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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

When the cable guy came to add another outlet to my previous house, I watched what he did and chatted a bit about his tools. He was using Digikey tools. I then ordered identical tools.

For my later house, I installed all the cables and outlets myself, with the Digikey tools. All I can say is two thumbs up for them. Quick and easy, and not a single bad connection.

I did this because of my troubles soldering, which all went away when I tried using a professional soldering iron. Ever since, I look at what the pros use and buy those tools.

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> Ever since, I look at what the pros use and buy those tools.

One of the best pieces of business advice I ever got was to identify the core pieces of equipment that really impact the quality/efficiency of your work and go as high-end as you can afford on those. Then go as cheap as you can tolerate for everything else.

See also: Professional chefs with extremely expensive personal knife sets alongside basically disposable $8 tongs and $20 pans.

This is pretty good advice in general. The cost value curve of different things is different, and as you suggest, for the majority of things the functional value cut off is at quite a low cost point.

What I find particularly amusing is when the cost value relationship invert, often after a stupidly high price point, especially when they introduce complexity.

> What I find particularly amusing is when the cost value relationship invert, often after a stupidly high price point

See "audiophile" equipment.

It's true that you often can't reliably tell quality from the price tag. I remember in marketing classes learning about what companies do when their product doesn't provide value commensurate with the cost. One approach is to reduce the price. Another approach is to increase the price, make it look pretty, and sell it people who are really buying status. That it sucks won't hurt your sales as much as you'd think, because functionality isn't really the reason people buy it.

> people who are really buying status

Yes, this is a huge area of value, which is why I was careful to write "functional value", because there are different kinds of value.

There are non-functional value which are tangibly important beyond pure function though. e.g As humans aesthetic is important to us, it affects our every day experience, and at a certain point that can even cross over into art. I will admit for some products I will make a choice based on form, and materials, but it's useful to recognise when you are doing this because even on a personal level it doesn't always make sense.

I particularly dislike "status" though, this is a hollow invention of consumerism that intentionally confuses quality and functional value with branding.

There are a also a lot of professional chefs rocking Victorinox Fibroxes which are quite cheap.

People like to fetishize knives, but for almost all uses, they really are pretty pedestrian and utilitarian. You don't need some $1,000 Japanese santoku forged from a meteorite to chop a bunch of veg well. You just need a comfortable grip and a little practice putting a good edge on the blade.

That being said, if nice knives bring you joy, then go for it. I have a couple of cooking knives that I like a lot.

Sure, but looking them up, even those knives are noticeably more expensive than the rest of the individual items you'd find in the kitchen, just not by orders of magnitude.

And for the car people, 1/4 inch Snap-On ratchet set, and Harbor Freight for the big stuff you don't use often.

If you have the money, and you're going to use the tools regularly, it's often worth the 'buy once, cry once' premium.

One of my cats passed away last year, and before I realized he was having kidney problems he'd taken to dusting a closet in a spare room. I tried and tried with my old carpet cleaner (10y+ old upright thing) and just could not make progress even with nature's miracle enzymatic shampoo/etc. I recently got a puppy and decided to just bite the bullet and buy a commercial Big Green and it's been amazing. The day I got it, I did a rush job cleaning it for maybe a half hour between a couple meetings, and I got a ton of glitter and other stuff out of the carpet that'd survived through at least 2 meticulous passes with the old carpet cleaner. It'd been a girl's room before I got the house, I think, I found other stuff that fell into the vent in there. And after a pass or two with the new cleaner, I got a couple of those older stank spots out, no problem. Just an obviously better job cleaning.

Anyway point being... the "buy the harbor freight one and then replace it if you use it enough to break it" is fine as far as it goes, but yeah, I'm increasingly this way too, I like having professional stuff that makes the job easier instead of adding additional problems. Some stuff the cheap version just is not good at all, or works OK for a little bit and then craps out.

I have had the same problem with vacuum sealers. After a while the vac-u-saver systems just don't pull a good vacuum or don't make good seals. Eventually I start getting bags that let loose in the freezer/etc and get air into the bag. I've cleaned the heat bar carefully, replaced seals, etc, and the consumer vac-u-saver systems just don't work all that well after 6 months or so of usage. Kinda bizarre and I know it seems to work fine for other people (although perhaps they are more accepting of bags letting go in the freezer/etc) but I can't figure it out. It's unfortunately a lot of counter space but I'm thinking seriously about getting a chamber vacuum sealer for the same reason. Maybe if I upgrade my oven to a convection oven and then get rid of the air fryer I'll use the recovered counter space for that.

It's hard to put a price on frustration and wasted time. Living alone/with ADHD I "don't have many spoons", and when I'm ready to do a project I wanna get it done, not fight crappy tools.

The problem now is the harbor freight ones are too good and basically will never break; so if you don't know what you're missing, you never find out.

Is that a bug or a feature?

> I have had the same problem with vacuum sealers.

A great example! My sealer is very cheap, and doesn't work reliably. But I use it almost entirely to package dehydrated food that I take backpacking, and getting a good one isn't worth it to me.

Instead, after I seal the food, I just leave everything out for a couple of days to find the ones that have leaked, and reseal them.

This is fine for my use case -- not ideal, but not a big problem. If I used the sealer more widely, it would absolutely be worth investing in a good one.

But then lets talk about toasters. I've yet to find one that is reasonably decent no matter what price point I've tried. So I just buy the cheapest one I can lay my hands on.

I really don't like the taste of carbonized bread, even if I do toast it's always been on the light side, golden brown at darkest. And an air fryer pretty much satisfies me for those needs - with the grille inside it gets good airflow around the back and makes decent toast at max heat. 2 mins at 350-400 will toast up a hamburger bun to the point of it starting to dry out and toast. That's fine for my toasting needs, if I was going to do bread that'd be a good start too.

Perhaps I'd have enjoyed toast more with better toasters growing up that didn't burn the bread (it's probably time to just junk my ancient toaster, I never use it). I like it in BLTs and such of course, and will sometimes toast up a bun for a burger/etc, but, like mayo, toast is one of those "as a main ingredient? no." things for me. It's an accent, not the main course.

Toast and popcorn also both have a sensory issue for me where they dry out my lips and it feels stingy and chapped and bad afterwards (even if I wash/chapstick/etc). Popcorn it's partially the salt, but it also occurs to some extent on homemade popcorn without/with less salt, and I also get it on BLTs/etc. Maybe the dryness of the bread is getting me in both cases. But I simply don't enjoy eating foods that trigger that chapped lipfeel.

I also watched an electrician do some wiring. He used a Milwaukee right angle drill to thread the wire through the studs. I bought one, and used it to do the low voltage wiring in my house.

What low voltage wiring do you have in your house?

Ethernet cables and coax cables.

This. It's even true of cleaning tools - get a mop from a consumer store and it's made of thin plastic and will break in a year or so. Get a professional one from a cleaning supplier and it will be indestructible - even though it's made by the same company.

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