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10 things to never buy again
Market Watch ^ | 02/16/2016

Posted on 02/16/2016 1:28:44 PM PST by Responsibility2nd

 

1. Cable TV

Though cable providers still have plenty of subscribers — roughly 101 million Americans, in 2015, according to research firm IBISWorld — those numbers are declining.

2. Name-brand razorblades

Americans love their Gillette razorblades — so much so that the shaving giant controls nearly 70% of the nearly $13 billion shaving industry ...

3. Bottled water

Who would pay $2 for what amounts to a bottle of tap water?

4. Credit monitoring services and identity theft insurance

The year 2015 saw more than 732 data breaches as of Dec. 8, according to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center — with more than 176 million records compromised at financial firms, businesses, universities and schools, government offices and medical facilities.

5. Compact discs

Compact discs have going the way of the dodo, and streaming music will keep that trend going in 2016, says Aram Sinnreich, a media professor at Rutgers University.

6. Memory sticks and thumb drives

Computer memory sticks and thumb drives are becoming obsolete as the online storage wars heat up.

7. Mini tablets

When Apple launched the iPhone 6 Plus phablet in 2014, it may have harmed the sales of another one of their product lines —

8. Paid online dating services

Love might be priceless, but the dating industry is now worth around $2.4 billion, according to IBISWorld, with revenue split between advertising and subscription services.

9. Meal replacement plans

Meal replacement plans help you lose weight by sticking to their strict calorie-controlled shakes and soups, but ...

10. Blu-ray players

Even if you have stacks of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, it probably still isn’t advisable to buy a Blu-ray or DVD player, says Benjamin Glaser, the features editor at DealNews.com

(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: consumers; dontbuy; obsolete; obsoleteproducts; slideshow
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To: Responsibility2nd
If a song is worth owning it's worth owning in its “purest” form,and today that form is CD.

If a piece of data is important to me I want to be able to hold it in my hand.I won't trust it to some “cloud”.

If a video is important to me I want to be able to hold it in my hand...in its “purest” form.Today,that means bluray,

21 posted on 02/16/2016 1:43:07 PM PST by Gay State Conservative (Obamanomics:Trickle Up Poverty)
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To: Responsibility2nd

Cut the cable cord 2 years ago.

I buy my razors and blades from Harry’s

I only buy bottled water when necessary . . . usually fill my own bottle. Having water bottle fillers/drinking fountains combination at work makes this very easy.

I got a year’s worth of credit monitoring a few years ago. My bank paid for it after my debit card got compromised.

Compact discs?

Still use USB sticks. They’re cheap and high capacity. I use them to transfer files at work and between work and home.

Bought my wife an iPad mini a few years ago. Haven’t even thought about another one.

Thank God I am already married and don’t need a dating service.

Don’t need to lose weight. Do need to get in shape though.

Got a BluRay player a few years ago . . . rarely use it since I have Netflix and Hulu.


22 posted on 02/16/2016 1:43:09 PM PST by al_c (Obama's standing in the world has fallen so much that Kenya now claims he was born in America.)
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To: LostInBayport
I still own a lot of cd's and will continue to do so....something about ownership, holding it in your hands, appreciating it....

like reading books....I much prefer to hold and maybe own a good book then go online to read it....

23 posted on 02/16/2016 1:43:37 PM PST by cherry
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To: Responsibility2nd

Cable, it really depends on what you watch. Not everything is on the stream, unless you feel like crawling around the dark corners of the internet, and if you subscribe to enough streaming services to get all your show you’ll find that cost starts approaching your cable bill. Plus there’s the bundles, my cable company is also my phone company, internet company, and home security company.

I don’t do blades but I’m not switch from Braun to offbrand.

Bottled water really depends on where you live, a lot of tap is gross. And filters aren’t that cheap, and some make the water worse (anything that softens, yuck that’s nasty).

Agree on the monitoring.

CDs, depends on what you listen to, and how. Yeah pretty much the only thing I do with CDs is rip them and listen to the MP3 but if you listen to weird music CDs are your best source. Plus you get liner notes, a dying art but still cool. Also like the TV stream, that cost adds up faster than you think.

Memory sticks are cheap and handy, and frankly faster than the cloud. Also more secure.

I don’t do tablets of any size.

I know a lot of marriages that started with online dating. It still can work.

The new wave in meal replacement actually involves delivering the ingredients with cooking instruction. Pretty cool stuff. Much more oriented to helping you eat well (healthy and tasty) fast, some of them even bring you in for cooking lessons, handy if your parents skipped some of those useful skills.

If you have the blurays and DVDs why would you not have the player? Most of them are also smart devices and do streaming which really helps with their item 1. And really they’re so cheap, less than $100 gives you streaming and makes all the stuff you bought already not trash, and it’ll last years.

I love these lists, largely because they’re always from a narrow tunnel and generally wrong.


