You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Can anyone beat the WD My Cloud for sheer unsuitability?
What it should do:
Be like dropbox, but with an actual physical box on your desk so it's quick enough to seamlessly work as a NAS whilst at home.
What it actually does:
Infuriates the user by popping up a browser user interface rather than an actual file manager whenever you click on it, occasionally redirecting to "Twonky server" which fills you with confidence. Be almost* impossible to actually transfer files to it from your phone. Auto backup files/photos from your phone (nope, you've guessed it, it hasn't).
FFS, it's supposed to be a simple consumer product. I just want to setup a folder for each person in the house that they can drag and drop shit into. But noooooo.
I'd actually be quicker just uploading everything to dropbox, then manually transferring it into an external hard drive, then whenever I needed to access it drive home, hook it up, print out glossy photos, then drive back to wherever I was to show them to someone.
*I've achieved it in the past, today it's not working
Haha. Got one of those as well. Can never remember how to get stuff onto it any more. Almost everything just goes to Onedrive now
Every printer ever made ever. Bastards, the lot of them.
Printers.
I had one of those wd my cloud things. It went in the bin.
It utterly refused to ‘actually’ work.
It would say it had achieved its job, but when you checked, it hadn’t.
I avoided any warranty issues by using a hammer to pack it back in it’s box.
I’ve taken the same approach with everything since, life is too short to **** about with stuff that doesn’t work.
Printers are the work of the devil, when they don't behave.
Haha. Got one of those as well. Can never remember how to get stuff onto it any more. Almost everything just goes to Onedrive now
Having been burnt by Flickr reducing it's capacity, and Facebook only storing low res copies I really like the idea of having the originals on an actual physical drive that I own. But an online backup for photos and just sticking SSD's in a case is looking like a better option than this unusable POS.
Roughly every 6 months I seem to set it up again and it seems to be working as it should, then just doesn't.
Every printer ever made ever. Bastards, the lot of them.
Our printer currently works over WiFi from my OH's work laptop, I've been unable to recreate this feat via any other PC, laptop or phone without enduing up with 3 identically named printers on the list and none of them working. Surely the manufacturers at least test their user-friendliness with windows, or do they have a special version of Drac's iPad running an obscure distro of Linux that it's ddeveloped for?
Central heating timers.
I share both the printer and WD app pain.
They are both shit!
GoPro
End of thread
I have a WD NAS. It took me nearly a month to get it set up so it would talk to my TV. It turned out that WD had licensed an old version of Twonky that wouldn't talk to my TV. Yeah really useful, release a product that is meant to talk to TVs but which won't work with the products of one of the largest, if not the largest, TV manufacturer in the world.
Took ages to figure out the problem as WD were no help at all. So I had to buy my own license to upgrade the SW (it's reasonable SW to be fair) and then install it by mounting the NAS as a drive, stopping the Twonky daemon, installing the new version, updating the symlink to that and restarting the daemon. Not too hard when that's the sort of thing you do weekly but for your average consumer the Linux command line isn't the friendliest of places.
Once I'd done that then it worked OK - I could simultaneously stream movies to the TV, my computer, my wife's laptop, an iPad and an iPhone without problem. All a bit OTT since there's only the two of us in the house.
So, yes. The WD NAS drives are a royal pain.
Wi-fi SD cards. Just won’t work.
Lego ****ing Mario, the temperamental four ****ing inch tall ****
windows 10
Yet another vote for printers. I fail to see how something ostensibly fairly simple can be specifically made to be so complicated, requiring wi-fi connectivity, specific apps, bluetooth and god only knows what other assorted crap.
Cable - plug in - print.
Our office manager worked out the cost savings of all of us WFH so not being in the office and ordering in reams of printer paper and ink cartridges and having the engineer come out every week to fix yet another broken bit of it. It was a LOT of money!
thegeneralist
Free Member
Quote
GoProEnd of thread
See I work with them for a living. I think their downfall is not having simpler "Go" an "Pro" options when you first switch it on.
99% of people would be better served if you could just click go and it went into 1080i and auto-everything.
