- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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I don’t have subscriptions for anything or license keys. What are people doing?
I remember Microsoft revoking my license keys for a 2011 Office Suite disk which were supposed to be a one-time purchase. Since then I gave them the middle finger and installed pirated copies on every single family member’s device.
They could have had a loyal lifetime customer but broke my trust and now they have a full family of non-customers.
Consuming. Blindly.
Not self hosting
‘When you sigh and flip open your laptop to maybe do some work, you find that your software products refuse to even launch, as they absolutely needed to refresh their license key verification this instant. Feeling mildly upset by their accusations of you having pirated their over-priced software after forking over so much cash each month, you slam the laptop shut again. This is when you realize that your project files are stored safely on the now unreachable cloud storage account anyway.’
- Good thing most of those products have a viable free/open alternative, plus you can still store stuff locally on a PC, you don’t have to put everything on the cloud.
No, but for example, Office can be replaced by LibreOffice (and the EU is trying to do just that), Adobe CS can be replaced by GIMP or Krita, Inkscape, RawTherapee or Darktable, and Kdenlive for PS, Illustrator, Lightroom, and Premiere/AfterEffects respectively, Maya or 3DSMax can be replaced by Blender, and even Windows itself can be replaced by some Linux distro or alternatively BSD; PC as a platform isn’t locked to Windows, and you’re not locked into proprietary software generally, work contracts or more esoteric stuff which doesn’t have a viable free/open alternative notwithstanding.
Also, you can still technically buy new cameras and camcorders, although new camcorders have for the most part shifted to the pro video market nowadays, plus there’s always the used market, and you can still build a custom PC although that market has been getting squeezed out by rampant overpricing and the effective evaporation of entry-level parts, plus you can still buy physical music/movies and the gear to play them on.
And film of all things has been seeing a resurgence as a creation medium lately.
I’ve been out of the camera and camcorder scene for a while now since I’ve been happy with the ones I’ve bought over 10 years ago, but I heard about some cameras that require apps on your phone to even work. I think it was the Insta or DJI cameras. That’s pretty wild. I hope point and shoots and mirrorlesses aren’t like that because I was looking into to getting a new one soon.
Mirrorless and P&S cameras should still be able to work without an app. Also, there’s always used SLRs.
I’m currently looking for a dependable MP3 player that is not $800.
I had a Sansa Fuse about a decade + ago.
Is there an issue with getting a used smartphone with no service and a headphone jack?
I might just do this. I was hoping for something a little smaller. I might use a rooted android phone and use a minimalist launcher.
Are you saying the one you have in mind is 800 bucks or is that your budget?
That was a typo. I meant to say NOT $800. Sony Walkman has options from $3600 to $400. I want to spend under $100, but I don’t want garbage either.
It’s not particularly high end, but I fairly recently bought a Mixxtape MP3 player for $60 new and it works well and can play as a cassette. The gimmick is wacky (but does work), but I mostly got it because I had to switch to a phone without a headphone jack and I wanted something small and inexpensive.
What the hell is even that?! It’s an mp3 player that doubles as a cassette adaptor. That’s wild
Get a used iPod. Load it with RythmBox, swap the hard drive for a few hundred gigs of SD cards and you’re golden.
I want Bluetooth though
Okay This is after 5 minutes of Googling. There are a few cheaper options out there.
This is all secondhand, but people seem to like Shanling as a brand
Check out Tangara https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara
This is exactly what I want. This would be so cool. I’m weary of crowd funding and you can’t buy it anyway.
FiiO has some that aren’t super pricey (they run a range, their entry level stuff is usually really affordable), their amps and DACs are pretty solid in my experience so I’d totally look into one, second hand would definitely be an option there too.
Just throwing it in there that none of my Fiio DACs or amps help up over time, especially with the more portable models. Maybe the build quality is better on their higher end models, but I’m definitely not buying any more of their stuff.
I like the echo mini. It looks like a cassette player
