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Film equipment is just like that. People ask where the autofocus is on that 50k$ Arri-Zeiss combination and you point at your focus puller loafing around with a coffee in her hand.

Just made for a different kind of gig than your usual consumer grade camera

focus pullers are amazing and underappreciated

> About 8 years ago I bought the cheapest catering/professional microwave/combioven I could get my hands on. I did this because I got tired of consumer units with overcomplicated UIs designed (apparently) by unregenerate misanthropes, rotating dishes that are a pain in the ass to clean, overzealous bleeps that go off every 30 - 60 seconds after a cycle is finished, peeling enamel, corrosion issues, and that are too small on the inside.

See, this is weird. The cheapest microwaves you can get have two dials, one for temp, one for time. Why not buy one of those??

> The cheapest microwaves you can get have two dials, one for temp, one for time. Why not buy one of those??

I imagine two reasons: first, the market seems to have decided that simple microwaves must be small microwaves. If you want to heat anything larger than a bowl of soup you’re gonna forfeit the dials.

Second, most of the time the dials also suck. Want to heat something for 2 minutes 30 seconds? Good luck with that on a cheap microwave that shows minutes in 5mm increments with 2.5mm of play in the dial.

I didn't think of looking at commercial microwaves so I ended up getting the Breville Smooth Wave [1] with its power and time dials. It's ridiculous that the only consumer microwave I could find locally with dials instead of touch controls was also the most expensive one with the exception of the ultra-sleek high end cabinet mounted units.

It's 1.2 cu ft which is on the bigger end and much quieter than the microwaves I'm used to with some sort of ventilation system that keeps going until you've retrieved the food. It's definitely more precise than the cheaper commercial microwaves I've seen without losing any of the "smart sensing" features, if you care for those.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Breville-BMO850BSS1BUC1-countertop-mi...

I was thinking about the cheap microwaves that use a mechanical countdown dial (like a kitchen timer) rather than just dials as a digital control surface.

Miele makes a large, deluxe unit with 2 dials. I like it. https://www.mieleusa.com/e/built-in-microwave-oven-m-6040-sc...

> the market seems to have decided that simple microwaves must be small microwaves.

Maybe I'm living in the wrong area of the world, I've never seen a differently sized microwave no matter the price category. They all are about large enough to fit a decently sized dish. Sure, the pizza from the local place won't fit, but that's not a microwave problem then.

> Want to heat something for 2 minutes 30 seconds?

Not really. In the 15 years I've had my ~$35 microwave (without a single issue I might add) I was never in a situation where I'd need much precision. Not to mention with every microwave, no matter the model, you need to have a feeling for how long to heat what in the first place. A lot of precision comes from that rather than beeping second counters.

> I've never seen a differently sized microwave no matter the price category

A quick look at the Amazon search filters for 'microwave' will tell this story - there are some that would fit the whole pizza and others that wouldn't even take your dinner plate.

> Want to heat something for 2 minutes 30 seconds? Good luck with that on a cheap microwave that shows minutes in 5mm increments with 2.5mm of play in the dial.

No cooking really works like this. Set the microwave timer for 30 minutes and set a timer on your phone for 2 minutes. After two minutes, pull the microwave timer to zero to stop the microwave and check the food. Decide whether or not it needs more time and chuck it back in, pulling the timer to 30 minutes again. After you count off 30-40 seconds in your head, pull the timer to zero and check the food. Rinse/repeat as necessary.

The timer isn't there for anything more than a safety to make sure that the microwave doesn't stay on forever if you forget about it.

You're drastically underestimating the most convenient feature of a microwave: repeatability.

Once you know how long something needs to be cooked and at what level - say, a mug of your favorite soup - you can just throw it in, put in your usual settings, and have something that's ready to eat when it dings[1]. A few seconds either way can be the difference between "needs more time" and "oh dear god my mouth is on fire."

There's a reason one of the first "smart" features microwaves added was customizable presets.

