Ask Lemmy

A controller frame for my phone. I'm now carrying around a DS, N64, PS1, SNES, and GBA with me everywhere I go. I'm looking forward to adding Gamecube and PS2 and 3 to the list in the future. I can also play PC games in my bed, but can't quite take that around with me because it's streaming from my PC.

Smart oven + meal plan: My spouse bought me one for my birthday (a Tovala) and I have to admit I was skeptical at first but hot diggity damn does it make fresh cooked meals easy. We very rarely order out now and the meals are usually very good (stay away from the burgers though, their bread usually sucks).

Upgrading my computer's primary storage from a hard disk (HDD) to a solid state drive (SSD). Really young folks on here have no idea how amazing it was for computers to go from taking minutes to start up to taking seconds.

Buying my first cell phone, which was a Nokia smartphone, in 2003. Having email and useful applications in my pocket, including maps and web search.

Bidet attachment for a toilet. Absolute life changer.

Bidet. Not even the fancy ones. Like the cheap ones that are no more than $20-30. Every poop, I've got a squeaky clean butthole.

A countertop water boiler, I have one of the Zojirushi 4 liter units. It turns out I drink 3/4 of a gallon of tea or so per day. So not having to boil a kettle for every round is oddly luxurious.

A goddamn dishwasher. I used to wash a lot of dishes by hand growing up so it took until my 30's before i realized that dishwashers are a wonderful invention.

Steam deck finally got me working through my steam backlog again.

Might have played everything before I die now

Internal SSD with the operating system on it. No other upgrade I've made to my PC has ever been so substantial.

Wireless ear buds.

I was pretty adamant that I was absolutely never going to get any, preferring wired and really looking for a phone that still had the jack. Then when new phone time came, I ended up having to choose between a micro sd card slot and the headphone jack. I tried for a bit with a USB-C to headphone adapter but ended up seeing some ear buds on sale and giving them a shot.

They last way longer than I expected, and the carrying case as the charger means I hardly need to worry about keeping another device charged. The freedom of not having the cord is really nice, especially when going for a bike ride or jog. I upgraded to a pair with a little over-the-ear hook and use them probably 10hrs a day every day they are great

Constant Glucose Monitors compared to the archaic finger stick monitors was like getting a blow job after spending a lifetime hacking it with sandpaper.

Lighting system as a wake up tool.

Have now been using a light or lighting system as a morning wake up for over 15 years. It’s life changing.

Lights start off dim and red/orange, and brighten very slowly to warm white. Works every time.

I wake up without the jolt of an alarm at home.

In fact - automated lighting in general - just so good.

A raspberry pi.

Installed Pihole on it and now get almost no ads on all devices at home.

iPhone 1.0. I was notoriously good at getting lost cause I'm not great with directions. A couple days after I got it, I was going somewhere in a city that isn't my own. I stepped off the train and pulled up the map app, looked at a couple of street signs, and said, "I'm going that way."

I thought to myself, this changes everything. Younger people who never had to rely on paper maps will never understand how profound that moment was.

Recently, my car. I was driving around a 2006 and recently got a 2024. A backup camera is amazing. The collision detection, touch display, and Bluetooth are a nice bonus also.

64gb of ram. 32 cores.

if you keep many chonky applications open it's lovely.

Getting a second monitor for my work computer gave me a 30% boost in my productivity.

Electric blanket!

It's not high tech, but it's so good.

Linux?

Microwave, I never had one, because, I never wanted to eat ultra-processed microwaved food.

But now , I use it all the time:

1. to reheat my tea
2. cook my vegetable (since I learn they retain more element being microwaved than cook)
3. I can stock on pure frozen product, tuna , salmon, raspberry... and eat them when I want without being afraid of spoilage.

So now all my meal are more healthy just because of microwave, which seems counterintuitive, but is true.

Besides upgrading to an SSD like another person said, I guess an electronic pressure cooker was a pretty sweet upgrade. It's incredibly multi purpose, cuts cooking time dramatically, allows me to walk away and forget about cooking with no consequence, and often only requires cleaning a single pot for an entire meal.

Like ya know those old TV ads for kitchen gadgets that try desperately to convince you it'll change your life, but you never actually use them? An electronic pressure cooker is one the few cooking gadgets that actually lives up to the hype.

Affordable solar panels and batteries. With this we were able to life off-grid surrounded by nature.

Wireless noise cancelling headphones and earbuds.

I was reluctant to pay $400 for a gimmick but holy shit, once I did they became my most treasured possessions. Then I got buds for $400.

If we are talking cost per hour of use, they might be the most cost-effective tech I own

Haven't seen this in this thread yet, but I'm going to say an improved sound system. For me, it was just a soundbar and rear speakers. I live in a tiny apartment so couldn't fit a full sound system with front speakers, but just that was a huge improvement over just the TV speakers before.

Bicycle technology. Suddenly I could travel three times the speed of walking for the same effort.