A few days ago, we had a thread about games that released in 2004, and I made a comment that ended with "old shit is better." And then I started thinking about it... old things are better.
Case in point: vehicles. I needed a truck for the family farm, and I went shopping. Quickly I realized that 1) newer 3/4 ton diesels are designed to fail as a revenue stream and 2) buying a $80,000 truck that will probably need at least one, maybe two $5,000 service visits before it hits six digit mileage wasn't in the cards. So I bought a 20 year old truck... that every mechanic who has seen it has tried to buy. Total cost was less than a Tabroma with the same mileage.
This continues on to just about everything. My house was built before I was born, and has the original air conditioner, stove and hot water heater. The original fridge died a few years ago, and the washer and dryer finally shuffled off this mortal coil last year. I doubt, seriously, that any of the replacement appliances lasts a decade, much less two or three.
Printers? Unless it's Japanese, don't buy a new one. HP will remote control your printer, if you opt in to the program (which they don't make clear what it is), and Xerox is a crapshoot if it works out of the box. Meanwhile, I have seen cheap Brother lasers go to half a million pages easily.
Tractors? Buy a new John Deere, and if it breaks, you either have Deere's mechanic fix it, or it stays broken. (Keep making your payments, please.) Meanwhile, you can buy an older Deere or Yanmar tractor and keep it going forever.
The modern world is starting to give me serious 40k vibes. Almost nobody knows how things work, new things are bad knockoffs, and there are mutants everywhere.
I don't know, I like the newer Camries. I rented one last year and loved the thing. I had so many luxury items hooked up to my phone or chair that it made driving a different experience.
I do have a complaint about gaming. In the mid 10's we had a lot of games that were fun just to walk around. Skyrim, Zelda, GTA5, Kingdom Come, and others have been upgraded and are great to just walk around in. I think Cyberpunk 2077 is the last one. It feels like that genre has sort of died somehow.
It's a red market. The company can't sell more, so they're charging more, and trying to get more from a single user.
My Audi was in the body shop after a fender bender and the insurance set me up with a 2018 Camry as a rental.
I was not prepared for how nice that car was. I had been in my aunt's 2004 Corolla and it was about as bland as Crispix cereal. This Camry however was almost as nice as my Audi in most respects. The leather wasn't quite as good, but the features and comfort was almost the same, and to top it off I was getting like 40mpg just driving around town.
That will be the next car I buy after I offload the Audi somehow.
Exactly, just really impressive for the price. My biggest problem was mine was dark gray enough to be invisible at night. Really annoying in the work parking lot.
I like my 2018 Camry. In my mind it's still a new car since I actually bought it new, outright. I went with the stripped down version though. I wanted them to give me one with a CD player but the only way to do that was to get a moon roof and whole bunch of other moving pieces I didn't want, so I just stuck with the stripped down model. My only complaint is that the retraction on the seat belt is a little slack when I get out and try to let it wind the belt back in. Toyota makes a good car.
The newer Camrys are nice. They also buck the trend. Newer Ford sedans are made in China, newer Chevy sedans blow their engine at 50k miles (and so many have died the wait list for a crate engine is months long), and Buick is now a joke in search of a punchline.
I think much of Toyota is still nice. The Corolla has no right to look that good and work so well.