Tag: computeritis

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Export from ING depot: CSV is not the same as CSV

Depot student Dominik has already provided a good overview of how to export data from the ING depot via the ExtraETF workaround. However, not every tool can handle the CSV export properly. For example, DivvyDiary immediately recognized the relevant columns, but the balances didn’t match. The reason for this is that CSV files can vary significantly, as can the data within them. Sometimes, columns aren’t separated by a comma but by a semicolon. And while the difference between 1,000.00 and 1.000,00 might seem minor to us, for DivvyDiary, a 1000 turned into a 1 because the thousands separator was treated as a decimal point.

The solution: As much as I dislike working with Excel, if you open the CSV file in Excel and then save it again as a CSV, even DivvyDiary (and many other tools) can handle it.

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How do minimalism and Apple products go together, when Apple is so expensive?

I have been using Apple products almost exclusively since the mid-90s. Now and then, I engage in debates about the pros and cons of Apple products compared to their competitors, especially regarding the price difference. And of course, the question arises whether minimalism and using Apple products even go together. It creates an ambivalence between design culture and the contradiction of consumption.

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The Zettelkasten as a Knowledge Management System and Beyond

There are a few topics that have been on my mind for decades, one of which is how to store and retrieve information and knowledge in a meaningful way—essentially, a Memex. In the 90s, I was a fan of Apple’s HyperCard, and since then, I’ve tried many things, but nothing has proven reliable. Data formats have disappeared (like Apple’s HyperCard), and even though the technical possibilities today are much broader than back then, I don’t have the impression that they have solved the fundamental problem. There is no quick fix that reads articles and books for you and also makes you understand them. I don’t trust summary services like Blinkist, not to mention that they don’t help me with scientific articles either.

In recent months, I’ve turned again to a system that I had used in the 90s but abandoned in favor of HyperCard: the Zettelkasten. Not just any box with index cards, but a Zettelkasten following the Luhmannian principle. Niklas Luhmann was one of the most significant sociologists of the 20th century, with an incredible number of academic publications to his name. His Zettelkasten, which actually consists of several boxes, contains about 90,000 slips and is being digitized at Bielefeld University. Luhmann attributed his productivity to this Zettelkasten system, and after several months using it, I can understand why. So how does the Zettelkasten work?

First of all, there are a few fundamental principles:

  • The quality of a paper depends on what has already been written. In an ideal world, the thoughts in the Zettelkasten are already formulated well enough to be directly incorporated. The goal of the Zettelkasten, therefore, is to generate insights that are worth publishing.
  • Everything you read is processed and placed into the Zettelkasten. Rather than following a strict plan (as is often recommended when writing academic papers), everything goes into the Zettelkasten and is, if possible, linked together right away. Luhmann himself always wrote his slips with the thought in mind of how they would fit into the existing notes. But new ideas can also emerge from the Zettelkasten at any time.
  • Writing about everything instead of starting directly with a hypothesis also has the advantage of reducing exposure to confirmation bias, which causes one to ignore anything that might challenge the hypothesis.
  • Highlighting in a text is useless, the learning effect is zero. According to Luhmann, thinking cannot happen without writing. Handwritten notes are preferable to those typed on a computer, as they tend to capture the essence better, thus facilitating understanding.
  • The Zettelkasten is not an archive, nor is it an idea graveyard like Moleskine notebooks.
  • There is no information hierarchy; thoughts can simply be inserted into Luhmann’s system wherever they fit. For example, if you have a note numbered “1,2,1” and another “1,2,2,” you can just insert a “1,2,1,a” if a thought is missing here. There’s no need to pre-think endlessly about what the best structure is.
  • Self-discipline is more important than IQ. A smart working environment ensures that you don’t face resistance from the start.
  • Daily work with the Zettelkasten leads to a new KPI for knowledge workers: How many notes are created each day!

How exactly does the Zettelkasten work?

  • When reading a text, “Literature Notes” are created, which contain only your own thoughts about the text, written in your own words.
  • These then lead to “Permanent Notes,” which are added to the Zettelkasten. The Literature Notes are discarded (this is also why I sent back my Scribe, since the Literature Notes could not be created with it).
  • Additionally, there are “Fleeting Notes,” which contain all the ideas you have.

