A Mythbuster's Biggest Tech Headaches (and Solutions)

An anonymous reader writes "The Mythbusters' Jamie Hyneman shares his top tech annoyances. Hyneman runs down the little things that bug him about everything from tools (exotic chargers) to cars (useless features). He also notes that there's a lot of room for improvement on PC desktops: 'In addition to being buggy ... extra features tend to bog down your system by demanding more processing power and memory. Computer-makers: Don't load up operating systems with features and then make us sweat to figure out how to get rid of the fat ... There's another solution available to consumers: Switch to a Linux-based OS such as Ubuntu. Since most Linux OSs are free, there's no business reason to bloat up the system with feature frills.'"

Deliberate

[Sloppy]

Most of these annoyances are very deliberate. HDMI is intended to be non-interoperable and failure-prone. OEM Windows preloads contain extra bloatware because bloatware makers paid to have their crap installed. Tools use nonstandard battery packs, in order to sell proprietary replacement packs.

These aren't engineering failures. They are just examples of products that are made to serve interests other than the user's.

Re:Ubuntu no better

[KublaiKhan]

Because it ships as non-bloated, and you have to add the bloat yourself, mostly.

I have to say that I've been fairly impressed with Ubuntu thus far. It seems fairly stable and reliable, and the little update widget is remarkably painless, and has only insisted on a reboot a couple of times (for things like kernel changes). Add to that the ability to get software to do just about everything I want to do with either apt-get, synaptic, or that add/remove programs thingy, and there's no more dependency hell. I wouldn't call myself a 'fanboy' exactly...but I -am- fond of it.

Re:Deliberate

[Kaptain Kruton]

He wasn't describing them as "engineering failures." He was describing them as annoying or troublesome when used for his purposes. There is a big difference.

Re:Things will be getting simpler, and are already

[Technician]

In my car I tossed the 12V "cigarette lighter" from the dash to the truck. I also increased its power from a small 5A fuse to a 10A fuse, so I can run a reasonably sized 120V inverter (also in the trunk) to power a few devices on-the-go.


Drawing twice the power than the wire was fused for is a good way to need another car soon. Unless you also upgraded the wire, I wouldn't recommend changing the fuse size.

I have a reasonably sized inverter in my trunk also, next to the battery. 1KW will power most anything except hair dryers you care to bring along.

At home, we have a DC run throughout the house wherever we upgraded our power,

This is not a good idea. Volts X Amps = Watts in DC circuits. To run a 100 watt laptop cross the house on 12 volts with less than 10% voltage drop requires a huge wire. Do the math.

http://www.otherpower.com/cgi-bin/webbbs/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=6346 [otherpower.com]

Don't forget a 50 foot cord is a 100 foot DC path.

To cut your loss in the wire by 100 as in a 10$ loss is now a 0.1% loss, go from 12 volts to 120 volts. That is the simple reason for the big inverter in the trunk. I can run a 100 foot 14 AWG extension cord and have less than 1% voltage drop in the cord to a 100 Watt laptop.

From the page "14AWG = .00297 ohms / foot". Doing the math, a 100 foot 14 gauge extension cord is 200 feet of wire with a resistance of .00297 ohms per foot. 0.00297 X 200 = 0.594 ohms. To get 100 Watts at the far end of the wire at 12 volts, you need to deliver 8 and 1/3 amps. That amprage going on that almost .6 ohm wire will have a voltage loss of 0.594 X 8.3333 or 4.9499 volts. To get 12 volts out, you need to put in 12 + 4.9499 volts. Volts X Amps in the wire is the power lost.. Let's see, lost 4.94 volts along 200 feet while carying 8.3333 amps. That's 41 Watts. In short to drive a 100 watt load, you toss out almost 1/3rd of your power in the wire.

Now using the same cord and laptop but now using 120 volts. Instead of needing 8.3333 amps for the 100 watts, we now need 1/10 of that or 0.8333 amps. Our voltage loss is now 1/10th what it was or 0.49499 volts at 1/10th the current. We now lose 1/100th the power in the wire we were before while still delivering 100 watts to the laptop. Now the wire has a loss of 0.41 Watts. I don't need to boost anything to make up for it.