1. This is, incidentally, how microwaves are used in restaurants too. Nobody's guessing.

> After two minutes, pull the microwave timer to zero to stop the microwave and check the food.

Just open the door.

Simple doesn't have to mean poor quality.

I have a Moulinex 800 W microwave with a turntable. It has a non-linear timer dial so that short times are easy to set. Five minutes on that dial is 180 degrees but from then on an extra five minutes is only 20 degrees up to a total of 30 minutes. The power knob is continuous and spans 270 degrees (but the actual power regulation is a simple on off duty cycle control).

I inherited it from my mother thirty years ago and apart from the internal lamp failing it works perfectly.

Moulinex still make microwave ovens with similarly easy controls.

> Simple doesn't have to mean poor quality.

No, but "cheapest" usually does.

I've never seen a microwave with a temperature anything.

A lot of microwaves have a 'wattage' selector. Combo microwave/ovens often do, but they're a bit more upmarket.

They meant power obviously. (Although in practice I think it's actually duty cycle.)

Traditionally, it's been duty cycle to control power output. But there are now also "Inverter Microwave Ovens" available, which can vary the output power continuously.

'designed (apparently) by unregenerate misanthropes'

haha! I try to keep myself to one complaint or less per day, and ten cuss-words or less per day. The days I break my cuss-word quota are the days I use the microwave.

I made sure to buy one with 3 memories and a 10 key pad, it's been fine

Commenting on the „overcomplicated UI“ designs:

It takes quite some research to find single-purpose devices, that are tailored for a specific use case - and are not overburdened with often unused features. There‘s not enough metadata out there on ecommerce sites to filter for that.

Take the microwave example: I‘m happy with the Samsung MWF300G microwave which does just one thing (heating stuff) really well in a very straightforward way:

One haptic dial for duration. One for Watt. And a simple display for time.

Just use the duration dial to set the time. That‘s it. You‘re done by turning your hand just once.

It starts automatically. No start button needed. No program selection. No stop button - just dial it back to zero if needed.

I’ll do you one better a single dial microwave that even my 5yo could use I bought in 2017 [1]

Commercial grade. No rotating dish but still warms everything nicely. Pain for defrost but honestly I just don’t defrost stuff much.

[1] Sharp R-21LCFS Medium Duty Commercial Microwave (Dial Timer, 1000-Watts, 120-Volts) (Update of R-21LCF) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BDF5ZNS

I believe that’s the one I got, too, after looking at basically all the options available. It’s still, I regret to tell you, a terrible product.

First of all, the sound design is criminally bad. Whenever you touch the controls it lets off an obnoxious beep that is way too loud for a home environment. It should of course be completely silent, except a pleasant sound to let you know it is done, and of course, like other reasonably designed home electronics, it should allow you to adjust the volume or turn the sound off completely. (Imagine, for sake of argument, that your iPhone beeped whenever you touched it. It would be bizarre. Why would you want that in a microwave oven?)

Second, the controls are flimsy and glitchy. If I try to increase the time slowly or by a small amount, the value tends to jump erratically up or down by some random amount. I need to firmly push the dial inwards while turning to avoid this.

Third, except for the noise pollution of those beeps, it also brings in more light pollution in my home, through a blue blinking seven-segment display that insists on always showing the current time. This is a bad feature that is irrelevant to the purpose of the microwave, and I would prefer to turn it off.

Finally, I hate the way it looks. Silver-coated plastic, reflective blacks and blue LEDs looks good in a cheap sci-fi flick, not in a home. What’s funny is that the inside actually looks pretty nice, a navy-blue metal with an organic white splatter pattern.

