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.
Consumer grade microwave ovens all, as far as I can tell, universally suck in one way or another that my commercial grade microwave doesn't. The thing is bomb proof. The only thing that's gone wrong in 8 years is the internal bulb. Everything else is rock solid.
This is, however, a rather different proposition to buying a food mixer that was manufactured in 1948. I can get spares for my microwave or, at this point, buy a new one and recycle the old without feeling I haven't got my money's worth. I'm going to struggle with the 1948 mixer and, like you, I don't want that.
Others have highlighted that commercial grade dishwashers and fans are also probably bad ideas. I've run into similar issues with UPSs: none of these things seem designed to run in an environment where fan noise is going to cause a serious problem (nobody seems to sell a completely silent UPS - it's really daft).
Likewise, if you buy a rackmount server instead of a desktop computer you may be surprised to find that the fan noise is extraordinary.
Honestly, the main thing is to do your research before making a purchase so that you buy something that's really going to suit your requirements, whether that's a consumer grade or "professional grade" piece of equipment.
Just made for a different kind of gig than your usual consumer grade camera
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??
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.
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 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.
No, but "cheapest" usually does.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just open the door.
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.
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.
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.
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
https://westwardsales.com/falcon-ssg1.5k-ups
I bought it because the late writer Jerry Pournelle told me to.
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.
$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.
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.
"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."
As a home-gamer, this one works for me. :'D
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.
Hell, yeah, they are. They're rarely designed for aesthetics. "Do one thing, do it well, and lowest TCO."
The other obnoxious thing is most of what's marketed as "professional grade" to consumers is junk that no commercial kitchen would use. It's just marketing.
You can get some interesting specific stuff on say webrestaraunt store, but you gotta be mindful of the above aspects imo.
I was very fond of the commercial potholders from there, but didn't know where to get some of my own since they closed all the stores.
Then one day through the magic of the Internet, I found a supplier of almost the same thing, albeit with their own logo on it.
(I'm pretty sure I bought them from Wasserstrom, but I just checked and I can't find them)
Unfortunately it doesn't look like they're selling much equipment-wise in my local store anyway. Just paper towel, plates, masks, and garbage bags.
That is not what the article is about though. He buys actual commercial / industrial stuff that is indeed more rugged.
The reason commercial dishwashers run so fast is that they sanitize dishes, but do not remove food from them. That is done by a restaurant employee. Home dishwashers include soaking and scrubbing to remove food, which takes longer.
https://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/no3c9j/why_do_comm...
Paying a bit more for a better item which can be repaired or serviced for a very long time makes it cheaper in the long run in my experience, because you buy it once and for life.
I love "overkill items for everyday life" point of view, but it comes with trade-offs for noise, ergonomics, size, replaceability and such. You can get a very good blade from Victorinox or Leatherman. If you fancy good steel, you can get a high end, forged German steel Victorinox chef knife and use something frighteningly sharp and handsome at the same time.
If you want a good heater, you can pay twice the price and can get a Fakir Hobby premium space heater and can use for 30+ years (we have two).
The list can go on.
Except that there isn't a good way to distinguish between something that is expensive because it has quality construction and something that is expensive because it is a brand name.
Searching for information online is nigh-useless due to aggressive SEO on the part of advertisers. Sometimes I can get lucky and find an enthusiast forum, but those are harder and harder to find.
Online reviews in general are effectively anonymous. Amazon reviews might not even be the same manufacturer, let alone the same product. Newegg lists different firmware versions under the same product ID, so compatibility reviews are useless.
The best thing I've found is to reach out to a group of friends and hope that one of them did the research previously, or can at least steer you towards/away a brand. This doesn't scale, and any approach that does scale is at risk of being overwhelmed by advertisers and other bad actors.
This thing is built like a fucking tank, it will never ever ever fail.
Compare that to the same model sold outside of Japan, and it's most likely made in Indonesia and the quality is nowhere near.
Except being built like a tank, Japan made one also vibrates less and more comfortable to use.