1% of people would quite like a slightly more manual menu that doesn't need forcing quite so much (the only way to make it manual used to be to set the max/min settings to the same value i.e. max iso 400, min iso 400, max shutter 1/60, min shutter 1/60 etc).
We've got a set of these and they're really quite capable bits of kit once you get the settings dialed and fit a decent lense to it.
I'm still baffled by the fact you buy computer games (Switch in our case) and the games has zero instructions in the box.
I give up and just let my 9 year old play until he gets to a level where he's figured out enough controls for his level of interest.
Would it be so hard to print a simple set of instructions saying which button does which action...
I have two WD drives. I made the mistake of thinking they must have improved things in the few years between buying the first and second.
I was wrong. Every few months I forget this and try to use them again. I soon give up. Lucky I just use OneDrive which works fine for everything across several pc's and phones.
Don't have any problems with printers.
far more basic than any of these, the USB plug / socket.
Chance says that 50% of the time I'll get it the right way round.
Experience says every f'in time I try, then have to flip it over.
Even the times I do get it right first time, because I'm like Pavlov's dog, so attuned to be getting it wrong I encounter the tiniest bit of resistance and I flip it over anyway. Only to then have to flip it back. So it's never right first time, only second or third.
Mac user here.
Printers. Just work
GoPro. Just works
Garmin. Just works
Android phone. Just doesn't work easily enough.
Hah you amateurs. I got a 3D printer for Christmas. An "entry level" model which means in other words it's barely developed.
Lezyne smart head chuck thing.
Absolute hateful, useless, less than useless, finicky pile of utter garbage.
I've not even owned a pump with one on but a mate did and just the experience of having to use it a handful of times made me want to go round to house of the Lezyne designer that came up with such an immeasurably shit item and make them swallow it!
Hah you amateurs. I got a 3D printer for Christmas. An “entry level” model which means in other words it’s barely developed
Pffft, I have an Ultimaker at work, cost £3k+. I've told my boss it's broken and I can't fix it as I just can't face troubleshooting it again! Something is broken and I can't figure out what. To be fair they're pretty simple bits of kit really, the slicing software all output the same file format so it's that which does most of the heavy lifting. The printer is just 4 stepper motors and a thermostat following the commands of the slicer software (which is why they've gotten so cheap).
Software not hardware but...Zwift.
Want to change setting, check badges, progress etc? Don't go to our website, open the app (it'll need updating I expect) start and ride, change stuff, cancel ride.
Wanna ride then pick another route? Close the app and reopen.
Want to see check who's riding a race, see full results which filter out sandbaggers. Ah, you need a third party app for that.
Want to checkout route details? Hey, try different website altogether.
Oh and unless you have rock solid broadband, good luck.
When it works its great though;)
molgrips
Hah you amateurs. I got a 3D printer for Christmas. An “entry level” model which means in other words it’s barely developed
What is it? My Creality Cr-10 Mini is about as basic as they come and once the bed was levelled it has pretty much just worked.
The trickiest bit is getting your slicer settings dialled in for specific prints and what your printer requires. The other thing is learning how to model things to suit 3hD printing and handling support material etc.
tinas - we've got an Ultimaker 3 Extended at work and certain things about it are great, but other things are complete crap and very poorly developed. Not worth the money IMO, although people with very little knowledge or experience have had good results with it.
I clicked on the thread to say something along the lines of "Garmin software - end of thread", but I've got a WD my cloud - my word is it truly horrible. There is a website with details of how to bypass some of the worst features and make is useable but even then it's awful. I can't think of a single piece of tech I've ever used that's worse.
I bought a WD my cloud couldn’t get it to work they way I expected for month’s
Then over lock down given I had the time I finally sussed it out , if works pretty well now to be honest
It only has one disk so I still back up important bits elsewhere
If anyone wants to give there a good home let me know
far more basic than any of these, the USB plug / socket.
Chance says that 50% of the time I’ll get it the right way round.
Experience says every f’in time I try, then have to flip it over.