After suffering through the APC and TrippLite crap, I bought a Falcon SSG1.5K UPS a few years ago for my animation workstation and network stuff. It has been fantastic. It does have a fan but it isn't noticeably loud.

https://westwardsales.com/falcon-ssg1.5k-ups

I bought it because the late writer Jerry Pournelle told me to.

https://www.falconups.com/byte6417-final.pdf

https://www.falconups.com/2008Chaos%20Manor%20Award.pdf

This sounds like a testimonial ad for Herbalife.

$50 consumer-grade products are almost always "crap," but you're making a sweeping generalization across dozens of product lines in 2 brands without offering any evidence or proof that you used appropriate products for the task. Fans on most UPSes only kick-in when their inverters run during an outage or a test for cooling.

I happen to have an SMX1500RM2UNC with humidity and dual temperature logging. It's floor or rack mountable, uses commodity batteries in a repairable pack, expandable, remotely manageable, logs details, works like a champ with under-voltage and other edge-case transfer conditions.

A writer is extremely unlikely to be an expert on backup power supplies anymore that I am an expert on coronary cannulas. Appeal to authority or an anecdotal testimonial is flimsy support, at best.

Sorry for your loss, but you might be wandering into the weeds on this one.

I have 3 smx3000rmhv2unc's and 2 of them give an error "battery bus soft start fault", according to the expert:

"I suspect that the metering of the capacitor voltage is slightly wrong on this model of UPS. We've seen this error a few times and the units have performed fine both before and after. Its to do with checking the voltage rise on the cap on power on / battery supply. I think it meters out of tolerance and throws the fault when perhaps either the centerpoint is skewed or the tolerance is too fine."

That's a completely different model for 200V+ operation.

As a home-gamer, this one works for me. :'D

Jerry Pournelle had quite a bit of experience with the guts of computer gear; his first home compter is in the Smithsonian Institution collection.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

So does Woz.

Even if either one or both were also a principle engineer for Intel, that'd still be a spurious, appeal-to-authority because they weren't a modern enterprise sysadmin, IT manager, or equivalent with visibility into what works and what doesn't in the real-world at scale.

Lionization in one or two domains for a limited time doesn't breed domain expertise across other areas for longer times. For anyone to be called, or call themselves, a polymath within the past 100 years is absolutely absurd. There are too many bifurcating domains splitting and branching too quickly for anyone of integrity to claim to "master" and stay in mastery of them.

I don't really care who they are: if they don't have sufficiently-current experience with enterprise-class gear, then random people have absolutely no place making claims about UPSes with supposed endorsements from dead dudes.

What claims have been made? I have owned, and dealt with, dozens of UPSs in both personal and commercial settings (animation studios, mostly) and Pournelle's article led me to research, and eventually buy, a Falcon. I have been much happier with it than any other.

I swear by this for living room quiet AV shelves/stands/racks:

CyberPower OR2200PFCRT2U PFC Sinewave UPS System, 2000VA/1540W, 8 Outlets, AVR, 2U Rack/Tower, Black

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B003OJAHW0/

Note the sine wave is key. And is 120V 20AMP, so do not run on a 15A circuit.

APC makes multiple lines of devices. The lower-end devices are not so great. But the SmartUPS line is solid. No fans or noise of any sort, unless the power is off and you’re draining the battery.

And if you’re draining the battery, then you should pay attention to all that noise and be in the process of shutting everything down safely, so that you can survive whatever caused the power outage in the first place.

The point of a UPS isn’t that you keep running for days regardless of the fact you’ve lost power, it’s that when the power does go out you don’t lose all your work, and you’ve got a few precious minutes to shut everything down safely.

If you don’t use a piece of equipment the way it was designed to be used, then that is all on you, and not the equipment that you are failing to use correctly.

Note that APC is owned by Schneider, a company that specializes in making the really big UPSes of the sort they go into data centers and are used to provide short term power for entire buildings. They know what they’re doing.

Noise is really a big thing. Apparently commercial fridges are ridiculously loud too.

WHAT?!

Hell, yeah, they are. They're rarely designed for aesthetics. "Do one thing, do it well, and lowest TCO."