( And somehow he is Canadian but speaks a little Cantonese )
He's a private dude, but I think his wife is french-canadian and he's at least bilingual. And from what I've gathered he has to have done some kind of mechanical engineering for a LONG time. Dude knows his stuff about anything mechanical.
His teardown of the Juicero is pure gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ
It's an amazing insight into a startup with endless amounts of money, bunch of really smart people, but no real business model. =)
Anything "professional", "military", etc. comes with the potential downside of it being someone's job to maintain and service it. Qualitative differences usually come with trade-offs - and if it's not your job, it might not be better to try.
If I break something or need more bits, I can always go back years later and get a matching piece.
I'm talking about Grand Maitre series [1], which are "Made in Germany under supervision of Victorinox" and are forged steel. They're nowhere near €35. I have a 15cm Grand Maitre Carving/Utility knife, and that thing's sharpness is scaring me sometimes. It's virtually equal with another handmade, hand forged set I have, and both blades hold their edges extraordinarily well.
OTOH, America's test kitchen has found that these €35 Classic knives has some extraordinary steel for their price, under an electron microscope. I was unable to find the exact video, sorry for that.
[0]: https://www.victorinox.com/global/en/Products/Cutlery/Chef%2... [1]: https://www.victorinox.com/global/en/Products/Cutlery/Chef%2...
HiFi gear is one of them. My CD player (from Yamaha) and speakers (from Heco) were cheaper when compared to other brands, but they're at least equal with their qualities, and they proved themselves over the years.
Similarly, if I can get 90% quality of a Wusthof by getting a Victorinox Grand Maitre, I'm OK with that.
I've also found out that technology has improved dramatically in certain categories. I've bought an entry level Sony BT headphones (Sony WH-CH510), and the sound quality for that price is unbeatable. I have much better headphones, but for something which I can grab and go, it's unbelievable. I had to pay thrice the price for that sound quality 10 years ago.
And hobarts are industry standard mixers for the food industry that vary in size from 5L to volcanic caldera. But they are built like a tank and easy to repair with plenty of easy to find spare parts. A lot of bakeries that make really high end stuff probably have the exact same hobart inside. Probably not that ancient as the one on the pic, but those things barely changed from their inception.
And with interest of cooking increasing a lot of restaurant gear is finding its way into home kitchens. Nothing sears a steak indoors better 3500W induction hob with big cast iron skillet on top.
And if cooking on a wok - having 120k BTU burner makes it much more pleasant and smooth experience.
Interestingly with gas burner efficiency - 120k BTU in gas are just a tad more powerful than the 3.5kw induction.
There is good reason why Alton Brown always says to obtain things from hardware and restaurant supply store.
And let's say in consumer ovens that are not built to gastronorm or hotel pan specs finding additional trays, sheets, grills etc that fit is PITA.
I’ve done a dishwasher repair, 1 dryer repair and 2 fridge repairs here, and a washer repair at my in-laws. Every case was a consumer-brand unit and every case the local home center was not capable to supply the parts from stock, so it became and “order online and wait” anyway. (For the washer repair, a local appliance parts store had the parts on-hand at ~$215 vs $55 online, which I politely declined.)
Which I think was the point of TFA: he wants to show everyone he appreciates overengineered stuff.
Large organizations like the military would probably be happier with an item that needs intensive inspection, servicing, and repairs on a very consistent schedule, but is absolutely guaranteed to work within that operational window than they they would be with an item which is low-maintenance but has an unreliable service lifetime. A maintenance schedule can be planned around and budgeted around so that it doesn't affect operations. A random outage or failure is expensive, and can only be planned around in a probabilistic sense.
As individuals, we don't have the time or knowledge to do all of the inspections and repairs to maintain an "industrial grade" system at a level that makes it worthwhile. We need stuff that "just works" for some unspecified amount of time, and we accept the cost of random failure and replacement as a tradeoff, since most failures in our lives don't involve the loss of human life or millions of dollars. The exceptions, like cars, tend to be engineered more like the former category, and can only really function reliably in the context of a larger organization (regular maintenance at a specialized repair shop).