The Zettelkasten system is highly minimalist, with no fancy notebooks or software tools. The reduction, or even restriction, to what is essential also stimulates creativity and thinking (see Stokes 2001 and Rheinberger 1997). Of course, there are software solutions like The Archive, and they would have advantages for me: I don’t always have my Zettelkasten with me. On the other hand, I’ve learned that when I’m sitting in front of a computer or iPad, I tend to get distracted. Therefore, I now carry index cards with me.

Here is an interesting video about Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, where he explains it himself starting at minute 37:26:

And here is the researcher who is now delving into the Zettelkasten:

 

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Eternal November: Will Mastodon Suffer the Same Fate as Usenet?

Mastodon and the Fediverse had maintained a niche existence for many years until they were thrust into the spotlight by Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and the ensuing turbulence. Since then, the Mastodon community has not been growing like a hockey stick, as it’s called in investor jargon, but like a rocket. This is a big win for those who champion open-source principles. However, this rapid growth might also become a curse, and for several reasons.

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Digital Minimalism

I’ve been blogging about minimalism for 15 years. Digital minimalism is another form of conscious consumption. And apparently, the topic strikes a chord, because otherwise, Der Spiegel wouldn’t have locked an interview about it behind their paywall (“How to Break Free from Your Smartphone”):

Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism contrasts with his other bestseller Deep Work in that it doesn’t focus on work and productivity, but rather on our entire lives and the impact technology has on them.

Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind showed how easily our brains can be distracted, while Newport presents the opposite side: the attention economy, which primarily benefits those who can successfully market our time to advertisers. Those who think this is a modern phenomenon are mistaken—this started with the introduction of penny newspapers in 1830, where the readers were no longer the customers, but the advertisers in a newspaper.

According to Newport, the unconscious use of social media leads to exhaustion, anxiety, depression, and, above all, a waste of life’s time. Arguments such as social media helping us stay in touch with friends and family are countered by the point that this is not high-quality interaction—more “connection” than “conversation,” as Sherry Turkle distinguishes. When relationships are less digital (or when digital communication is used only to facilitate traditional communication), they are actually strengthened. The time we spend on Facebook and similar platforms is not only spent on lower-quality conversations but also on mindless scrolling through updates that give us the illusion of connection while leaving us feeling lonely.

However, Newport doesn’t advocate for completely abandoning technology. Instead, he encourages us to adopt a different attitude toward it, and he even paraphrases Dieter Rams’ phrase “Less, but better.” This leads to what he calls a digital declutter. Ironically, it was Steve Jobs, who was focused on mindfulness, who ensured that we carry around with us the symbol of constant connectivity in the form of the iPhone. His original goal was simply to have one device for both phone and iPod. The fact that the iPhone could also access the internet wasn’t even mentioned until late in the original keynote. We weren’t prepared for it. And suddenly, there was an app for everything:

 

We didn’t have time to think about what we truly wanted to get out of these new technologies (and even if we did think about it, like I did back then when I didn’t want a Blackberry, we later found too many reasons why a Blackberry might actually be a good idea). And since then, the door has been wide open for those who want to shape new habits in us:

Nir Eyal’s bestseller Hooked describes this mechanism in great detail. Fairly, Eyal also wrote the antidote to it. However, Eyal’s approach is not as elegant as Newport’s; it deals more with the symptoms, even though it sometimes touches on the causes. Where Eyal says that you can take back your time, Newport suggests you first consider what you want to fill it with. The mechanisms both describe, however, are the same.

Every post for which we might get a like or retweet is, for us, the same as using a slot machine—it triggers a dopamine release. The goal is to regain our autonomy and join the attention resistance, as Newport puts it. Digital minimalism, for him, is:

A philosophy of technology use where you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support what matters to you, while ignoring everything else. (my translation)

To this, he quotes Thoreau in Walden:

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

This, of course, applies not only to social media & co. When someone buys a new sports car, they also need to consider how much life energy goes into working for that car and whether it’s worth it to drive a sports car in exchange for that time. The profit gained from something must be weighed against the cost of the life energy needed to obtain it. Conversely, technology should be considered optional, as long as its temporary absence doesn’t cause the collapse of one’s (work) life. Can I no longer live a meaningful life without an app, or does the app simply provide some added value that I could get elsewhere? This is in stark contrast to FOMO. To truly understand which technologies are genuinely valuable, Newport suggests a 30-day break.

