r/TechNook

I usually try to keep my phones for as long as possible, my last one lasted me 4-5 years before I finally upgraded to an iphone 16 in 2024. Tbh I didn't feel the need to replace it just because newer models were coming out every year. As long as the battery was still usable, I was happy to keep using my old one, I just needed the upgrade since 64gb of storage wasn't really for me and I don't want to keep relying on iCloud storage.

How many years do you usually keep a phone before upgrading?

Tbh I'd take the thicker phone without even thinking twice, I don't really get why phone companies are obsessed with making phones thinner when battery life is something people actually complain about every day. I'd happily carry a slightly chunkier phone if it means I could go 3 days w/o charging.. Though thinner phones look great and are convenient since they don't weigh that much on your wrist but meh I don't want to charge every night. Which one are you picking?

I have a laptop that's basically plugged in 24/7 and I still turn it off every night unless I forget to then I just usually restart it, but I know people who basically never shut their PCs down lol like just how? I get that leaving your PC in sleep move overnight but I'm always a little surprised when someone says their computer has been running for more than a week straight, at that point I'm wondering just how high their electricity bill is...

When the remote loses its responsiveness or the battery power is low, tapping on the remote with your hand will almost certainly bring it back to responsiveness.

What physical phenomenon takes place in the remote when this is done?

Imagine buying a game today and finding out you can't play it 10 years from now because the servers have shut down

We're seeing more games depend on online accounts, launchers, authentication servers and live services, even when people have already paid for them. once a company pulls the plug, some games become practically useless

Physical copies don't always solve this either if the game needs a download or an online check to work

Do you think games should be required to offer an offline version before their servers shut down, or is that unrealistic?

Everything works so smoothly when all your devices are from the same brand.

Then you try switching to something else and realize how much stuff you've tied to that ecosystem lol.

Anyone actually managed to switch without regretting it?

Watching an old movie on a modern tv can look strangely smooth, almost like someone filmed it recently on a cheap digital camera.

A lot of TVs have motion interpolation, where they generate extra frames between the real ones. It can make movement look smoother, but it can also give films that weird soap opera look.

The funny thing is you buy a nice tv to watch a movie and then have to dig through five menus to make it stop inventing frames the director never filmed

Installing a game from five CDs and sitting there waiting for it to tell you when to swap the disc.

And if you put the wrong one in, back you go.

Kids now will never know that struggle lol.

Taking the software applications such as VLC, WinRAR and 7-Zip, these have been here for decades and yet they have not forced advertisements, advertisement software bundling, or even monthly subscription fees on users.

Most of the time, almost all modern desktop application programs get bought up, cluttered with banners, or even converted into cloud subscriptions. These are the applications that just keep surviving in their pure forms. While I acknowledge that people donate money to the developers, but just donation money cannot cover the costs. How does this happen?

Processor: 2.3 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M

macOS Big Sur 11.7.10

I would greatly appreciate any recommendations you might have.

There are some game glitches i've seen so many times that they don't even feel like glitches anymore

Skyrim's flying horses, gta's weird ragdoll physics, pokemon's missingno, melee's wavedashing, old fps rocket jumps

Some of these bugs became so well known that removing them would almost feel wrong

Which game glitch became part of the game's identity for you?

They are great displays and AD machine but genuinely suck at being a standard old school TV

With the seeming ubiquity of cloud storage and fast internet connections, as well as rising prices of storage, does anybody still carry external drives or flash drives?

I have a few older HDDs that i used throughout school to backup full system images, files, photos, etc., it was just the way I’d grown up and what I’d seen my dad do. I actually still have them. But as I got new devices I also got much larger integrated storage in them and got a little bit lazier, so I haven’t really used them in quite some time though I have debated getting an external ssd to store/backup photos onto across devices. Thinking of just keeping it in my bag along with my laptop the same way I used to with my HDD’s, (also used to have some desktop that stayed at home, along with a NAS and things like that) but prices and lack of “need” make me hesitate.

As for flash drives I also used to basically constantly have one on me throughout school. Whether it was for quick document transfers, using a printer, storing important files I could access, even having an encrypted file with my passwords, I just always had one on me. I kinda miss it, but struggling to see if it would have any utility in my daily life now. Also see though that it could be one of those things that when I actually need it could save me.

I even remember having plenty of SD cards and micro SD cards and even Sony memory stick pros I kept in a little box, along with a little usb universal adapter so then I’d use them in the same was as a flash drive.

So just wondering, do people still regularly use these technologies or carry them around? What is y’all’s use case? Or have most just moved to large local storage and/or cloud storage technologies? (The latter is something I struggle with because I just hate everything being some form of subscription but that’s a separate discussion)