Even the times I do get it right first time, because I’m like Pavlov’s dog, so attuned to be getting it wrong I encounter the tiniest bit of resistance and I flip it over anyway. Only to then have to flip it back. So it’s never right first time, only second or third.
Agreed on USB Type A:
Life is too short to deal with WD. Online service and/or synology NAS.
iPhones. Horrible things.
I gave up on NAS drives totally after yest another Synology update meant I had to rebuild the library on mine. Total POS. An It mate advised me to subscribe to OneDrive.
That Lezyne chuck head is the bike equivalent of Satan's ringpiece. A malevolent hoop that causes immense pain. I hate it with a passion. Pump consigned to dusty shed corner.
Fridges and freezers. Does a bigger number on the dial mean higher or lower temperature? THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW WITHOUT RUINING A LOAD OF FOOD.
It’s not even consistent between different fridges.
Every printer ever made ever. Bastards, the lot of them.
I think you've forgotten about SCSI interface scanners
windows 10
I think you mean Windows 8 Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows XP Windows 2000 Windows 98 Windows 95 Windows 3.1.
Win3.1 was the first version I used. Each version was easier to use than the previous (with the exception of Millenial Edition, which was warmed over Win98). Win10 is amazingly simple and reliable compared to the old XP and 98 days.
The old programmable VCRs. Nothing like working through a 200 page paper manual to work out the codes to video Coro St. for my mum every day. Jesus, the salespeople must have laughed their arses off every time one of those went out the door based on the demo of "look, you can set it to automatically record all your favorite programmes."
I’m still baffled by the fact you buy computer games (Switch in our case) and the games has zero instructions in the box.
I give up and just let my 9 year old play until he gets to a level where he’s figured out enough controls for his level of interest.
Would it be so hard to print a simple set of instructions saying which button does which action…
Stopped years ago due to there always being an in game menu > options > controls or similar. Saves paper too!
I’m with central heating or any other type of timer. Had a fancy pants towel heating radiator thing fitted that has a separate thermostat and timer. Only ever comes on when the heating does as I can’t figure out how to set the timer and the display is so tiny that, even if I could set it, I wouldn’t be able to tell what I was doing.
Modern cars I'd say. When something goes wrong you basically have bo chance of being able to fix it yourself as everything needs a sensor now and needs programmed (you cant even change the battery yourself in some BMW) and half the time the dealer cant or wont because you dont really have much comeback against them.
USB-c
solves the problem of
Chance says that 50% of the time I’ll get it the right way round.
introduces the problem of a plethora of power demands and data rates with nothing on the device, lead or charger to indicate what their requirements or capability is.
The old programmable VCRs.
Following on from that, DVD players. You know how, when you press a button on a computer or phone and you expect it to do something? Right there and then.
DVD players managed to introduce a complete new time zone between you pressing the button and (much whirring and clunking later) actually carrying out the command you told it.
Sometimes via 4 or 5 sub-menus offering language and subtitling and aspect ratio but never letting you skip the adverts or anti-piracy warnings.
Can I join the WD My Cloud app misery, Utter utter shite software.
Ok, maybe shouldn't be in the 'non user friendly category but..
Don't get me started on WD crap. I bought a 1TB external hard drive a few years ago, can't remember what I paid for it but I duly 'saved' a load of photo's, did this about 3 or 4 times & had it stored in a drawer. Went to use it after it was about 3 weeks out of warranty & It's basically Fubared, just won't work. I've had it to 4 different places to see what's wrong but It's just knackered.
Pile O shite.
Modern cars I’d say. When something goes wrong you basically have bo chance of being able to fix it yourself as everything needs a sensor now and needs programmed
Sure, but they don't stop on the side of the road if you drive through a puddle. Jesus, try driving some old 70s cars. They had carburettors, so to start them up you'd have to apply the choke and stamp the accelerator several times to pump gas into the engine (generally three stomps on the accellerator, but it depended on the car, if you over did it, you'd flood the engine, and then you were ****ed). Then, once you got it to fire up, you'd have to monitor the engine temperature to make sure you didn't flood it before you disabled the choke.
