the ones in my local Sainsbury’s are really good
when they’re not broken 😐

can I suggest the modern motorcar? so f*cking full of useless tech. far far more than is necessary.

Self service checkouts – I used one once – now being a good little greenie I go by bike and carry a rucksack. I had to load the stuff into aplastic bag then once checked out transfer it all into the rucksack. The till thingy would not let me load straight into the rucksack or not use a placcy bag. Now that irritated me.

Sat Nav? Try a map instead.

Electronic books – for God’s sake, no.

Personal Organiser? Got one, it’s called a diary.

God, I’m getting old.

Personal Organiser? Got one, it’s called a diary.

Mine’s made by Nokia, much better – if I ever lose it it’s fully backed up on my PC 🙂

Good point, well made. PC’s you say, never catch me using one of those new fangled things……………. 😀

LOL, can’t believe how much trouble people seem to have with those self-service checkouts.

I use one every day (I get my lunch from Tescos). Never had an issue with it. Use my own bags without problem. Pay by card for small amounts without any tutting. Much faster than dealing with a RealPerson™

we would never get self service checkouts here in China. Since there is very little welfare system in place, the Government tell companies how many people they have to employ, based on the amount of customers they have. More customers = more staff to serve you.
I’ve been into shops where there are more staff then customers.. now that can get annoying 😯

I like self serve and Sainsburys fast track even beter as you can load up your bags as you go. What i find anoying is where they take a product that works and manage to replace it with 5 different things that never do quite what you are looking for.

FFS get a life

Shouldn’t that be FFS sake get a life?

lol out loud

RAS syndrome

The thing that annoys me about the self service checkouts at tesco is that if i am buying a croissant i go to C for croissant and its there, then i want to put my almond croissant (yes i like croissants) through and it’s not under C for croissant, so i look under A for almond and its not there either so i have to go through the entire alphabet to find out what they call it….ahh of course F for fresh bakery produce or whatever. One the plus side i now just put everything through as a bread roll thus saving myself time AND money

Anybody mentioned Electronic toilet doors on trains yet?
Those are brilliant!

Tesco self service checkouts are pointless. Tried to use one the other day as the normal queue was half way around the shop. First couple of items went in OK then I tried to buy a small bag of salad. I scanned it and put it in the bag – PUT ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. I just have. I take the salad out and put it back in again – PUT ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. I rearrange the bag to make sure the weight is evenly distributed. PUT ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. I give up and go and join everyone else in the normal queue.

Retro. They are indeed brilliant. We were on a train up to Glasgow. It was rammed so we sat in the corridor outside one of those contraptions. A bloke walked up and opened the doors to reveal a rather attractive young lady stood there with her trolly’s around her ankles. It perked up a boring journey no end 🙂

In-car satellite navigation.

Not just for its shitey nomme de plume or the way that people automatically assume you have it when giving you an address, but for encouraging otherwise capable people to behave like my mum when confronted with a requirement to travel between two locations, and THEN, THEN endlessly complain about it!!

I accept not everyone is blessed with my faultless natural sense of direction and coolness under pressure, but honestly, come on. Real men use the position of the sun during the day and the location of star constellations at night* with the occasional glance at a map, for fun. We don’t ask for directions, and we certainly don’t need a small machine to make them for us.

WTF are these people going to do when civilisation collapses under the combined weight of climate change and economic unrest? Real men skills will be needed then, not a small electronic device that can’t follow you into the bath and come out working. They’ll be screwed. And they’ll be eaten first.

* on cloudy nights we stay put or only travel to places we already know the way to.

SatNav only winds me up under certain conditions…

1. When I type in a postcode and do not get offered the name of the or when it has no concept of a house name rather than a number. Great when trying to find someplace in the middle of utter **** nowhere in the sticks, where house numbers do not exist and have not for centuries.

2. When people treat the **** things as gospel and drive their expensive Mercs/Audis/BMWs into streams, rivers, lakes, gorges etc because they refuse to believe that technology can lie to them and _never_ use their own common sense to tell them that they might be going slightly wrong the wrong way.

heard something along these lines on tv the other day….

“five blade razors, brilliant arnt they, the first one shaves you, the next one shaves a bit closer, the next a bit closer, etc etc.

strikes me, you only really need the last blade?”

Technology for technology’s sake?
-UK love for CCTV
-Speed cameras instead of traffic police
-Segways
-Brain shock
-Dyson airblade
-Windows Vista
-Audi Q7

also.
crap functions on hardware.

does anyone play the miriad of games that come “pre installed” on any Operating system, or phone or anything?

voice recorders on phones?
mobile TV on phones?
all this CRAP that no one uses.
and my calender on my computer (at work this is) wont sync to my work phone, because the phone only accepts nokia calender entries or something.
which makes the useful concept of work related reminders on ones work phone totally defunct!

calls please, and txts from time to time….
thats, about IT!

I love the Airblade… it’s cool and much better than ordinary dryers 😀

I’m just wondering if the iPhone fits into both the best and worst categories… Still can’t decide whether to get one to replace my Nokia e61 yet.

Any help gratefully received from the STW masses by the way.

OK It does use less power, I will give em that. But they reckon a normal drier takes 27 seconds to dry? Hmmm.
And what’s this:
“Power Consumption Per Use: 4.44 watts” Makes no sense James!
Typical ugly plastic dyson design though, and so damn noisy!

