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
Also, this is an old meme, and a bit outdated for our times, but no one has mentioned it so ill do it. The Nokia 3310. Truly the AK-47 of phones.
I think every Swedish household i've ever been in has owned the same Moccamaster coffee brewer for over 15 years. My parents have had the same one for over 20 years probably, swear those are indestructible.
My 99 honda civic had nearly 250,000 miles on it the day that it was stolen. When it was found, the thieves had gutted the dashboard of electronics and had removed wheels and other parts. When it was discovered by the police, they towed it to the city in-pound lot and failed to contact me for a couple days because the license plate had been painted over for some reason.
Unfortunately the lot and towing fees ended up being more than what I paid for the car. I wasnt very well off at the time, so I surrendered it to the city. I assumed it would be scrapped for parts.
6 months later it was served to me in ad for Facebook Marketplace. Some guy had fixed it up and had been driving it regularly for months with no issue.
I still wish that I had bought it from him. I fuckin loved that car. I used it to deliver pizzas for 2 years, so i wasnt even that easy on it. I never had a major engine or transmission issue with it and the minor issues that I had were easy for me to fix myself. I bet it's still running out there somewhere.
Sony MDR-V6. I've had them for 15+ years, only had to change ear pads to velour ones after the first 5 years of use, after that 10+ years, no issues.
Akai 4000ds Reel to Reel tape player. So many are still working, built like a tank. They're super cheap on the used market.
Japanese-made sewing machines from the 1950s. Most are all-metal and overbuilt, and will work like new with a few drops of oil, maybe a fresh belt. In the US they were imported and had local brand's names put on them; what you're really looking for is the "Made in Japan" on the back or bottom. Granny sewing machines also qualify, but most of the Japanese ones have zigzag
I've been interested in this subject for a while and have a few recommendations.
Stanley Thermos. It could get hit by a fucking train and would still outlive you. Don't recommend putting cofee/milk products etc in them though because it will make the gasket smell. Excellent water container though.
Double edged straight razor. The handle piece is virtually indestructible. I bought a package of like 500 blades for like 30 dollars and haven't had to buy new ones for actual years. Fun fact as well, once you learn to use one it's better for sensitive skin because you're only dragging one razor across your skin per stroke instead of 5 or 7 or whatever the fuck the "better" ones have. Can confirm the "more blades = better" shit is just pure predatory marketing.
Buck knife. Multi tools are cool but if you tend to use the knife often, invest in a higher quality knife and stones to sharpen it. Sharpening stones (not the crap ceramic stuff they try to sell) will last a lifetime and will also keep all your kitchen knives beautiful for years. While you're up to it, get a piece of raw leather, like the back of of an old belt, and use it as a strop to polish off the blade when you're done sharpening, it really does make the cut smoother.
People say Mag light, but I'd personally recommend Olight as well for flashlights. The Olight Baton 4 is a ~600 lumen adjustable brightness flashlight with strobe which will blind you if you aren't careful and its smaller than a pill bottle and comes with a reversible clip and inset magnet in case you need to stick it somewhere to keep the light steady.
A graphite metal "magic" pencil. Instead of using normal graphite, these metal bodied pencils have end pieces you screw in as a tip, are erasable, and one nib takes forever to run out, something like 5 pencils. They dont draw as dark as a regular pencil due to the hardness but for general usage they are handy.
Mighty plugs ear plugs. Want to know what it's like to be deaf? Buy these. They aren't too costly, completely seal the ear, and I only have to get a new package once every few years. They're so effective I had to purchase an alarm clock built for deaf people which shakes my mattress instead of making a sound because I couldn't hear any normal alarm clock after I started using these. This combination is unbeatable if you have awful neighbors or live on a busy street with night traffic.
Any self winding watch. Stop fucking around with button cell batteries and evolve. If it's cheap, that's probably better, if it gets scratched you don't have to care. Seiko is a good brand in my experience.
If you're into camping get a decent mid sized carving hatchet. I have a mid sized Hultafors swedish steel one. People like splitting axes because they do what they're advertised to do, but theyre huge, heavy, and you cant carve or skin with them. A lighter smaller carving axe will do the same job splitting a log if you baton it with a medium sized stick. If you need something bigger to cut down a tree, go for a curved folding saw to bring with the hatchet. The Silky Saw Big Boy is great for that. Also buy a wool blanket. That shit will keep you warm in -35 C if you use it correctly. Also tents are neat but cumbersome, instead invest in a tarp and learn to make a lean to/other tarp configurations in combination with a ground sheet. If you expect you'll be facing inclement or extremely wet weather, get an oilskin tarp (or make one yourself its literally just a cotton sheet which you have ran through a few dryer cycles as hot as possible, and then soaked through in a 50/50 mix of boiled linseed oil and mineral spirits and hung outside until completely dry. Don't put an open flame near it at any point in that process).
I probably have a bunch more, but can't think of them off the top of my head.
Wait, you're saying not to use coffee in a Stanley thermos?? Even if I don't have milk in it too? What's it for then, only soup?
Yea or water is what I primarily use it for. You CAN put coffee and such in there however, you will want to take off the gasket and clean the hell out of it. It absorbs smells quite strongly. You could also probably get a different gasket which is not as bad for it. Should the gasket begin to smell, I recommend soaking it over night in vinegar, and then another night in water. This really seems to suck the smell out of it.
In that case, it's probably any gasket that's susceptible to this, coffee is really strong-smelling. My Zojirushi thermos is only used for coffee, for this reason...
It can probably affect all gaskets, but depending on the type of rubber some might be better or worse. I haven't played around enough with testing different ones to know for certain though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The only thing I'm really curious about is how far back the CPU gets throttled with the dGPU active and busy.
On both of my machines when I render a video using my GPU the CPU is still the limiting factor because of the codec I chose. On my 11th gen machine it took like 5 minutes before it was power throttled down to 25 watts. My gen 6 takes longer to power throttle and only goes down to 35 watts, but either power level that sucks. I already know the gen 7 dials back the clock speeds, but I'm mostly curious how far it goes and how quickly?
The easiest way to test this is just open a video game that's taxing on the CPU and GPU, I don't think the CPU throttles with light loads like if you opened furmark. Maybe benchmarking software would cause it to throttle.
I bought a T14 Gen 2 on eBay for about $250. It can play some older games like Morrowind, but I mostly use it for book writing, D&D games, video downloading/ripping/burning, browsing, and such.
I put Linux Mint on mine and it runs like a dream.
(Off-Topic) Does anybody have “anti-planned obsolescence” communities?
Maybe where good products are discussed or recommended? Similar to r/buyitforlofe but without the shilling of socks
Edit:
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.
KitchenAid mixers before they got cheap
I inherited a 6" Wilton vise from my dad. He's still alive but I convinced him to pass it on to me early because I had a couple projects it would be super helpful on. And maybe a little bit to beat my siblings to the punch.
Zippo lighters.
My dad also has a Lincoln Electric welder that will last to pass onto another generation or two. He still uses it though and again, I probably have a sibling or two who would also appreciate having it.