On top of that, in wet weather, drum brakes would fill with water and not work until the water got squeezed out and the brakes get up to temperature. So, if you drove through a puddle, the brakes on one side of the car wouldn't work and you'd change lanes if you stomped on the brakes.
That was all considered normal BITD. Just part of learning how to operate a car. Modern cars are amazing. They just start up when you turn the key and stop when you mash on the stop pedal. No drama, just boring start, do, stop without any randomness thrown in.
Sure, but they don’t stop on the side of the road if you drive through a puddle. Jesus, try driving some old 70s cars.
Agreed, but that was 50 years ago. I'm thinking back to maybe 20 years ago, lots of cars from then are still around now and running as well as the day they were bought. By then they were well past the kind of issues you describe.
We bought an Echo Show. Terrible bit of kit. Will only respond if we say “echo” in a northern accent and has yet to show anything of remote relevance to any question.
Better.
The leisure centre chain, Better.
Specifically their website. It’s just hard to use. It should be simple, but *somehow* it’s just baffling. Easy things like ‘when can I swim’ take thousands of clicks and dead ends and irrelevant asides. It should be easy, I’m a web-literate human. But it’s awful
Couldn’t it just be, erm... ‘better’
Meh....my WD mycloud works great still after 4+ years. Granted the mobile app is pretty shocking though.
GoPro software. Absolute shite.
The new sky guide. It used to work well. Now it doesn't.
Wireless printers. Ours works for a few months then needs setting up again.
WiFi bulbs that aren't from the major brands. Instructions were to switch on/off repeatedly until the bulb started flashing.
Stood ther for 15 minutes turning lights on and off and still didn't connect.
Nextbase dash cam. Must be on the 6th one in 12 months. Every so often, it just locks up making an annoying pinging noise and none of the button respond. Response from nextbase? You need to format the SD card.
1. I can't, the ****ing thing is unresponsive.
2. Why does it need formatting every two weeks? Can't it just overwrite? Or failing that, give me a warning message that it needs attention rather than just locking out.
I'd also like to give an honorary mention to every single IT system at work. Everything needs a password, but each set of password criteria are different so you can't use the same one and none of the systems talk to each other.
but each set of password criteria are different so you can’t use the same one
Sounds idiot proof 🙂
GU10 light fittings. Hateful.
Sounds idiot proof 🙂
Just means everyone has a post-it note on the side of their screen with all the passwords on it - which all need changing after differing amounts of time.
One of our managers had his car broken into recently and his laptop back was stolen. It was recovered about 3 cars down once they'd looked inside and saw the pos laptop that was in their.
The interior of any Saab, especially those made in the 2000s. All the buttons and controls in the wrong place and behaving in the wrong way makes for a hideously counter-intuitive experience.
I had one of those wd my cloud things. It went in the bin.
It utterly refused to ‘actually’ work.
It would say it had achieved its job, but when you checked, it hadn’t.
Please, can I join the ‘WD MyCloud are shit’ group? It seemed to be ok, but then I noticed it hadn’t been backing up via Time Machine. Had it and my Mac Mini checked over, nothing apparently wrong, and then my Mac’s HDD failed. Turned out the MyCloud hadn’t been backing up, and I lost 100Gb of music I’d ripped. 🤬
Fortunately, I’m one of those odd creatures who keeps CD’s, instead of flogging them all for a fiver, so I’ve been gradually re-ripping all the old stuff, and bought two small toughened 2Tb portable drives that I can daisy-chain and set up a software RAID. I’m going to get another portable drive, backup everything onto that first, I have to reformat the other drives to run in RAID.
I wish I had an air rifle, so I could shoot the WD drive full of holes. What a hopeless piece of shit.
Amazon smart speaker jobbie - friends have got one, let’s just say it’s not an encouraging advert for their efficiency...
Touch screens in cars, what ****ing idiot thought that was good idea?.
Mac user here.
Printers. Just work
GoPro. Just works
Garmin. Just works
Android phone. Just doesn’t work easily enough.
