The Room 101 thread - for things you hate or just having a bloody good moan

[Stormbringer]

Okay, the fine was only £50 in the end, so it could be worse...

[Stormbringer]

The Trainline's new "Tap that App" advert, popping up on YouTube almost every single time, which is a mass of mutated CGI fingers dancing to an awful beat and wriggling about like some kind of body-horror nightmare...I have watched it several times and I can't figure out what it's got to do with trains at all.

I thought it was AI generated, but there's an article about the making of it here:

https://lbbonline.com/news/Trainline-Tap-That-App

This doesn't make me like it any more. Adverts like this make me think we've reached the twilight years of human creativity.

[Lenny Solidus]

Microsoft repeatedly keeps ninja installing Microsoft 365 +1 and I keep removing them.

That's 12Gb of healthy space that could be used for something actually worthwhile on my drive. Stop it.

[Stormbringer]

Finally ordered a new phone for the first time in five years...only to discover I could have ordered the newest model, which just came out yesterday, for the same price, but with way more data.

By the time I figured this out (just about an hour after I had gone through with the purchase), it was too late to cancel.

[Alan]

Its not, you have a mandatory returns period. Use it!

[Stormbringer]

I thought about that. But I think I'm gonna just accept it.

What I ordered was the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

The Google Pixel 10 Pro just came out, and I could get that for the same price. But it's not the Fold. The newest Fold won't come out until October, but I really need a new phone now as my current one is on its last legs. I'm quite taken with the Fold, you see.

[Raid]

I've always just seen foldable phones as a gimmick (albeit less so with the near tablet-sized-when-unfolded style that the Pixel ones take). Is there a particular use case you have for it? I'd maybe try one if they were a reasonable price, I'd maybe give one a try, but £1400+ is just far too much for me to spend on a device that I could accidentally drop and destroy so easily.

[Stormbringer]

One particular use case I can see is keeping Teams open in the left hand screen so I can stay across my work comms, while doing something more interesting in the right panel, like reading, browsing, etc.

Whether or not this idea works in reality remains to be seen. I could very well come to regret this purchase, but...well, I am nevertheless fascinated by the folding design and fancy giving it a shot. Three years is a long time to pay for something if it turns out to be unsuitable, or breaks within that time-frame, I admit... it's a gamble for certain.

[Alan]

I think theyre cool but I'm too feart. Theyre too expensive to be so much more fragile than the brick in my pocket.

[Wrathbone]

I’m yet to be convinced that the technology is good enough to not develop some kind of visible crease over time.

Pixel phones are great in general though. I’ve got the 8 Pro and it’s probably the best phone I’ve ever had - way, way better than the shitty Samsung phone I had before.

[Raid]

I'm incredibly indifferent to my phone choices, mostly because I spend 90% of my time using the thing in either Chrome or the Reddit app, neither of which really differ from platform to platform). I'm also using Pixels at the moment (currently on a 7 pro, had a 2 XL before that), but considering moving to an iPhone as I've recently seen examples of people using their built-in LIDAR sensors in place of a dedicated 3D scanner device (devices that typically cost £1000 or more, and the results are surprisingly comparable) - it's not really something I'd expect to use often, but it'd be occasionally useful for replicating objects either for 3D printer duplication, or as guides for designing my own printed parts.

I have also had Samsung phones before, and I'm pretty sure they'd both have ended up in this thread.

[Mantis]

I'm back on the Pixel after shopping around for a good replacement for a couple of years. I tried Huawei and Samsung and both were pretty terrible, my Galaxy in particular had so many software problems and was constantly janking out on the most basic of things.

The Pixel just works and the OS is unobtrusive. It links in nicely with all the Google services which I use (albeit am slowly migrating away from) too.

[Raid]

I must admit I've been getting a bit more security conscious lately, and while I don't particularly trust either company, Apple does, outwardly at least, seem to be more interested in protecting their customers' data than Google. I've not looked into any of the specifics yet, I reckon my Pixel 7 probably still has a few more years left in it, but I don't think I'll just automatically buy the next Google flagship when it does finally start to go wrong.

[Lenny Solidus]

CDKeys rebranding to LOADED Formerly CDKeys.

[Sly Boots]

Yeah, it's a bit odd (and naff imo), but hey.