So it's not really a spectrum of quality from cheap and unreliable to expensive and indestructible. It's actually a spectrum of logistical overhead from individual use and low upkeep to multinational organization and high upkeep.
For example, a Ford Focus or Chevy Malibu is a lot more reliable and cheaper to maintain than a fancier and more fun car. Loads of third party parts, etc.
Regarding the mixer, I understand they changed the gears to plastic so they would strip without damaging the motor. Easier to replace a cheap set of seats than an expensive motor.
I heard something interesting about ejection seats on tv.
The canopy cost up to a million dollars.
There are personnel who main job is making sure the ejection seat is working properly.
If a pilot needs to use the ejection seat, he, or she, has a 9 out if 10 chance of survival.
The spine will compress 1/2" after that emergency handle is pulled, and they said the shortening of the spine is permanent.
If I had the room, and was offered a small commercial Hobart mixer at a rock bottom price, I would buy it.
I worked at Marin Bagel factory in college, and that mixer was the only thing I liked about the job. The owner didn't like me, so when he was in a bad mood, my job was rotating the freezer. Imagine 5:30 am. Cold outside. A bakery where talking was discouraged. Climbing into a packed 10 x 20 foot packed to the door with frozen food. 1 foot of clearance on top of the food. Then rotating everything. Worst job ever. It wasn't the job, it was the owner.
Sorry about my ramble.
Now that people are discussing it, I do want to find out if there are former air force pilots reading this who can corroborate or refute my hypothesis: I suspect long-duration mission bombers like the US B-52 and B-2 have pilot seats especially tuned for extended operational comfort, even more so than commercial airliners (passenger or cargo), and it would be interesting to test my hypothesis that those would make excellent office chairs for coders. Someone makes these from old pilot seats [1], but I'm specifically interested in pilot seats from airframes that routinely perform round-trip trans-Pacific routes.
I personally wouldn't routinely use such a seat for more than say 10-12 hours at a time, but if it is proven to still be comfortable after someone uses it for that long, naps for a couple hours in it, and uses it for another long session, then it is likely going to feel very comfortable to me. And maybe the safety harness will help me maintain my posture instead of having to remind myself every half hour to check it.
Though honestly, I think it's actually a solved problem. I just buy aftermarket Recaro seats. They know what they're doing.
OEM GT sedan seats are probably your best bet. Big Lexus, Mercedes, etc. sedans.
This is extremely unlikely - military/industrial-grade stuff is designed for heavy duty cycles and decades of use. It is extremely unlikely that you'd see it even hiccup in decades of consumer use.
If you did need a part, the mfgr will have it, because, unlike consumer crap, these products have lifetimes measured in decades, not quarters.
>> is going to suck to make high end pastries because it’s geared towards making mashed potatoes for the troops
not unless you have some specialty unit. And if that is the case, get the industrial version designed for chefs to make industrial quantities of high-grade pastries
https://www.bakedeco.com/detail.asp?id=51771
They don't list the weight or dimensions, but Hobart makes a modern version:
https://www.hobartcorp.com/centerline-20-quart-mixer
This 20 quart mixer is 33.3" high and weighs 189 pounds (204 pounds in its shipping crate).
A great unit for a commercial kitchen, maybe not such a good fit for typical home use!
How is that possible to enforce?
If a company comes up with a design that is less serviceable than its competitors, but has other advantages, is it forbidden from selling its new design?
If a company comes up with a design that is more serviceable than its competitors, are all the competitors now forbidden from selling their old design?
I'm probably missing a load of other tricks, but just doing the above would go a long way to ensuring products can be repaired reasonably.
No, I definitely think that the verification on the parts to make sure that they are original should stay, but it should not disallow non official parts to be installed. Because, if I want to replace a part with an original, there should be a way to verify the part is not counterfeit, and I think it would be super beneficial for consumer if the part was able to verify itself as genuine. But, I should also be able to install non genuine parts as well.