As I write this, I am on the 8th day of my digital break. Newport really makes this break seem appealing, and I even started it before I had finished reading the book. During the reading, I paused my Facebook profile and deactivated my Twitter account (dangerous, because after 30 days, it is permanently lost). Instagram is deleted, as are Telegram and WhatsApp. These many ways people could contact me had already been annoying. Then, I even uninstalled email. These exact steps were already suggested in Make Time, but for Newport, it’s not about dogmatically banning all these apps, but rather about understanding what you truly miss.

In fact, I only bought my last phone because I wanted the best camera and didn’t want to carry around another camera. I enjoy listening to music. And occasionally, I like to make calls. So, here’s what my home screen looks like now:

Of the slot machines, only Signal, Apple Messages, and Safari as a browser are installed. Everything else is either essential (for example, banking—no longer possible without a phone) or helpful (e.g., the Corona app). Additionally, I’ve now set the Do Not Disturb mode as the default. Only my favorites can still call me, but their messages won’t come through either. However, this isn’t just about distraction.

Solitude (better translated here as seclusion and not as loneliness) requires the ability to be undisturbed and not have to react to everything, or the freedom from input from others. Seclusion demands that we come to terms with ourselves when we are alone, allowing for deep thinking. Our desire for social interaction must therefore be complemented by periods of solitude. How much this already occupied me 14 years ago is shown in this blog post from 2007.

But Newport goes even further. It’s not just about stopping certain activities; as mentioned earlier, you must also consider what to do with the time and attention you’ve gained, so you don’t fall into a void. The smartphone allows us to quickly escape such moments. Most systems already track how often that happens:

(On that day, I made several changes to the configuration, which is why the value was so high.)

Newport suggests writing letters to oneself, engaging in real conversations (instead of chatting, liking, or commenting), joining an offline group, or doing something non-digital with your hands. I’m out when it comes to crafting, but at least I can play instruments. The point is to deliver your best, quoting Rogowiski:

Leave good evidence of yourself. Do good work.

Not using Facebook and the like should therefore not be seen as a sign that you’ve become some kind of eccentric. It should be viewed as a bold act of resistance against the attention economy. This has become increasingly difficult, as we now carry a full-fledged computer with us at all times and actively have to seek ways to limit its possibilities. Still, my reMarkable is one of my favorite work tools. I can’t check emails on it or quickly look something up. And more and more, I’m only using that device when I sit on the couch in the evening.

Furthermore, Newport’s approach means that you need to carefully examine where you still want to gather information. I reactivated Twitter after a week, but unfollowed almost everyone because I only want to follow those who truly provide valuable content. And that’s a very small number. A kind of information diet, so to speak.

I’m not at the point yet where I want to have a Light Phone or leave my smartphone at home most of the time (the Light Phone isn’t available in Germany yet). For now, the camera in my phone is still too important to me (I used to always carry a Fujifilm X100, whose battery was always dead at the critical moments). But after just a few days of digital break, I can already hardly imagine going back to Facebook or spending the first minutes of my day reading through feeds.

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Google Wifi vs Netgear Orbi Experiences

After almost 2 years, I put my 3 Google Wifi Pucks – retired – on eBay. The first problems had already arisen a year ago, when one of the pucks had stopped working from one day to the next. It still worked, but it could no longer connect to the main access point on the other side of the wall. Even if he was standing right next to the other puck, he didn’t want to connect reliably anymore. The Google Wifi Puck was immediately replaced by Google, but the problem was not solved. Most likely, another network had spread in the neighborhood, and in fact, the neighbor below me had gotten a new, strong Wi-Fi. The automatic switching of channels is a nice theory, but it doesn’t really work well. Although the Wifis change their channels from time to time, but only to hang out together on the same channel.

When we were renovating this apartment in the almost 150-year-old house, the electrician asked us if we didn’t want Ethernet to be laid. “No, why, I have WIFI?” I said, and that was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. With 8 Sonos boxes, 3 to 5 mobile phones, 1 tablet, several smart home devices such as those from tado and lots of other devices in the WLAN, there is already a lot of stress here. The solution to my WLAN problem should therefore be PowerLine adapters from tp Link. These supposedly transmit up to 1,300 Mbit/s, and of course this is a theoretical value. In fact, however, they actually managed between 200 and 950 Mbit, depending on the room. Only in the study, where I needed the net the most, the connection was very insecure. Either it wasn’t there at all, or it fluctuated between 8 and 200 Mbit/s.

