as cheaper materials or workmanship is used. And the product no longer lasts as long or breaks easily.
Amazon’s Search Has Been Broken For Over 15 Years
November 26th, 2019Posted in Web
Amazon‘s search has sucked for over 15 years. Even when I pick the proper category and try sorting it by price it still won’t sort by price. Somehow everyone has just learned to deal with it and accept it and despite it all, they are successful. I often find I have to swim in the pool of copyright infringed, counterfeits, inauthentic pool of products varying in price even though I set it to sort by price, it still randomly dumps them out of order.