Obviously this also implies that to create a replacement part you don't need to ask the original manufacturer for permission. A "third party signing" key should be publicly available.
To my knowledge most people campaigning for Right to Repair don’t want change the designs of the things we currently buy.
They just want to stop companies banning their suppliers from selling spares to consumers.
That is, most things are already reparable enough but certain firms are going out of their way to stop that happening.
Here is a kitchen scale I bought. Made in Switzerland, no less. It’s bloody beautiful: https://neil.computer/notes/mettler-toledo-ml3002e-teardown/
Does that mean all consumer grade stuff is bad? No. Leatherman tools and 3M consumer grade stuff is usually great. Nalgene bottles. Does that mean all pro quality stuff is great? No. I’ve bought restaurant quality containers, made in California, no less, but are not BPA-free.
My philosophy is quite tangential to the points you’re making:
- Search for stuff in auxiliary / parallel industries.
- Used surplus stuff is usually below consumer grade prices even if it was slightly worse, you're still equal. 9/10 times it is actually the opposite - 10x the quality, performance and durability of consumer grade crap on Amazon.
- Some cheap crap is actually good. Victorinox $30 knife is excellent value and used by professional chefs. The same cannot be said for an outdoors knife, you want it to be overbuilt. Cheap $30 outdoor knives would not stand a chance. Always buy generic drugs, they're exactly the same.
There are atleast 100 more examples I can write about that were a net positive buys. Just last week I bought U-Line tape dispenser. Same price as consumer grade ones, so why not?
- Orthogonal search usually yields frugal jackpots. No one would ever find any use for the life raft bag in the marine parts store.
Average consumers want stuff that is objectively worse for them. Touchscreens were an excellent idea for a phone, now they want it everywhere in their cars. Overall, with the throw-away culture consumers are addicted to, it’s hard to not blame them. Have you ever dealt with customer service? You might be surprised. We are soooo addicted to wasteful culture. You’re just promoting this and doubling down on it.
Let’s see in last 20 years: Quality went downhill, durability is an after thought, repairability is non existent and consumers want bigger box - literally larger than the item because they choose it based on how good the box looks. If it were any other reason, it’s a waste of packaging and businesses know this. Businesses are not looking to waste money on extra packaging unless it led to better sales. This is a direct evidence of the utter shitshow consumer culture embodies.
Anyways, I fancy things that are engineered with deliberation and specification. Tested and qualified against requirements. Usually military, aviation, marine or medical grade goods are designed and engineered in such a way.
I remember looking at ToughBooks because their shells are amazing. But what does that do for me if inside it has a 10 year old computer?
Meant in jest: I find your lack of faith [1]...disturbing [2].
That said, I have found marked differences even in "consumer" duct/duck tape offerings at big box stores. Adhesive properties, abrasion resistance, UV resistance, backing laminate strength, vibration tolerance, and so on, have converged my choices these days to Gorilla and 3M brands, and only give other manufacturers that show up in the big box store shelves one chance with one sample roll.
[1] https://tapeuniversity.com/industry/industrial-mro/what-is-t...
You gotta compare apples to apples.
Lots of comments are talking about the extremes but most reasonable people can figure it out. Obviously don't use an industrial appliance that operates at 90db, requires high voltage electrical, and needs 2 hours of daily maintenance to make your coffee; but that liferaft bag is brilliant. Also nice industrial design on the site!
The commercial version of the electric Ford F-150 has a reasonably sized touchscreen in the center of the dashboard. The consumer version has a huge 18 inch touchscreen which sticks up above the top of the dashboard, and looks silly. This replaces the large number of single-purpose knobs and buttons in the commercial version.
...were originally lab equipment. The company pivoted to consumer goods after their products had already become popular as such.
I'm sorry to say. This is false.
This will be a bit technical but often, generic drugs are a racemic mix (both L and D conformations in some mixture) where as a branded drug may be a specific conformation or specific racemic mix (e.g. 75% L, 25% D.)