Since I am currently spending a little more time in the study (after the book is before the book), the poor WIFI connection was getting more and more annoying. And constantly connecting the Ethernet adapter (it has to be connected to the old Thunderbolt port on my MacBook Air, because the USB adapter only manages 100MBit/s), well…. Yesterday evening, the network kept failing, and then I looked again for other mesh networks. I had already read some good things about the Netgear Orbi. At 0:58 on Saturday morning I ordered the NETGEAR Orbi High Speed Mesh WLAN System RBK50-100PES (3,000 MBit/s Tri-Band Mesh Router + Satellite Repeater, 350 m² coverage) from Amazon, at 11:58 on the same day I had picked it up from an Amazon Locker station (Thanks, Amazon! Actually, this should not be delivered until after the weekend, but on the same day is already very nice).

Less than an hour later, it was set up. It’s not as easy as with the Google Wifi. The app is less understandable, some settings such as port forwarding can only be made in the browser. But the speed… the satellite is now in the study, and since then I have not had a single break. Better yet, the speed is better than what I’ve ever had. In the screenshot on the left you can see a Tx rate of 867 MBit/s. This seems to be the maximum my old MacBook Air can do on the 5 GHz band. Of course, we are not yet at the 3,000 Mbit/s that the network theoretically offers. But, to be completely honest, who should the MacBook connect to? My NAS has a 10 GBit Ethernet port, but is connected to a 1 GBit switch, to which the Orbi is also attached. My tests currently show a maximum speed of 330 MBit/s to the NAS when I write to an SSD there, which is a little more than 40 MByte/second. Not bad, if you consider that before I could only fear that my connection would last at all.

Of course, it’s no wonder that the Netgear device has more power on it: It’s a lot bigger, so there’s also more space for antennas in it. Yes, it’s more expensive compared to the Google Wifi, but for me it seems to be the solution to Wi-Fi problems, at least for now. The long-term test is still to come. Unfortunately, at least the Google Wifi pucks did not survive it.

Comments (since February 2020 the comment function has been removed from my blog):

Internet Speedtest says

  1. November 2019 at 16:05 Hello, I also use a Netgear Orbi RBK53 system with 3000MBit/s. It is precisely these 3000MBit/s that I would like to briefly explain to you or how they are composed.

1733 MBit/s (4MIMO streams with 433 MBit/s each in the 5GHz network for the Orbi router and the satellite) You don’t see this network, that’s only for the internal connection. 867 MBit/s (2MIMO streams with 433 MBit/s each in the 5GHz network for the clients) 400 MBit/s (2MIMO streams with 200 MBit/s each in the 2.4GHz network for the clients)

1733 + 867 + 400 = 3000 Mbps (which you can never get on a client)

Have fun with your Orbi system! I will never buy anything else for Wi-Fi again…

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Synology upload speed limit

Home – Blog – Synology Upload Speed Limit

The Synology NAS has a particularly great feature, namely encrypted backup in the cloud via Hyper Backup. After I had sworn off unencrypted cloud services (including Dropbox), the combination of encrypted backup and the cloud flat rate of Amazon Prime was so attractive. Unfortunately, the backup unfortunately ate up the entire bandwidth of the upload volume, 12 MBit. This speeds up the backup, but also slows down the Internet in the home network.

The “Traffic Control” in Synology DSM was supposed to remedy this, but this is where the problems started. First of all, you can’t choose Hyper Backup as an application whose bandwidth is to be restricted. If the need is great, then of course you can also select all ports and allocate less bandwidth to them, for example 2,000 KB/s. And this is exactly where the mistake lies.

First of all, the port 443 of the destination folder must be selected, this is the port used by Amazon (and probably other services as well). And then comes the biggest misunderstanding, because 2,048 KB/s is not 2 MB/s, but something else that I haven’t understood so far. Because if I select 500 KB/s, then the NAS uses 5 MB/s.

How can that be? Maybe KB/s don’t mean kilobytes/s at Synology, but kilobits/s? But that wouldn’t be 5MBit/s, which Google Wifi now shows in the app.

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Google Wifi in the network with SONOS, FritzBox & Synology NAS

Update July 2019: I retired the Google Wifi Pucks because they didn’t pass the long-term test. The new installation runs with a Netgear Orbi.

