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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

It’s reached the point where I now look at people using two stroke lawn mowers and instinctively think its weird that they’re using such crude and uncivilized technology. The noise alone is a reason to switch, imho.

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There are some people who are "nerdy" in a different way, and actually like the noise, for example. Different strokes for different folks :)

And live in a neighborhood were everybody else is "nerdy" about the noise?

Nobody ever said there was a neighborhood :)

Fair enough.

And I have a good old fashioned manual cylinder mower that I push along and think? Why on earth do people need electricity?

I've used one of those for the last several years, it's terrible if you get behind even a little bit, the long grass doesn't make it into the knife. I'm gonna a buy a battery mower this year.

Depends on the size of your yard and how quickly it grows. My current yard is on the edge where power is a nice to have, my parents’ old yard would have taken hours to do with a non-powered motor.

two stroke mower? Where do you live? In the US, the only major brand selling two stroke motors was lawn boy, and I can't remember the last time I saw one of those. They were always a bit odd.

Just about any mower you see is 4 stoke, which is far cleaner.

two strokes are brush cutters, tend to be. They are no push mowers, though... and electric ones are absolutely no replacement due to sheer lack of power (or battery life).

@grand parent - Mowing ditch/stream slopes with anything but petrol brushcutter is just next to impossible. Saying that as owning - a battery strimmer, a 4-stroke petrol push mower, a battery robot mower and 2-smoke brush cutter. I have tried using even a battery powered hedge trimmer. In other words - not everything is a nice flat rectangle short grass cover.

I honestly assumed they were two stroke. The last lawn mower I used at my parents house was two stroke IIRC (smelled like it at least), and I never bought a gas mower once I bought a house. I went straight to electric.

My mowers getting on 10 years old now. It's probably gonna do another ten. I don't like waste. I'll probably try convert it to run off ethanol. I'd buy more battery gear if it wasn't designed to be so wasteful and the market wasn't full of so much lock in. Getting stuck in one brands battery goes against alot of my ethics re. Tech purchases. I hate vendor lock in.

My Ego mower is 8 years old now. (I got one as soon as they were available in Canada, as it was the first mower to operate at >40V.) Still works like new. Don't think they're inherently any more wasteful than gas. And of course, they don't waste gas. Yeah, you're locked into the battery, but at worst, if you don't use the battery for anything else, that's no worse than the gas mower. With a few tools though (leaf blower, string trimmer, maybe hedge trimmers...) you end up saving a bunch.

Oh, yeah, I didn't even think of the (lack of) noise. Can easily listen to a podcast or whatever while I mow.

I know I'm going to sound like an unpleasant person, but I now get that same feeling every time I drive by a petrol station (with my electric car).

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