PC user here
Printers just work. Never understand why people struggle with them.
win 10 just works. Has worked perfectly since I started using it at work and home.
iPhone. Just works, has done for 10 years (or ever since I started using my iPhone 3).
Sony OLED TV, brilliant picture, crap everything else, so flaky it makes the old Samsung look good.
Software not hardware but…Zwift.
I'm relatively tech savvy. Got smart tech thoughout my house, worked as IT project manager for years. Can work my way around Android, iOS and Windows quite happily. Used to ride Sufferfest on a dumb trainer and it was, obviously, straight forward. I got a smart trainer a couple of years and the tech just sapped my will to live. The softward, apps, profiles, accounts and interdependencies just broke me. I know it is user error but I never actually was able to work out how to train on it in any sort of session or race. I even asked on here. I now use my smart trainer in dumb mode and ride Sufferfest sessions again. I could have easily saved myself a few £££ by keeping my old dumb trainer
Oh and agree about the WD My cloud as well
Just means everyone has a post-it note on the side of their screen with all the passwords on it –
That works absolutely fine. Hackers can't see the post it note.
iPads.
I'd like to connect to computer please. Now let me drag and drop files. No? iTunes? Yes, **** you very much.
Don’t get me started on WD crap. I bought a 1TB external hard drive a few years ago
Just dismantle it, the drive will just be a standard SATA unit that you can plug into any computer.
PC user here
Printers just work. Never understand why people struggle with them.
Single user or networked? My HP works fine for one computer. Refuses to work for the app or any other computers (luckily this can be worked around by emailing docs to it). By the look of it I'm not alone either. Older networked printers were fine, it's the bells and whistles that bugger everything up.
That works absolutely fine.
I'd say that is dependant on the data those passwords are supposed to be protecting.
Touch screens in cars, what **** idiot thought that was good idea?.
Actually.... pretty much all car stereos - but particularly aftermarket ones. I've never understood why they invest so much space on the facia for a screen- which you can't really look at when you're driving - and so little space to the buttons - which you typically operate without looking at them. Lets not have any space between the buttons and lets make them the same colour as the facia.
The printer I have works fine most of the time, when connected to a PC. It doesn't like my daughters' Macs, though.
Cheap WiFi plugs probably get my vote: getting them to pair to your phone is an exercise in frustration.
Usb a is simply always the logo on top, no?
Wd cloud is really easy once you enable Windows file sharing, and just map a network drive to your laptop or whatever. I cant remember how I did this, but I suspect its enabled by default
Sony OLED TV
This. I have low expectations of anything running Android but the Sony TV implementation takes things to a whole new level of incomprehensibility. For example, if you want to watch Freeview you have a choice of two guides, each of which has a different set of features, neither of which is complete, so you have to choose the least worst option. The Home Screen has more random unremovable crap than things you actually want and new things appearing randomly whereas stuff you actually might want (like Nowtv, AppleTV+) is carefully obscured. Bluetooth headphone connection is a lottery. Do people not try these things before they sell them? All that and the uncomfortable knowledge that Google is spying on your TV watching habits.
iPhone.
Wife has had one for 3 years. She said she still hadn't worked out how to copy a mp3 from our win7 computer onto her iPhone and play it.
The heating controls in my car. How about a knob for fan speed and a knob for temp? Nope, you have to select the control and then turn the knob. TBH there’s a lot wrong with the audio/Satnav/phone stuff too. I’m not sure my brain works in the same ways as Germans when it comes to ergonomics. See Vailant boiler controls and anything SAP for confirmation.
iTunes. Apple’s insistence on not just killing it with fire is akin to being forced to run your Porsche on Ling Long tyres. Just awful. The iOS Podcasts app gets an honourable mention too.
Having read through this thread it seems obvious to me that we are in the Windows 95 era equivalent of 'smart' home appliances and software.
Having read through this thread it seems obvious to me that we are in the Windows 95 era equivalent of ‘smart’ home appliances and software.
