This is not a conversation about guns. This is a conversation about items that have withstood abuse that are near unbreakable.
Some items I have heard referenced as AK47 of:
Gerber MP600: It’s a multi tool
Old Thinkpad Laptops
Mag lights
Toyota Hilux
My Yamaha f310 guitar. It’s supposed to be a beginner model, but I never felt the need for anything else. Took it with me traveling and after some 15000km on the road still sounds as on its first day.
Yamaha makes the best guitar for the money.
The instrument I probably play the most is a nylon string Yamaha with a great dual pickup/mic that I got for $100 at a pawn shop. It has some cosmetic wear, but that’s a bonus in my opinion.
Yes! I bought mine in 2004, it was the only proper steel string guitar that I could afford at the time. And it is a really good guitar. There has been zero need for any adjustments, the only replaced part (excluding strings, of course) is a single tuning peg. I was drunk and slipped while I was playing, the guitar hit the floor first but miraculously there was no other damage.
A friend of mine was a guitar tech/roadie for Dio and Metallica in his youth and when he tried the F310 his opinion was that “This isn’t a bad guitar at all, actually it sounds a lot like my own Martin back home. You really might want to hold on to this one.”
Casio G-Shock GWM-5610 – the current model number of the original 1981 G-Shock digital watch. Resistant to dust, shock, water, and up to 20 bar pressure. Self-charges via solar power. Self-synchronizes to GMT by passively receiving continent-spanning radio time signals. Little bastards cost less than a hundred dollars and are effectively bombproof.
Self-synchronizes to GMT by passively receiving continent-spanning radio time signals.
Why don’t other watches do this?
Baofeng AR-5RM Handheld Radio. Costs under 30$ and is extremely useful and versatile. Can pick up just about any frequency youd need, VHF, UHF, AM, FM, GMRS, etc. and while not waterproof its built very tough. Could probably use it to beat somebody to death then pick it back up and have a conversation on it.
Shure SM58/57
SM57s still can get roughed up pretty bad with the plastic covering on the front of the mic (especially if miking a snare drum with a less than precise drummer). SM58 will survive a nuclear war.
Can confirm with the old thinkpads. They’re not great for gaming, but the keyboard, track pack, and eraser head are solid for writing and other office-like work.
Hmm, yes, “eraser head”… That’s what I call it too.
I definitely don’t call it the mouse clit. Who would call it that?
Certainly not me.
How old? I want one, but there are a lot of models
Newest you can afford. T and P models, or X if you can.
The newer ones are actually less well-built.
I have a T14 Gen 3 from work to confirm with. It’s definitely not bad, but not as rugged.
Meanwhile, for personal use, I got a X230, and a W530, and they are much more solid. A lot of people said that T480 is the “last great Thinkpad”, but I don’t have one so I cannot confirm this.
I don’t really disagree, but as time goes by, those old ones show their age more and more. I’m using the same one as you for work, and I got a T580 off eBay for personal (replaces my T430s). I don’t know what I’d get if not for used Thinkpads though. One day maybe I can afford/justify one of those boutique Linux laptops.
Edit: I briefly had a T480 and it had problems with the display… apparently widespread.
I bought a T480 coming on a year ago as my first ThinkPad. I’m pretty happy with it, feels rugged and I’ve now fully conditioned myself to using the TrackPoint. Happy with the weight of it for the screen size, I have the 1080p one and it’s not bad at all.
My work device is a L14 Gen 3 with the Ryzen 5 something and it’s okay. I don’t like the flatter TrackPoint buttons but they’re still more than usable. I actually dropped it from about waist height from my car, and apart from some scuffs on the corners it’s still completely functional.
I do miss the media keys and CPU upgradability of my old Latitude E6420 (had that bad boy up to an i7-2760QM, 16GB DDR3, 512GB SSD) but it was just so bulky in comparison and the screen maxed out at only 1600x900 (which yes, I upgraded on it too).
One more thing for me to go on a tangent about, ThinkPad X240 was a poor choice as a secondary. I thought I wouldn’t care about the weird touchpad but it’s barely usable for me, either as a touchpad or TrackPoint. I’m selling that shit on to get either an X220 or X250 onwards, depending on what comes up.