The issue comes from the fact that L-conformations may have different (better, worse, otherwise) effects than the D-conformations.
TL;DR Not all generics are the same as their branded counterparts and they might effect you differently. Caveat emptor.
There are a few different types:
Achiral, no change Levorotary (L), Rotates anticlockwise Dextrorotary(D), Rotates clockwise
The reason that it matters and what I was talking about above is that the sites in your body that a drug interacts with aren't universal. So if you have a (L) version of a drug that might have different effects and interactions than a (D) version.
A 1:1 mix of both (L) and (D) is called a racemic mix.
When you are talking about Brand name drugs, you're typically discussing a particular mix (e.g. Adderall XR is a 3:1 (D):(L) mix) or a particular conformation. That is not necessarily true with generics which may have a different ratio of (D):(L).
To give an example of how different the effects can be: Penicillamine (L) is used in the treatment of primary chronic arthritis. Penicillamine (D) not only has no therapeutic effect, it is highly toxic.
Here's a link to some Wikipedia pages on it if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality#Chemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racemic_mixture
Do note that this is a bit of an oversimplification, but it's 3AM here so I hope you can forgive me.
If generic drugs have a different L:D ratio and L molecules have a different effect than D molecules, then surely the generic has a different effect and result than the brand name which would make or the other work better. Wouldn’t that come up and be an issue leading to either reformulating the generic to better match the brand name, or pulling the generic altogether?
I think, as a layman, Thalidomide is probably a good striking example.
One chirality does what it says on the tin. The other causes babies to be born missing limbs and with other birth defects.
In theory, if we could produce Thalidomide with only the correct isomer, it would not only be effective but 100% safe for pregnant women.
Given that we know (like you point out) that different enantiomers can have very different effects, it seems particularly dangerous for generics to be marketed as alternatives to the branded drug when, in some cases, they really are not.
ProTip: Odds are there are 10k bars named ka-bar or k-bar founded or operated by current or former Marines.
This won’t bother anyone in the US I guess but a fixed blade military knife like that could get you into legal hot water fast elsewhere.
In the UK, you could take it camping or fishing but if you divert to the shops on your way and get caught with it you you could get a mandatory prison sentence.
Even if you leave it in your car the whole time.
Where as a simple Victorinox Swiss Army Knife with a friction folding blade can be taken almost anywhere without a reason. That makes them a much better bet for an international backpacker IMHO.
This is the same for many other countries too.
Quality consumer goods are better in two key areas. First, they are replaceable. I don’t want a military grade mixer in my kitchen if getting a broken whisk or motor on it is going to require me hunting all over eBay for the specific part hoping it’s available. I was very excited at one point about the idea of getting a commercial dishwasher that can run a load of dishes in like 90 seconds. Problem with those is that you can’t go to Lowe’s and get a replacement part when it acts up. You have to call a restaurant equipment servicing company and pay them what a restaurant with a broken dishwasher would pay. Or more because you aren’t a frequent customer. Sure, maybe it’ll break less but here’s the thing: my modern LG dishwasher will be more convenient to use and if I get 10 years out of it rather than 20 I still spent only $1000 on the top of the line one rather than the $4k on a 10 year old used commercial unit that I will struggle with the entire time.
Second, consumer goods are replaceable. I am used to my Kershaw knife. I broke it yesterday. I can get it serviced by the manufacturer or get a brand new one, or both. If I buy some special forces surplus knife and chip the blade I am either done with that knife or I’m taking it to a specialist or I’m buying a new one. Knowing that I can replace an item I’m used to when a one-for-one replacement is a comfort. Obviously that doesn’t work for everything but it works for items that are made by high quality manufacturers.
Bonus: a military grade mixer is going to suck to make high end pastries because it’s geared towards making mashed potatoes for the troops. I feel like the author is romanticizing ma class of products that in reality aren’t all that amazing except in a couple of key areas that to most consumers aren’t as big of a deal. So while it’s possible that, as the author states, the average consumer is an idiot, I don’t see much evidence that the author is much ahead of the pack here.