When I knew my income was going to be destroyed I prepared by stopping all my outgoing subscriptions immediately. Changed phone plan to bare minimum etc. traded our car in for electric which cut our fuel bill from £100pm to £15. Finally I’m slowly selling my stuff, but I’m now at the stage where I have a 10 yr old laptop, 8yr old phone and something is going to break soon. Fun times.

JK Rowling hate-tweeting

A turd floating down a river?

I feel sorry for the sign writers who will have to update those fees for no reason. The world has got the message, we’re no longer welcome in the US, good luck and thanks for the movies.

Farrage is already peddling the project 2025 playbook and the morons that vote for him are lapping it up.

This is the only justifiable way to acquire a Dyson in 2025. I saved a friends vacuum from the bin by dismantling it and pulling a clog out of a pipe, so many I’m sure get thrown away because people just don’t maintain them and assume they are broken.

There is some magnet or sensor in the filter and if they is some small misalignment it refuses to work, I’ve had to replace the filters on at least 2 Dysons because of this ‘feature’. I’m not sure what it achieves… other than ensuring you need to replace parts after you’ve cleaned it a few times and the fit gets sloppy.

That’s fair, I’ve told her now… no more surprise Dysons. Just thinking though for the ~£500 a new one would cost I could buy a lathe, and enough tooling, titanium, glass Fiber reinforced plastic etc to remake every failure prone component.

That is a fair assumption but I only bought the first two… the other three were “joint” purchases, where I came home to a new vacuum, and phrases like, “I can’t carry the old one up the stairs”, “we needed a new one, and this is purple!”, “the old one doesn’t get the dog hair up properly, and this one has an Animal head” etc.

You do have a point… but this Dyson is my ~5th I think in the last 20 years, I think the motor went on my first one, then the on button/control board failed on the next, after we are into the battery era and I still have them but they are now ‘garage vacuums’ where genuine batteries are no longer available but they share a cheap eBay battery which needs replacing again.

Thinking back I think I needed to replace a roller belt on the Sebo about 15 years ago, for around £2 from a shop in town. Given the vacuum was probably 25 years old at that point impressive the parts are available and so cheap.

And only a 3 seater sofa

Extended family “IT Guy” here. Have replaced 30ish laptops batteries. The cheap ones on Amazon/eBay you have a ~30% chance of them being DOA, and 99% chance of them being dead within a year.

“Brands” like Duracell GreenCell I’ve had better luck with but I’ve been sent batteries from GreenCell which only lasted a year because they were sitting on a shelf for 3 years before they were sent to me.

OEM batteries tend to last longer than the originals as most BIOSs from Dell, Lenovo etc. now include battery optimisation which extends the life of cells.

It all come down to what you need, and how much you value your time compared to money. My personal stuff I always go OEM as I rarely replace my laptops. Current one from 2015 is still going strong. If you are willing to put up with returns and rapid replacements a £20 cheapie can look good when the OEM is £100

EDIT: Sorry just re-read your question. The OEM at 75% health is dead already. The cheap no-name ones are probably just random used cells thrown together.

You’d probably be better off with the no-name but for this use case just get the cheapest thing with a 1year warranty and cross your fingers.

I’m not sure this did change, at least I can’t find any reference to it, other than a potential proposal.

I’m in the UK, short-term cheaper alternative is keeping your existing gas boiler until it breaks down… so roughly 20-30 years. The government gives £7,500 towards a heat pump but that has resulted in prices staying artificially high and virtually every install for a 3-4 bed home comes in at £10,000. A new gas boiler is around £1,500-£2,000. Due to some other short sightedness, any heat pump which also cools is not eligible for the £7,500 grant, which is really problematic when temperatures keep rising.

Bought our first electric car this year and will never go back to Diesel. If heat pumps weren’t so expensive I’d have one installed tomorrow.

I do kinda want that wallet.

Don’t worry the government will make it all better by spending millions on schemes to promote heating, cooling and insulation options behind 17 layers of bureaucracy making it somehow horrifically expensive with almost zero profit for tradesmen and disallowing any DIY options.

For the hot humid nights the only real solution is air conditioning, we’ve had it for the last three years and it‘s bliss!

However… we also:

• open all the windows early in the morning to replace all air in the house while it’s cool.
• We have an awning over the downstairs south facing window to keep the room cool, and keep the south facing curtains/blinds closed upstairs
• have massively insulated the loft and are adding wall insulation this year
• have fans on to circulate air in the house.

Thanks to all the above we have not needed the AC so far this year.

I went back through your posts to find out where you were based… and I have discovered that there are in fact many stupid questions 😀…

This may be different in the US as your distances are a little larger… but we charge at home overnight and have never needed to charge anywhere else. Every morning we have 250miles available and 1200miles a month costs us ~$30 in electricity.

You may be able to get a prepaid debit card and use that on public charging stations for long journeys or emergencies.

User replacement of “Activation Locked” new, 2nd hand, and OEM parts can be done, should be done, won’t be done.