What You've Just Bought!

[Joe C]

Just spent $450.00 on..........

Groceries!!

 

[kmanmx]

Just spent $450.00 on..........

Groceries!!

My groceries spending was out of control prior to my budget. One month earlier this year I had spent $650 on groceries just feeding myself, and I was averaging $500 monthly. Brought it down to $280 a month with my new budget.

 

[MemRefreshABC]

Just spent $450.00 on..........

Groceries!!

I'm coming to your house for dinner! Thats allot of groceries and for the way I enjoy food, you can use the help!

 

[PP Mguire]

$450 is only half a month for this house, on a budget.

 

[MemRefreshABC]

$450 is only half a month for this house, on a budget.

That goes to show you just how much the cost of living is increasing with very little or no assistance! Thats scary.

 

[kmanmx]

Sold my Wacom drawing screen to pay off more debt. I loved it and I will rebuy one once i've got my debt down, but for now it was worth selling.

As such i've bought a cheap monitor to atleast replace it as a screen. Not even really that sure of what i've bought, just know that it was the cheapest 27" WQHD monitor I could find with a height adjustable stand and the inputs I needed. I'm normally a huge monitor snob but as i'm on a spending cut and just gonna be using it as a side screen for discord and work, meh, quality of the panel is not a big deal.

Okay I learned a lesson here, TN monitors are still horrible. Or atleast the one I bought. The viewing angle was so poor that if you opened discord fullscreen with the dark theme, the bottom 1/3rd of the screen it'd be a light grey blue, and the top 1/3rd of the screen it'd be a dark grey almost black. It was really bad. The only way to get a consistent gamma and brightness across the screen was to look at it from about 40cm above the top of the screen.

So, I returned that straight away. Fortunately it turns out they do an identical monitor that's just £15 more that uses a basic IPS panel. It's nothing special at all but atleast the better viewing angle gives it a consistent appearance.

You can see the difference below.. ignore the big ass reflection of my window.

 

[PP Mguire]

That goes to show you just how much the cost of living is increasing with very little or no assistance! Thats scary.

Well when a pound of ground beef has gone from 88c to 5 bucks that really kicks it up a bunch. Most of our regular core quick meals involve 2lbs of ground beef because most of my kids are over the age of 10 so they eat a lot. The baby has 2 teeth now so he's eating more and more regular food too. It's absolutely nuts how far the cost of food has gone.

Okay I learned a lesson here, TN monitors are still horrible. Or atleast the one I bought. The viewing angle was so poor that if you opened discord fullscreen with the dark theme, the bottom 1/3rd of the screen it'd be a light grey blue, and the top 1/3rd of the screen it'd be a dark grey almost black. It was really bad. The only way to get a consistent gamma and brightness across the screen was to look at it from about 40cm above the top of the screen.

So, I returned that straight away. Fortunately it turns out they do an identical monitor that's just £15 more that uses a basic IPS panel. It's nothing special at all but atleast the better viewing angle gives it a consistent appearance.

You can see the difference below.. ignore the big ass reflection of my window.

Nope TN panels are still just absolute trash. I made absolutely certain my small portable monitor was an IPS, and I regret not getting a higher refresh rate.

 

[kmanmx]

Well when a pound of ground beef has gone from 88c to 5 bucks that really kicks it up a bunch. Most of our regular core quick meals involve 2lbs of ground beef because most of my kids are over the age of 10 so they eat a lot. The baby has 2 teeth now so he's eating more and more regular food too. It's absolutely nuts how far the cost of food has gone.

Nope TN panels are still just absolute trash. I made absolutely certain my small portable monitor was an IPS, and I regret not getting a higher refresh rate.

My main monitor is 120hz OLED and I feel like there is nothing on the market to even upgrade too right now which is good news for me as i'm trying to save money lol. In an ideal world i'd have made sure this secondary monitor was 120hz too but realistically it just has discord on it 90% of the evening and then Teams on it 90% of the day during work, so I really don't benefit from high refresh rate on it.

I'm actually legit wondering when there will be a monitor that is just a straight upgrade in every area over my LG CX. I've seen those Samsung Neo's which have crazy high brightness levels and 240hz, but still they do not have the contrast of OLED and absolute black levels, and even with 1000 miniLED zones they still have blooming. There are the new quantom dot OLED's that are about 30% brighter than my CX, but that is nothing ground breaking. I'm hoping by the time this thing dies of burn-in that there will be a 240Hz OLED that is a good 50% brighter than my CX.

 

[PP Mguire]

My main monitor is 120hz OLED and I feel like there is nothing on the market to even upgrade too right now which is good news for me as i'm trying to save money lol. In an ideal world i'd have made sure this secondary monitor was 120hz too but realistically it just has discord on it 90% of the evening and then Teams on it 90% of the day during work, so I really don't benefit from high refresh rate on it.

I'm actually legit wondering when there will be a monitor that is just a straight upgrade in every area over my LG CX. I've seen those Samsung Neo's which have crazy high brightness levels and 240hz, but still they do not have the contrast of OLED and absolute black levels, and even with 1000 miniLED zones they still have blooming. There are the new quantom dot OLED's that are about 30% brighter than my CX, but that is nothing ground breaking. I'm hoping by the time this thing dies of burn-in that there will be a 240Hz OLED that is a good 50% brighter than my CX.

The QDs side by side are actually a fair bit better in terms of content compared to LG OLEDs, even their gen 2s. Good enough to almost make me upgrade from my G9 on the PC but I REALLY like the super ultrawide now. I know, I used to bag on them hard but that extra curvature is what did it for me as it makes such a huge difference. HDR on PC just isn't there yet for me to care about the bleeding edge in terms of contrast ratio and perfect blacks.

My portable gets used for my email client, Teams, and Onenote when at home, and in the office I actually use it as my main monitor. I don't use it on my personal PC (it's plugged into a USB video adapter plugged into the dock), but on the work machine it's a bit irritating for the mouse to feel sluggish going from one to the other. It's not a huge deal, but still a pain. If I really cared that much I'd upgrade it so I can leave one at work but eh.

 

[kmanmx]

The QDs side by side are actually a fair bit better in terms of content compared to LG OLEDs, even their gen 2s. Good enough to almost make me upgrade from my G9 on the PC but I REALLY like the super ultrawide now. I know, I used to bag on them hard but that extra curvature is what did it for me as it makes such a huge difference. HDR on PC just isn't there yet for me to care about the bleeding edge in terms of contrast ratio and perfect blacks.

My portable gets used for my email client, Teams, and Onenote when at home, and in the office I actually use it as my main monitor. I don't use it on my personal PC (it's plugged into a USB video adapter plugged into the dock), but on the work machine it's a bit irritating for the mouse to feel sluggish going from one to the other. It's not a huge deal, but still a pain. If I really cared that much I'd upgrade it so I can leave one at work but eh.

Ah man, I find HDR on Windows 11 great now. The Auto HDR feature works pretty well for most games that don't have official HDR support too. And being able to quickly toggle it off and on with Win + Alt + B makes it pretty convenient to use. I run every game in HDR where possible.

I had heard the QD OLED's were quite nice but I havn't seen one in person yet. Might go check them out in store or something when i'm next near a big electronics store.