I'm shocked that more devices aren't standardizing on DC. 18V, 5A+, not a big deal -- but so many devices could use it (charging tools, video games, cell phones, even some computer monitors). Simple, without needed ANOTHER heat-generating and wasting transformer. My laptop is DC, too, yet I need the darned transformer throughout the house.

Do the math and you won't be shocked at all. I would rather lose 5 watts in a laptop power supply than 40 watts in the 50 foot wire from the battery fuse box to the laptop.

I've standardized on 120 VAC for almost everything. As a bonus, I don't have to buy special 12 volt CF bulbs at $15 each. I can use the buck a bulb ones instead. It's all about saving money. A 1 KW inverter is chaep and can be located very close to the battery to keep loss minimum in the low voltage wire.

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11234952&search=inverter&Mo=13&cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-US&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Sp=S&N=5000043&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=P_CatalogNam [costco.com]

Re:Annoying cars

[Beefslaya]

Just purchased a 2001 Subaru Forester.

1. I can change the plugs, wires, ignition module, fuses, relays, sensors, alternator...and other various devices and gadgets. Because they are on top of the engine compartment, or placed within easy reach behind the dash.
2. I can open the hood, and actually see the ground by looking on either side (you would have to remove the skid protector on the front, but if you did you could see the ground). Plenty of room.
3. I can change the oil myself because the oil filter is conveniently located in the front of the engine within arms reach.
4. I can do most of the vehicle maintenance and repairs with 4 tools or less. (10-12mm sockets, #2 Phillips screwdriver, and a can of WD-40)

I test drove many newer Subaru's before this one and noticed that not many changes have been made to this design. All the same...2.5L H4 Boxer engine (turbo chargers may add some extra fiddling due to the extra goodies on the intakes).

-Fuel efficient
-Tough mechanics
-Plenty of gadgets (heated seats, thermometers, barometers, altimeters, levels, CD changers, cabin air filters) All of these things can be easily done by the consumer if they RTFM and know how to turn a screwdriver.
-Stick with what works

Subaru's are designed this way for easy repairs (because you may not be near your local Subaru dealer when you take the vehicle to the places it is designed to go).

Mr. Hyneman's point is that engineers are neglectful of the needs of their consumers. Subaru has done an excellent job at "keeping it real" on the issue of End User maintenance.

Consumers need to do much more research when it comes to their vehicle purchases.

Standards and poor design choices

[Emetophobe]

His first four points are all about a lack of standards:

1. Cordless tools and equipment--all with different kinds of battery packs and chargers.
2. Flashlights and other small electrical devices that run on exotic batteries.
3. Cellphones that all come with different chargers and power-supply units.
4. AV equipment that has different types of hookups and remote-control protocols.

And his other three points are all about bloat and poor design choices:

5. Computer operating systems loaded with stuff I don't want and will never use.
6. Automobiles with obnoxious electronics.
7. Cars designed to make it tough to do maintenance.

Overall he makes some pretty good points.

In response to his first three complaints, I don't think companies will ever give up their non-standard battery packs... they make too much money on replacement batteries.

As for complaint #4, I thought AV equipment was pretty well standardized already. All of my TV and AV equipment accept the same types of audio cables. I'd agree with his point about remotes though. I've never owned a "universal remote" that "just worked".

In complaint #5, Jamie is mainly complaining about the bloat in Windows (more specifically Vista). I think the problem is that Operating Systems like Windows have to be designed with a wide user base in mind, so they have to have features that only 10% of the users would use. It would be nice if Microsoft actually made a modular OS where I could uninstall everything that I don't use (Outlook and IE for example). I have to give Jamie props for advocating Linux in the article.

