Thank you for that bit of trivia. Very interesting.
>U.S. President Bill Clinton owned and wore several early models (including the original) of the watch during his time as Governor of Arkansas and in the early years of his Presidency. In one of his early Presidential photographs and at his 1993 Inaugural Ball, he is seen wearing a blue and black Ironman Triathlon. Clinton's forgoing of a more presidential watch such as a Rolex earned him some criticism; Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post described Clinton's timepiece derisively as “a plastic digital watch, thick as a brick and handsome as a hernia”, while Omega SA ran ads in 1992 suggesting that Clinton should give up the Timex in favor of something more expensive. Clinton stopped wearing his Ironman publicly in 1994, starting with the 50th anniversary of D-Day.[2][3] Clinton has since donated one of his early Ironman models to the Smithsonian.
One way to become rich is to be very careful money. Thus you tend to find the rich right in poor areas doing things that the poor do, and wearing clothing the poor do. Those million dollar homes often are inhabited by people who earn a lot of money, but spend every cent and have nothing in the bank and a lot of debt.
These are great! For less than $10 each, I’ve bought a bunch of them and left them scattered around my apartment and various other places so I can always find a watch. If it’s starting to take me too long to find a watch then the watch density must be getting too low, so I order some more.
Yeah interesting - I always keep my watch on, even showering - it cleans the watch and I have a water resistant one. I only take my watch off to put on a different one for style.
My grandmother had severe arthritis and her fingers lacked the fine control needed to set her watch. So she simply kept it set to the same time zone all year round and made a mental note to subtract one hour for half the year.
The others laugh, but this is great (my house isn't big enough to bother though).
Another baby game changer along these lines - buy a 20 pack of small microfiber cloths and hide them in all your coin and inside jacket pockets. Never be without a glasses wipe when you need one. I even give them away to people who forgot theirs, since frequently I'll have two on my person.
I'm laying on my couch right now, with my laptop plugged into a brick perched permanently at the end thereof. There are two more at the table (sometimes work and personal laptop are up at the same time), and one on my nightstand, and one in the kitchen for when I'm using a recipe from online or just youtubing while cooking.
All my old Thinkpad bricks with the gray round plug have little converter cables on 'em, so they work with the modern yellow rectangular socket now. I got a new brick with the work lappy, a new one with the personal, and I think there's one knockoff cheapie in the mix somewhere.
I do this same thing, except now with USB-C chargers it's even better. Charge my laptop or my phone. There's some great charger bricks that go on sale for ~$10, so I have a lot of those.
You can also convert usb-c charger into specific laptop chargers with the appropriate barrel/rectangle adapter (search for usb-c pd trigger + laptop model on aliexpress). Caveat: the laptop doesnt know the max wattage of the charger, it's your job to make sure it gets 60W or 90W from the USB PD adapter
Historically USB chargers have consumed power when connected to the wall socket, even when not connected to a phone. Some phones have even displayed an alert "Disconnect power supply from wall to save energy" when you unplugged the USB cable from the phone. Do modern USB-C chargers suffer from the same drawback and so shouldn’t be left plugged in all the time?
Doing some quick math in my head, even at 1w draw each, if they're constantly drawing that 24/7, it would end up costing about 80 cents per month (at $0.11/kWh). The cost of purchasing the chargers easily outweighs that. But I probably only have 5 around the house, so I have no problem spending 40 cents per month.
Thanks! I'm glad to see the recommendation for Nekteck; they looked kind of generic knock-off-y to me, but I went for https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0712252ZQ a while ago, and have been very happy with it as essentially my sole charger.
An aesthetic benefit to placing the ThinkPad bricks strategically around the home is that you can mount them in a way that's more tidy when you're using it, than dragging a brick around. (Though there can be an aesthetic downside to having a cable around when you're not using it.)
My favorite means of mounting a brick is to use a large pair of Velcro. For undersides on some IKEA tables, I once had to augment the Velcro pad adhesive with Gorilla Glue. Sometimes I use zip ties instead of Velcro.
When buying extra bricks, in addition to the presumed-good one that came with the laptop, I advise going to some effort and guesswork to try to get genuine, non-counterfeit ones. I've seen some corner-cutting in circuitry in other power adapters and chargers, and that seems like a fire hazard.
For people who don't like the idea of bricks plugged into the AC when not in use, Leviton and others make little switches that plug into the AC outlet.
Another, but much cheaper trick is to always leave the alarm on: then you have around 10 seconds of chance every morning to find it, if not - then better luck next day!