Oh hey! I used to have a Latitude E6430! I’ve seen my college buddy’s E6420 and they’re not too far apart (we’d get these upcycled laptops when we’re lucky from a local e-waste company).
I can vouch for their ruggedness. Definitely not on par with Thinkpads, but they’re pretty up there.
I didn’t get the chance to upgrade much aside from the RAM and SSD, handed it down to a friend in need while upgrading my arsenal to Thinkpads.
One thing that bothered me is how heavy it is for a 14 inch laptop; that bezel is humongous. Also, it stings then I touch the palmrest wrong while charging.
The old part really does a lot of work here. New ThinkPads are utter trash :-/
I got excited to get one for work (having heard about the old ones) and was sorely disappointed. It thermal throttles if you look at it wrong, it keeps having BIOS issues with Lenovo being no help and the USB-C display connection (To a Lenovo monitor with their inbuilt docking station!) is iffy.
Which series? T/P or one of the economy options? The T, X, W, and later on P series have been the only models people really like.
We have a few T series at work and they’re not bad. My T14 Gen. 1 doesn’t thermal throttle at all as long as its thermal paste isn’t toast. It will run at basically its full all core boost speeds all day long. The newer 12th Gen. machines dial their clocks back a smidge under full load, but that’s because they have 2x the cores of my measly 10th Gen. machine.
Also I have a T14s AMD and that thing is a BEAST for such a small machine. 35 watts out of an AMD 6 core is no slouch for something that small. And I easily get 7+ hours of battery life out of my abusive use.
Ah, T15 Gen1 with 48 GB RAM. The Intel CPU throttles hard unfortunately, I’d much rather switch to AMD (or a desktop…).
Fortunately the company has so many issues with Lenovo, they are switching to Dell now.
Change your thermal paste. These machines (as do all modern machines) run hot, and their paste doesn’t last long if you’re a heavy user. Find a thermal paste that’s thick in particular.
The pump out effect is really drastic on these modern CPUs if you’re constantly hitting 100% load.
Dude, I’m not opening up my work laptop. It’s going to be replaced in a year anyway.
The thing has been a piece of shit when it was brand new, it’s not the paste.
Are you on Windows or Linux? On windows 11 go to settings > power and battery > power mode and if you set it to high performance it almost doubles the TDP of the CPU. On windows 10 click the battery and drag the slider to high performance. If what I read online is correct the T14 and the T15 are the exact same heatsink and motherboard so unless the 1" gap from the end of the heatsink to the vent is that much of a problem they should perform exactly the same, just like the later T14 and T16 models. But 4 years is more than enough time for the thermal paste to be toast. My P1 ruined it’s paste in less than 6 months, but that’s also an i9.
But that’s the world of modern Intel CPUs. Turbo boost as far as you possibly can until you can’t turbo anymore. Then in 6 months when the thermal paste is ruined you’re searching for a new machine.
I have two new P1 Gen 7’s coming today, i hope they have fixed that
They didn’t. They did kinda change the goalpost though.
Which model did you get? The i7 or the i9? The i7 models have a minimum guaranteed TDP of 28 watts, while the i9 is at least 35. But 35 watts on such a high end CPU is dire. The Gen. 7 also killed their high end GPU options, but maybe that leaves more power headroom for the CPU.
That’s still better than my P1 Gen. 4 which throttles down to 25 watts. 25 watts on an 11th Gen. i9 is AWFUL performance.
i9 with the 4070 GPU
Let me know how the thermals are on that machine. I ended up paying out the ass for a refurbished gen 6 because it comes with the 4090 and a MUCH bigger heatsink. From what I saw initially in the reviews the performance is worse not just because the 100 series has worse IPC, but the machine doesn’t actually boost as much since it’s more thermally limited.
HOWEVER the machine gets a LOT better battery.
My gen 4 would get anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours of battery life unless I’m doing literally nothing on it. This gen 6 gets like 4 hours unless I’m heavily taxing it. But from people online I saw them say 7 hours is easily doable. And having a GPU that doesn’t use 20 watts sitting idle sure helps.
Anything specific you’d like me to test?