Asda self service sh1te when I want to quickly buy beer on a Friday night and put it in my rucksack, its worth killing someone at Walmart head office for that sh1t.

And when you finish fannying around with it, after having to scan your own stuff, get the woman to approve your age, then finally come over and reset it with her key because it won’t let you use your own bag, it says “Thank you for using the fast lane!”. Utter arse.

The new iPhone has a couple
-Video editing on it. Pretty sure if you NEED to edit a video, you’ll find a better way
– Magnetic compass on the iPhone. It has satnav, if you need a compass, buy one from a camping shop and save 200 quid.

I’m a huge fan of the category “We did this to make your life easier, but in reality know it makes it MUCH harder”. Current favourite is my local council who won’t let me pay my council tax bill unless I have the relevant number. Their excuse is the system is designed with data protection in mind and won’t let them add a payment unless I have the number, irrespective of whether I can tell them who I am, where I live, when I moved in, when I last paid etc. Apparently it could be “DISASTROUS” if they allowed me to pay without the relevant reference number.

– Magnetic compass on the iPhone. It has satnav, if you need a compass, buy one from a camping shop and save 200 quid.

But the reason a lot of satnav things suck for anything other than driving, is because they haven’t got a compass it it. A compass makes total sense for walking directions, finding your way on a bike and other things where you’re likely to not be following a completely predefined route. The real question is why the hell do people build GPS units / gps phones and not stick a compass in there, given how small and cheap a digital compass is.

Joe

I like Tesco self serve checkouts. We call them the “Buy one get one free checkouts” in our house.

parking ticket machines. put money in get ticket…you would have though, oh no, put money in TYPE IN LICENCE PLATE NO, then press hidden button, then wait, slightly too long so you think it’s broken, and then get ticket.

All to stop you passing a parking ticket on to some-one else, a nice friendly thing to do, that costs them what a couple of quid…bastids

Facebook/Bebo et al – keeping you in touch with those people that you thought never have to see again just so you can tell them interesting facts like “I just had a w@nk watching the One Show”

LOL, best thing anyones said on here in a long time!!!

I think self service tills are a rite of passage in some way, they seem to confuse all sorts of people. The only problem I’ve ever found with them was with dodgy bar codes, then someone is along swiftly to sort that. Perfik – I dont have to queue for ages, answer whether I want a hand packing, make polite but pointless conversation etc.

Dyson airblades – absolutely rock. Work a treat, look a lot more hygenic and clean than the skanky white enammelled things normally there, full of spit and chewy, and since evap occurs primarily by air motion rather than heat its a winner all round.

Sat navs – not pointless, they mean you dont have to stop for map reading all the time, and thats handy. Rarely use one though.

The new iPhone has a couple
-Video editing on it. Pretty sure if you NEED to edit a video, you’ll find a better way

Yeah, but EVERY video needs editing and the whole point is you can shoot the video of you lighting your own farts, edit it and then upload it to YouTube within a matter of minutes, all on the same device.

i usually go with the arguement that user error is the cause of “computer says no” but in the case of the tesco self serve what are you supposed to do when the bag you are packing is full. when you move it computer has a fit and refuses to do anything else gaaarrrgggghhh. 9 times out of ten that i use them something causes a pain in the hole.

the tesco self service petrol pumps are great though i have not been inside a petrol station shop in years it really puzzles me to see people go inside, wait in big Q then pay by card anyway without buying anything else. i’ll pass any compliments about these on as my bro wrote the original software 🙂

In a departure from Tescos…

For me it would be a project I was on to replace a fax machine in Payroll with eFax.
They demanded that we do it, it cost a fair bit, as projects do, complete with 3rd party contracts the lot – costs more than the maintenance on the old fax machine.
Now when they are faxed they get a nice email instead containg a PDF.
… which they print out and file (legal reasons).

Why bother?

Heard a story whilst in the RAF about NASA spending $$$$$$$ to develop a pen that could write in a weightless environment. The ink was meant to be propelled from the pen by Nitrogen gas.

LMAO when the USSR solved the problem of writing in space…….by using a pencil. 🙄

i hate those speed limit signs that light up

especially the ‘eco’ solar powered ones!

moan moan moan, it must be early

and the whole point is you can shoot the video of you lighting your own farts, edit it and then upload it to YouTube within a matter of minutes

…which just goes to show that atlaz was right; technology for technology’s sake.

Heard a story whilst in the RAF about NASA spending $$$$$$$ to develop a pen that could write in a weightless environment. The ink was meant to be propelled from the pen by Nitrogen gas.

LMAO when the USSR solved the problem of writing in space…….by using a pencil

Except the story’s not true, you really don’t want pencil shavings (with lovely conductive graphite) floating around your spaceship…

Real story
More…

Those self service checkouts have one (Sort of) basic problem – They are too complicated. There’s no need for them to talk to you, they react very slowly, they take up too much space.

We were in the USA a few years ago, and they hadn’t been installed in the UK at the time, but over there they were fairly common, and looked a bit old and worn in some places. The American ones are very simple, don’t have a big posh (Windoze) driven desktop, don’t talk, and you can swipe your goods as fast as you can pick them up. In short, they work very well.

Ours are just too complicated for their own good….

Oh I just thought of another:
-genetic engineering