I have them scattered around my place for a different reason in that I keep finding the watch itself far out lasts the cheap plastic band (especially because I use them almost primarily for swimming and other places a "disposable" watch makes more sense than wearing a smartwatch like I more regularly wear), so I keep leaving the band-less watches in interesting spots where I haven't bothered to put a clock or wouldn't otherwise need to have a clock.
> Also, for those of us men with "less than manly" wrists, it doesn't look oversized, unlike the bulk of men's analog watches today.
Boy, is that an understatement. I don't think I have terribly manly wrists, but it barely fits on mine. I thought I'd accidentally ordered the women's version when I got it. Other than that (which is fixable with a new band) and the light, I love it, but it is a gripe.
Large fraction of world population has not learned to express themselves trough mindless consumerism. Cheapest Casio is enough "It shows the same time as expensive watch."
Buying the cheapest Casio can also be a status signal, similar to the CEO of Goldman Sachs wearing a Swatch. Buying a truly cheap watch is a signal of 'I don't care' (which may be true, or may be affected), whereas getting into expensive watches can get very complicated. There's plenty of stories from investment banking about the signals that watches send, from my understanding people are more likely to poke fun at a Tag Heuer than a Casio.
I bought a gshock about 16 years ago when going through military training - during the time I had two other watches stop working. The watch has been in some harsh conditions and has taking a beating, its worn down to the point you can no longer read the text captions, but you can still read the time perfectly, all functionality works, even the light, and its still on the original battery.
I don't understand why all of these cheap watches have so much text shitting them up. I've already bought the watch, you don't need to sell it to me anymore!
You can't replicate its LCD or UI with some "generic" digital watch movement. Fakes have a reimplementation of the Casio module and many do output CASIo. The fakes are mass produced. There are a few identifiable families of fakes with particular errors in their production.
Mine has an additional tell in the printing on the face: a tiny, precise U under the word RESIST. On fakes, which are usually poorly printed, the U is much bigger.
Arguably made famous by James Bond, a Nato strap is an alternative to a metal bracelet or rubber strap for a watch. Basically, a sort of fabric similar to the material your seat belt is made of, is used to strap the watch to your wrist. Lots of exciting colorways.
I collect mechanical watches, and the F-91W is the only digital watch I own.
Really nice to see a Vostok shared! I've got the Komandirskie and Amphibian, along with a bunch of other vintage Soviet pieces (Rateka, etc). Cheap, and cheerful, and always eye-catching.
I used to own a Raketa 24H Antarktika "Frankenwatch". It contained a genuine 2623 movement, and as best I could tell the hands were the original. Other parts, such as the glass were cheap fake pieces.
It was definitely a very unique piece that people always inquired about. Unfortunately, it wasn't so durable and didn't last very long before the glass began falling off, and subsequently other components became damaged and dirty. I intend to get another eventually, if I can find a good place to get a high quality one. I'm not even too worried about getting a Frankenwatch, my only concern is the durability.
A conventional strap is in two pieces, so if one pin attaching it to the watch body fails you lose the watch. A NATO strap loops under both pins as a single piece, so if one pin fails, the watch is still attached by the other.
99% of people you see wearing a NATO strap will never be in a situation where they might have this problem mind you!
I have the W-800H-1AV hanging on the wall in my shower with full date and day of week. Absolutely indispensable and has held up with battery and water resistance for 5 years now.
I love mine! This is one of the few goods I chose to buy "disposable," since I can't repair a broken watch of any kind on my own. I work outdoors a lot and I'm always scratching the face and banging it on things. Usually the failure point is water getting in through those cracks, but I've had one wristband snap. I think I buy one a year roughly, and have for over 6 years.
Feel like OP should have linked to the link inside the article (provided below) which gives more evidence. Still not very good evidence, but better than this original (1/3 of wearers were linked to bomb making):
I had a package of these opened by a government agency in the US!
My partner at the time had and loved one of these and then lost it, so I bought 8 of them for like $7 each from a store in the UK. When it arrived it had all this official government tape on it and a note that it had been opened. I forget what the tape/note said but it was not obvious which agency did the opening. Not so long after that I had something else totally innocuous (literally a postcard sized cardboard envelope with a sticker in it) opened by Customs and Border Patrol and that was well labeled as such.
I guess for IED reasons they were interested but now I'm paranoid I'm on some list.
edit: oh and I should say I got 8 to have a variety of color options, they were a great gift and after shipping it was only like $80. Highly recommend, one of them would match any outfit. Kind of fun to watch them all drift variably over several months too.
Definitely not for IED reasons. It is one of the most counterfeited watches, even though it is already one of the cheapest. This past October was especially busy for customs and border patrol: https://usa.watchpro.com/louisville-border-force-seizes-1050...