24 posted on 02/16/2016 1:45:11 PM PST by discostu (This is a different kind of flying... all together.)
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To: LostInBayport
And as for “online storage”...yeah, what could possibly go wrong with uploading your personal files into the hands of others?

I agree. I'm no Luddite but I don't think I'll ever trust the cloud thing.

25 posted on 02/16/2016 1:45:16 PM PST by pgkdan (The Silent Majority Stands With TRUMP!)
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To: LostInBayport

If I can buy a used CD for $3.00 instead of paying $1 per song streaming why wouldn’t I buy the used CD and rip it to my computer?


26 posted on 02/16/2016 1:45:27 PM PST by Behind Liberal Lines (Obama loves America the way OJ loved Nicole)
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To: stylin19a

I think it’s because CC companies/banks monitor your credit for free. I’m thinking of dropping FICO monitoring for that reason. You can set up all sorts of indicators through your CC bank.


27 posted on 02/16/2016 1:46:21 PM PST by SkyDancer ("Nobody Said I Was Perfect But Yet Here I Am")
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To: Responsibility2nd

I don’t need advice from some jackass with a slide show.

If I want it/need it/gotta have it... I’m gonna get it. LOL


28 posted on 02/16/2016 1:47:47 PM PST by Augie
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To: stylin19a

They don’t do much for most affected people. Heard a lot of complaints about them not really doing what people thought they would based on the ad hype.


29 posted on 02/16/2016 1:48:05 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: VanDeKoik

Yup, they are wrong about storage. I dont do cloud.


30 posted on 02/16/2016 1:48:32 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Responsibility2nd

Razor blades - while you might be able to feel a difference between gillette multi blade extravaganzas and a good to high quality double-edge safety razor, it’s not visible. 100 weeks of high quality shaves with Derby blades in a basic safety razor costs $15-$20. $40 if you go for ultra-high quality blades like Feather.

So no, gillette lost my business a long time ago when 3 pack started hitting $12 and I realized the multi blades cut below the skin surface leading to ingrown hairs and acne.


31 posted on 02/16/2016 1:48:40 PM PST by FateAmenableToChange
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To: Responsibility2nd

It’s disturbing how they keep trying to force us to give over control of our data/media to cloud companies. No thanks. I’ll retain ownership and control of my files. No cloud storage for me. If it’s important to you, you keep local copies and a way to access it without anyone else’s OK required.


32 posted on 02/16/2016 1:48:58 PM PST by Trod Upon (Every penny given to film and TV media companies goes right into enemy coffers. Starve them out!)
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To: Responsibility2nd

Cut the cable cord last July.

Buy the big package of 3 blade razors at Costco pretty much in line with Harry’s

Bottled water for prep purposes.

Credit monitoring for free like another upthread.

I’ll buy a CD if its in the super discount box if its a good one.

Like having a USB

Have a couple of minis for the kids. They get used every day.

Married...although a dating service would have been cheaper ;)

I like to cook and have an Italian MIL.

BluRay player but never buy disks. Kids do just fine with Netflix and Hulu.


33 posted on 02/16/2016 1:49:42 PM PST by MNlurker
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To: Responsibility2nd
Some of the things on that list are BS. Sure, don't buy CDs if you want crappy sounding MP3s (however, if you can't tell the difference, go ahead and stream). I still buy CDs and even multi-channel SACDs.

Same is true for Blu-rays. there is not presently enough bandwidth to support the resolution and bitrate we get on Blu-rays. They may stream or broadcast in HD, but there are pockets of missing information in every stream and broadcast. and the sound is not HD.

These kinds of list always irritate me, in which some know-it-all tries to convince us to give up something of quality for something that is merely convenient. He may as well have said give up our TVs - we can stream and watch Lawrence of Arabia or Ben-Hur on our phones.

34 posted on 02/16/2016 1:49:47 PM PST by Sans-Culotte (''Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small''~ Theodore Dalrymple)
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To: C19fan

It does work. I do it. I can get a couple months out of razor blades before they go bye.


35 posted on 02/16/2016 1:49:54 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Trod Upon

If Taxact.com ever gets hacked I’m screwed.


36 posted on 02/16/2016 1:50:11 PM PST by central_va
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To: Gay State Conservative

Over time CDs can deteriorate and become unreadable.


37 posted on 02/16/2016 1:50:50 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: MNlurker
Cut the cable cord last July.

Interested in what you're using for internet access and how reliable. Thanks.

38 posted on 02/16/2016 1:50:55 PM PST by nascarnation (RIP Scalia. Godspeed)
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To: wattsgnu

No internet, no access.

Need local storage.


39 posted on 02/16/2016 1:51:07 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: VanDeKoik
I don’t like cloud storage for everything. Gotta have that hard back-up.

Can't boot up on cloud storage either ........ need a thumb drive with an OS on it, and a motherboard that can boot up on a thumb drive OR DVD.

40 posted on 02/16/2016 1:51:11 PM PST by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
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