Here's a quote from complaint #5 which I totally agree with:

And high-tech companies--stop messing with us on your treadmill of upgrades while making the old stuff obsolete. It may be that any software company that didn't routinely upgrade its product would go out of business. But what if the rest of the world worked this way? Oh, I lost a sock. I need to get a whole new wardrobe because the replacement sock is version 2.0.1, and the stores now only sell version 2.0.3.

His main complaint in #6 is that he doesn't like cars that beep at him to buckle his seatbelt and he doesn't like cars that auto-lock the doors. Personally, I don't mind these features, but I can understand why someone might find them annoying. As for all the other electronics going in cars nowadays, I don't mind them. If you've ever driven in a BMW, you'd probably fall in love with all of the electronics. Whenever I drive in my toyota, I'm constantly adjusting the temperature as it's always fluctuating between too hot or too cold (I can never seem to find that comfort zone). But in a Beamer, I can set the temperature to 22C and forget about it. Some electronics I can live without, like those onboard navigation screens, but others I tend to enjoy.

And finally, complaint #7 is all about poor design choices (in cars). Here's his example of a bad design: "One late-model sedan I worked on required the removal of a front wheel, plus a bunch of other stuff, just to replace the battery". I'm not a mechanic, and I have little to no experience under the hood, but are a lot of cars really designed this poorly? I can't think of any car where I actually had to remove a tire just to change the battery (Does anyone know what car Jamie was talking about?).

Re:Shame he didn't...

[spaceyhackerlady]

A couple of years ago Jamie and Adam did an interview with Slashdot, and they explained that while they would love to do some computer myths, they just don't work on camera. Unless you take a spammer out to the bomb range, I suppose. :-)

I can only think of one computer hardware myth offhand, about CDs fragmenting when CDROM drives spun them too fast.

...laura

Re:Standards and poor design choices

[Anonymous Coward]

I know my 1998 Dodge Stratus requires you to remove the tire to change the battery. Dodge said the advantages are:

1) By keeping the battery away from the heat of the engine it would last longer

2) By moving the battery to the "fender" area the engine compartment is smaller and the passenger compartment is larger

I have not found it annoying. As an engineer I like seeing every bit of space used, I also don't change my own battery anymore. I just go to a car battery store and have them replace the battery. I have better things to do with my time than tinker with the car, though I know some people enjoy it, I tinker with my house.

Re:Shame he didn't...

[sjames]

No, he "posted" it to Popular Mechanics, a magazine frequently read by people who will understand the issue, but may not have encountered Vista or Linux before.

Re:Shame he didn't...

[k_187]

FYI, they did that in an episode. Strapped a CD to an angle grinder to get maximum RPM.

Re:No offence,

[TekPolitik]

What I don't want is my phone to attempt to be a PDA. A phone's screen is not big enough to handle the amount of information I want on the screen (and me able to see it clearly.)

This is a personal bugbear for me too. I'm currently in the market for a PDA. Not a phone/PDA combo - I want to be able to use the PDA while the phone's busy with something else, like allowing me to listen to somebody at the other end of the phone without being on speaker so the quality suffers. The usual suspects are no longer stocking standard PDAs at all.

Re:No offence,

[nwf]

I'm with you -- mini and micro USB is much more standard than the iPod and there's no reason Apple couldn't have used USB instead. It would've possibly cost more, sure, so they did something proprietary like everyone else.

In fact, there is. Getting L+R audio and video can't be done via USB and plug it into a stereo and/or TV with minimal electronics. Plus, there are ways to remote control the iPod via the connector, although I suspect that could be done via USB pretty easily.

I don't think they even had micro USB when the iPod came out, either.

Re:No offence,

[snowraver1]

In 2006 China was looking at standardising the phone charger market.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061219/092747.shtml [techdirt.com]

I am not sure if they were successful or not (but given the plethora of chargers still on the market i'm guessing not). Another note, it is possible to get L+R stereo from a mini USB port (the motorola razr has a dongle that does just that. It should be entirely possible to make a dongle that does video out.

I get so tired of companies pushing thier proprietory solutions when an already established would do the job just fine. (Sony and Apple, I'm looking at YOU!)