Oh interesting! Good call. I didn't think counter terrorism made sense it's not like opening would have revealed anything that an xray wouldn't, but perhaps for checking counterfeit makes a lot more sense.
I love the G-Shock squares if you want to stay with casio. The solar charging one that syncs to atomic time automatically runs about $90 (Model: GWM5610-1). The battery powered, manually set time runs about $40 (Model: DW5600E-1V). They keep such good time, and the batteries last for over 5 years in most cases, and can swap out in a few minutes for a few bucks, that you'll have to decide if it's worth it.
I also like pretty much all Timex Ironman watches... T53151 is small like the F-91W and pretty cheap, usually under $25. The Transit series is more square and modern looking, the TW5M19300 runs under $40.
The "cheap" Casios run on the fumes of their old fame and retro nostalgia.
I'd say the modern day equivalent would be a $20 waterproof fitness band like a Xiaomi Mi Band.
They are basically uncompetitive today, unlike they were initially. Here they are literally more expensive than a band with a color display, bluetooth and various sensors.
I dunno. For me this watch is nearly perfect. It's incredibly thin, lightweight, waterproof. It shows the time, day and date. The battery will last for 7-10 years. I can wear it day and night and never have to take it off or do anything for it.
I have a collection of other watches including Apple watches and Swiss mechanical watches. None of them are as practical and hassle-free as this watch.
The UX is poor though. Once you've finished with the stopwatch, the next mode-button press leads to the time-adjustment mode rather than immediately back to the current time display. Any destructive modes such as adjustment should be protected behind a long-press, not interleaved into the routine mode cycle.
It's also frustratingly easy to knock the watch out of 24 hour display with a slight mistouch.
It is marvellously thin and light though, I wish there were more options of a similar form factor.
> Once you've finished with the stopwatch, the next mode-button press leads to the time-adjustment mode rather than immediately back to the current time display.
This is incorrect. If you’ve interacted with a mode, the mode button always takes you back to the current time display.
It's rare that I would ever be away from a charger for more than a week. That said, if I ever get to through hike the PCT, I'll be picking up one of these cheap Casios as a sanity check for time until sunrise/sunset.
My son has Garmin VivoFit from 2015 which hasn't needed the batter changed (they weren't rechargable). He did switch to a Apple watch a couple of years ago, but it was between 2 and 3 years of every day usage.
Honestly I think I'm charging this band once a month. Which doesn't seem like such a hassle. Indeed, my Casio still runs with the original battery but it also has almost no features and was 3x as expensive than this band.
I am looking for a modest looking, slim watch with a dot matrix display. It shouldn't have any spying, surveillance built in. Closest to this requirement are some Seiko watches from the 80/90, but these are quite expensive.
Dead right. For twenty bucks I can read emails without taking out my phone, measure my blood oxygen, and me and the Chinese Communist Party are able to keep track of how well I've been sleeping.
(They're all indistinguishable, but I think mine was made by Huawei.)
I've built one of these. Good fun, but of course battery life does not match the 7+ years of the original. I think mine lasted close to a year?
If I remember correctly the magnetometer was end of life, but not critial to it's operation.
I'm not the original author, but I am considering ordering a few new boards and maybe the components. If you're really interested, give a shout on github: https://github.com/carrotIndustries/pluto/issues/1
My incredibly niche use-case of the watch, in particular its low-profile face and band, is that I can do handstands while wearing it. Every other watch I've owned is too chunky and gets in the way of my wrist flexion, and have to take it off before I invert. Not the case with the Casio, and one of the reasons it doesn't leave my wrist
I do that with the Casio. Even backwards, the other watches I've owned were still too big, or the straps are metal which is a lot less forgiving on the wrists.
I have had them for 30 years. They last on average three years. Three areas of failure:
(1) The black plastic hooks to the watch bands fracture. Superglue doesnt seem to last.
(2) The watch band tears. I duct-tape it sometimes. But that is temporary. If I have some bands left over from the other failures, I can replace it.
(3) In high humidity states moisture sometimes gets into the works and shorts the electronics for good.
Just buy another. If I see a clearance sale for $10 or less, I'll keeps a spare. Targets doesnt seem to have casios anymore. But Walgreens and Walmarts does.
Unless you lost it or damaged it (drop, water, excessive scratches, etc, etc.) or it fell too much out of style. I suspect most 50 dollar watches don't last anywhere near 30 years in real life usage.