I was just blaming the usb-c connection to my monitor and throttling on a combo of windows and corporate bloatware, I guess I feel a bit better that I’m not the only one.
The connection to my monitor is the most frustrating, sometimes won’t even recognise it, sometimes after blanking the display it’ll come back with the wrong resolution but still display like it was the original, it’s super bizarre. Literally never had an issue with my personal Asus zenbook in either Debian or w11.
I had one that lasted for 12 years. By the end it was more of a media centre connected to my TV, but still.
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No prob! Just here to not help
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Well, what do you need then?
Any chance you have any suggestions for any “buy it for life” items from your own experience?
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The wrt54g. They don’t make wifi routers like they used to.
I bought one specifically for DD-WRT firmware way back when. I now rock a gigabit mesh system but that wrt lasted almost a decade before tech moved on enough for me to switch.
I ran Tomato on mine. Liked it better than DD-WRT.
Careful now, they are too old to be secure. I’d switch to TL-WDR4300.
That’s what I’m running, though I had issues with it randomly requiring a reset. Installing OpenWrt fixed that problem.
Yup, WDR4300 on OpenWRT is the way to go.
Had that running on my main router until a newer one came along. Now it’s still going strong, but as a wifi repeater.
Rice cookers.
You can get really simple ones that just work and due to little components they will last a while. IMO they’re really worth it if you cook rice often or can’t for the love of god not mess it up while cooking. They’re really cheap as well.
Other people are saying “cast iron” or other broad brands/categories, but this is the only one that doesn’t fall under OP’s request?? Nonsense.
The AK-47 is a specific product from the class of assault rifles, whereas “rice cooker” product class, not a specific product of a class.
Ah right, the post confused me a bit.
I recently bought a zojirushi rice cooker because of their reputation for making perfect rice and lasting decades. So it’s the AK of rice cookers. Or more like the AR because it was $200.
My man… 200 for a rice cooker, does it at least give you a reach around?
It even plays a happy little tune while it does it.
Okay, I’m sold.
To be fair there’s probably almost no moving parts in a rice cooker. Someone mentioned cast iron pans. I think that’s a fair example.
Game Boys are usually regarded as durable as hell. There’s even one that withstood bombing during the Gulf War (1991)
Me and my cousin went tubing one time and he forgot his gameboy color in his pocket the whole time we were out on the water. There was water behind the screen but it still booted and played with some fresh batteries
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If you’re a musician or audio tech trying to get started, the Shure SM58 and SM57 are the first two mics you should grab. 58 for vocals, and 57 for anything that doesn’t need a screen (like an instrument or guitar amp.) Both have the exact same mic capsule, but the 58 has a larger filter that will make it a little warmer and less prone to popping on plosives.
Are there fancier mics out there that sound better, or are made for specific purposes? Yeah. But there’s diminishing returns on audio quality, you can’t use them for as many things, and more sensitive mics are also more fragile. For $100 each, you can get some mics that will be passed down to your grandchildren. If you’re trying to cover the widest possible range of uses, the 58 and 57 are your go-to mics.
Whenever you think of a stereotypical 🎤 microphone, you’re 100% thinking of a Shure SM58.
If youre ever onstage and need a hammer but dont have one, just use an SM58
And the SM57 for things you don’t need a screen on.
You probably meant the SM58. The 58 is the prototypical singer’s mic.
The sm58 is the microphone, if you ask a kid to draw a mic, the kid will draw the sm58.
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My only example are zippos
Honest question, how long is the fluid supposed to last? And I’m not talking about burning time. I have a zippo, I fill it, a few weeks later I go to use it and the flame lasts a few seconds as the fuel finishes.
Stainless steel or cast iron in general. Let go of your nonsticks.
Gotta be the KitchenAid mixers no? Especially the older ones. I have a friend that has one from his grandma that’s over 50 years old. If anything breaks, it’s usually a gear or something simple to fix, and the parts are easy to buy and generally cheap.
The mixers are not exactly cheap though… and their other stuff is now mostly made from plastic (like the food processors for example)
I’ve managed to get a hold of 3 of the old ones through garage or estate sales, but yeah the ones that are brand new have plastic parts in them which drives me crazy. But you can at least 3d print what you’re missing