When I was trying to set up my WD NAS I compared it to the very early home networking systems where you needed to set up routing tables on everything in order for it to work. Just not something you'd expect "normal" non-tech users to be able to do.
Apple TV touch remote. The old one was fine, the one with the little touch pad must have been signed off without any user testing.
Wahoo RFLKT. Properly awful, half baked piece of crap.
My daughter's iPhone and iPad. Never realised a device could actually be smug.
Agree about zwift. I've been using other apps with a wide variety of sensors/trainers for years but I have never managed to get through a month of 'I'll give zwift another go' before giving up. All the setting up stuff takes ages, it's cold in my garage and I'm not emotionally equipped to deal with it when the wee man on my screen stops pedalling at random for the 90th time.
Usb a is simply always the logo on top, no?
unless the slot is on its side - then what? Or you can’t see the logo.
Wd cloud is really easy
Seems you’re outnumbered in this opinion.
Look at the logo on the usb cable before putting it somewhere you cant dee? Sure if its in its side its tricker (there might be a standard?) And dual sided is obviously better, but its not bad for a design thats 24 years old. Remember how bad ps2 was?
Or it's one of the annoying cables where the manufacturer has ignored recommendations and put their logo on the top instead of the usb logo. PITA.
I have my cloud too but I don't use the software and it works fine. Use Pcloud instead. Marvelous.
iPad keyboard on the other hand is dismal.
iTunes. Apple’s insistence on not just killing it with fire.....
Itunes was replaced in 2019 🙂
Modern cars I’d say.
Nah. You just need the tool to deal with it, then they're great. Something goes wrong, a light comes on, you plug in and it tells you what's wrong. Half the time you just replace the bit then you're off. It doesn't require arcane ancient lore of rules passed down from father to son for decades.
I’m thinking back to maybe 20 years ago, lots of cars from then are still around now and running as well as the day they were bought.
Disagree there. My Passat is now 14 years old and they were incredibly common when I got it in 2009, but surprisingly few now. Because I notice these things. Look out for cars with pre-2000 old style number plates on. There are hardly any.
My old VW Polo was a 93, the one that looked like a little estate car. Simple mechanical engine and reliable. I almost never see those on the road now. This has been the case for many years, and they were a popular car at the time. Thinking back to the cars of my youth 20-25 years ago, they are all rare as hell now despite being ubiquitous at the time.
The program I just wrote as a sub contractor.
I told the BA it was a terrible design. He/they didn't care. Write it verbatim they told me. So I did.
Full of useless needless complicated features controlled by a zillion inputs.
Management think 'more features, close tight integration' = 'adding value'. Grrrr.....
Disagree there. My Passat is now 14 years old and they were incredibly common when I got it in 2009, but surprisingly few now. Because I notice these things. Look out for cars with pre-2000 old style number plates on. There are hardly any.
That's mostly down to depreciation and the low perceived value of old cars in the UK.
I've known people scrap old cars at a big bill. By big bill I mean tyres, brakes and other consumables.
Car is worth £not a lot, new tyres and brakes etc will cost more.
Completey ignoring the fact that the replacement will cost more and still need, probably even more expensive tyres and brakes etc.
The trick with WD NAS drives is to forget the app and just map the drive as a network drive. It then always just like any other hard drive. Forget Twonky or anything else like that.
As for my vote - macOS. Just hateful. iOS I actually like but the Apple’s desktop OS just doesn’t make any sense to me. For something that is supposed to ‘Just Work’ it’s shit.
And for a niche entry, any astrophotography set up. Requires hours of fiddling, usually in the freezing cold and dark 🙂
Or you can’t see the logo.
Put a dob of tippex on the logo for easy identification
Not consumer but...
Autodesk products.
New features everyear. Recurring problems you find first mentioned in 2008 forum posts remain unfixed with helpful "workarounds" suggested by staff on the forum like its not worth fixing.
Crashy and buggy. "Oh and by the way this year we've changed the file type and its no longer backwards compatible. Also while we're at it no more shared licenses for anyone its standalone only"