Beg your pardon? G-Shocks come in a wide variety of designs and price ranges. At a glance, mine could easily pass for an F-91W - a cheap, digital watch about as far from pretence as it is possible to get. Durable, radio sync'ed, solar cell driven, and watertight down to some ridiculous level of pressure. Just about the most functional piece of hardware I have ever owned. The unflashiest of black boxes, just there when I need it, shows me the time to the second every time, no discussion about it. And it doubles as a signaler, a very neat expression of who I am or at least would like to be. I wouldn't swap it for a Rolex even if somebody gifted one on me.
It's not a hard weight to bear when the intended signal is "I'm a utilitarian who prefers wearing non-flashy, reliable, mass-produced, low-cost consumer electronics"
Of course, every ten years you have to replace the battery, which you can do yourself, w/ an easy-to-find part. I wonder where today's Apple Watches will be in 10 years.
In concession, this is far more attractive than any G-Shock I have seen before, and indeed if you put a gun to my head and forced me to wear a GMW-B5000D-1ER I would consider it only a minor inconvenience.
Looks to be a DW5600BB, I own one of these. It's quite durable but maintains an nice understated appearance. I wore it non-stop for about a year then migrated to an Apple Watch. The G-SHOCK keeps on ticking as a backup watch, though.
I’ve gone through a number of F-91W bands as well (never replaced the watch itself). Then I went for an F-84W instead, and it has already held together longer than any F-91W band did. Has a slightly cleaner look, too.
Re (3): there are a lot of accounts online of divers filling their cheap Casios with some oil or paraffin, so it can stand to be submerged. I guess that if it's good enough to stand pressure and coating the surfaces of the PCB to avoid short circuits, it's good enough for high humidity places. Maybe not good enough for soap and shampoo, but still a great upgrade.
226 comments
[ 8.0 ms ] story [ 303 ms ] threadhttps://i.redd.it/5o061ntl2m651.jpg
https://i.redd.it/b4j5fzl4d6f41.jpg
https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/839e131...?
>U.S. President Bill Clinton owned and wore several early models (including the original) of the watch during his time as Governor of Arkansas and in the early years of his Presidency. In one of his early Presidential photographs and at his 1993 Inaugural Ball, he is seen wearing a blue and black Ironman Triathlon. Clinton's forgoing of a more presidential watch such as a Rolex earned him some criticism; Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post described Clinton's timepiece derisively as “a plastic digital watch, thick as a brick and handsome as a hernia”, while Omega SA ran ads in 1992 suggesting that Clinton should give up the Timex in favor of something more expensive. Clinton stopped wearing his Ironman publicly in 1994, starting with the 50th anniversary of D-Day.[2][3] Clinton has since donated one of his early Ironman models to the Smithsonian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Ironman
- If you don't know any other information, assume a thing will continue for as long as it has already existed.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediocrity_principle
People buy cheap watches because they're poor.
There are far more poor people than there are rich people, so there'll be far more cheap watch wearers than there are expensive watch wearers.
So cheap watches are ubiquitous. Is that really a surprise?
There are also exceptions to every rule, so it's no surprise that some rich people wear it too.
From my observations poorer people are less likely to wear this.
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/opinion-being-one-watch-gu...
Another baby game changer along these lines - buy a 20 pack of small microfiber cloths and hide them in all your coin and inside jacket pockets. Never be without a glasses wipe when you need one. I even give them away to people who forgot theirs, since frequently I'll have two on my person.
https://www.wired.com/story/microfibers-are-the-new-microbea...
I don't do it with watches, but I do it with charging cables, socks, and toothbrushes.
(Of course, I avoid buying things, so I don't buy them.)
I'm laying on my couch right now, with my laptop plugged into a brick perched permanently at the end thereof. There are two more at the table (sometimes work and personal laptop are up at the same time), and one on my nightstand, and one in the kitchen for when I'm using a recipe from online or just youtubing while cooking.
All my old Thinkpad bricks with the gray round plug have little converter cables on 'em, so they work with the modern yellow rectangular socket now. I got a new brick with the work lappy, a new one with the personal, and I think there's one knockoff cheapie in the mix somewhere.
Is it against HN norms to put a specific recommendation here? I'd love to know some reliable chargers in that range.
90w charger: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B083ZBXXN5/
My favorite means of mounting a brick is to use a large pair of Velcro. For undersides on some IKEA tables, I once had to augment the Velcro pad adhesive with Gorilla Glue. Sometimes I use zip ties instead of Velcro.
When buying extra bricks, in addition to the presumed-good one that came with the laptop, I advise going to some effort and guesswork to try to get genuine, non-counterfeit ones. I've seen some corner-cutting in circuitry in other power adapters and chargers, and that seems like a fire hazard.
For people who don't like the idea of bricks plugged into the AC when not in use, Leviton and others make little switches that plug into the AC outlet.
If it takes me too long to find one, then I up the number of pens scattered around the house.
Nothing irritates me more than being unable to find a pen when inspiration strikes.
I guess I'm not the only one to maintain a specific density of a specific item I want on hand.
End artificial scarcities to increase productivity
http://matt.might.net/articles/artific
Boy, is that an understatement. I don't think I have terribly manly wrists, but it barely fits on mine. I thought I'd accidentally ordered the women's version when I got it. Other than that (which is fixable with a new band) and the light, I love it, but it is a gripe.
Signalling with low price saves money and time. It's a good thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Counterfeits
The genuine product is so cheap, you probably can't compete with it unless you use a mass-produced generic movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_watch_strap
Here's my Vostok Amphibia on a NATO https://photos.app.goo.gl/vqpq31QVcBKpRbTP8
Really nice to see a Vostok shared! I've got the Komandirskie and Amphibian, along with a bunch of other vintage Soviet pieces (Rateka, etc). Cheap, and cheerful, and always eye-catching.
A conventional strap is in two pieces, so if one pin attaching it to the watch body fails you lose the watch. A NATO strap loops under both pins as a single piece, so if one pin fails, the watch is still attached by the other.
99% of people you see wearing a NATO strap will never be in a situation where they might have this problem mind you!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-fil...
My partner at the time had and loved one of these and then lost it, so I bought 8 of them for like $7 each from a store in the UK. When it arrived it had all this official government tape on it and a note that it had been opened. I forget what the tape/note said but it was not obvious which agency did the opening. Not so long after that I had something else totally innocuous (literally a postcard sized cardboard envelope with a sticker in it) opened by Customs and Border Patrol and that was well labeled as such.
I guess for IED reasons they were interested but now I'm paranoid I'm on some list.
edit: oh and I should say I got 8 to have a variety of color options, they were a great gift and after shipping it was only like $80. Highly recommend, one of them would match any outfit. Kind of fun to watch them all drift variably over several months too.
Why Terrorists Love Casio's Iconic F-91W Watch
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkebp8/casio-f91w-watch-terr...
I also like pretty much all Timex Ironman watches... T53151 is small like the F-91W and pretty cheap, usually under $25. The Transit series is more square and modern looking, the TW5M19300 runs under $40.
https://www.casio-europe.com/euro/products/watches/collectio...
I'd say the modern day equivalent would be a $20 waterproof fitness band like a Xiaomi Mi Band.
They are basically uncompetitive today, unlike they were initially. Here they are literally more expensive than a band with a color display, bluetooth and various sensors.
I have a collection of other watches including Apple watches and Swiss mechanical watches. None of them are as practical and hassle-free as this watch.
The UX is poor though. Once you've finished with the stopwatch, the next mode-button press leads to the time-adjustment mode rather than immediately back to the current time display. Any destructive modes such as adjustment should be protected behind a long-press, not interleaved into the routine mode cycle.
It's also frustratingly easy to knock the watch out of 24 hour display with a slight mistouch.
It is marvellously thin and light though, I wish there were more options of a similar form factor.
You commented that the UX is poor because of the way the stop watch works.
That user, if they're using the watch for the time and date, never experiences the stopwatch UX. To them, the UX is superb for what they do.
>The UX is poor though.
for you.
This is incorrect. If you’ve interacted with a mode, the mode button always takes you back to the current time display.
The claimed battery life was 1 year.
I've got a few various styles of, more or less, the same watch.
(They're all indistinguishable, but I think mine was made by Huawei.)
If I remember correctly the magnetometer was end of life, but not critial to it's operation.
I'm not the original author, but I am considering ordering a few new boards and maybe the components. If you're really interested, give a shout on github: https://github.com/carrotIndustries/pluto/issues/1
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975012
https://www.casio.com/products/watches/classic/f105w-1a
(1) The black plastic hooks to the watch bands fracture. Superglue doesnt seem to last.
(2) The watch band tears. I duct-tape it sometimes. But that is temporary. If I have some bands left over from the other failures, I can replace it.
(3) In high humidity states moisture sometimes gets into the works and shorts the electronics for good.
Just buy another. If I see a clearance sale for $10 or less, I'll keeps a spare. Targets doesnt seem to have casios anymore. But Walgreens and Walmarts does.
This is a lot of weight for a mass-produced, low-cost piece of consumer electronics to bear.
You're not counting new batteries.
It's true that you can buy a tool to change your own. But a small, rarely used tool is very hard to keep track of.