Although our apartment is at least not that big, at least it feels like it, the FritzBox 6490 cable router alone was too weak on the chest for the whole apartment; no wonder, it is also in the outermost corner of the apartment and not central. Initially, an AVM Fritzbox Repeater 310 supplemented the WLAN, but due to the lack of 5 GHz, this was replaced by the 1750 model. That worked quite ok, but not really smoothly either. It was not uncommon to catch the repeater with flashing LEDs, the Wi-Fi reception often did not reach the bathroom, and then there were always dropouts that I just couldn’t explain. According to the predominantly positive reports, a Google Wifi should solve the problems.

Google Wifi Mesh versus Extender/Repeater

In the hope that one station would be enough, at least that’s what the advertising sounded like, I ignored the double pack and bought only one component. First of all, that’s not enough, at least not if the device is in a corner of the 120sqm apartment. I don’t have fewer devices than before, and with 130-140€ per device, the combo is a more expensive alternative. But the advantages of the mesh network as well as the prospect of having peace and quiet with the constant network problems were worth the test for me. Nothing is as annoying as a stuttering movie because some component in the network has a problem at the moment. And setting up the repeater, including a guest mode, took several hours and many support emails.

A repeater has the disadvantage that it simply extends the signal of a WLAN, but some of the speed can be lost because there is an overhead in communication. Meshed networks, on the other hand, do not have this problem, they are simply ONE network; in addition to the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks, they have a third radio module through which the devices communicate with each other. So you don’t switch from the area of the main WIFI to that of the repeater, but are in a network all the time.

Setting up Google Wifi

Setup is super easy, the app guides you through the setup, and you’re ready to go within ten minutes. The latest software version of Google Wifi is downloaded, which accounts for the lion’s share of the time. To be honest, I had spent more time trying to open the package, which is mainly due to my inability to recognize and peel off scotch tape.

After the app reported that my Google Wifi was now ready, I turned off the Wi-Fi of the Fritzbox router and switched the connection to my new Wi-Fi. Setting up and configuring the Wi-Fi is really child’s play, only my Sonos system didn’t want to work afterwards, more on that below. It’s fun to use the app, test the internet connection and Wi-Fi speed in each room at the touch of a button. A guest wifi is set up very simply. What I’m missing, but I’m not only missing here, is an easy way to assign less speed to a device, because when the Synology NAS starts backing up to the cloud, the whole network becomes paralyzed (see also the article on how to reduce the upload speed of a Synology NAS).

By the way, it was only after 2 weeks that I realized that I had plugged the Google Wifi puck into a LAN socket of the FritzBox, which was “only” set to 100 Mbit/s. Since we were kindly given 200 Mbit/s by Vodafone for a few months, I slowed down our WLAN myself. Not that this was noticeable, the limiting factor is the upload speed anyway. But so I went from 91 Mbit/s to 189 Mbit/s in the tests. Of the 212 Mbit/s reported by the FritzBox, 23 Mbit are lost somewhere, but let’s be honest: Anyone who used to surf the net with a 56K modem will only complain here if that actually becomes a problem. An Internet connection that is over 3,400 times faster also goes hand in hand with much more loaded websites and movies, but that’s another story.

Setting up IPv6 is not easy, but this is not due to Google Wifi, but to the Fritzbox. The default settings here look like IPv6 is not a problem, but additional settings are required. For example, with “Also allow IPv6 prefixes that other IPv6 routers in the home network advertise” and with “Assign DNS server, prefix (IA_PD) and IPv6 address (IA_NA)”. Then Google Wifi doesn’t say that it works, but that the ISP may not support it. But it does in my case

But as already announced in the introduction: The WIFI only reached the other end of the apartment with a weak connection, if at all. Quite apart from that, I also hope to solve my SONOS problem, because the connection to Spotify kept breaking off.

Adding another Google Wifi node: iOS issues

So I went to the Mediamarkt, bought a second Google Wifi (yes, the double pack would have been cheaper), and quickly connected it to my home. The setup is just as easy as with the first device, here the addition of the network, only one thing bothered me: If I already agreed to receive purchase incentives and statistics about my network from Google when I installed the first Google Wifi, why am I asked again for the second device? If I say “no” now, will I no longer receive the mails for the first device?

Then the annoying stuff: For some reason, my iPhone went on strike after setting up the second node and didn’t want to connect to the network at all, while my Macbook was able to connect without any problems. Network settings reset, network ignored, everything tried, and still the iPhone (and the iPad went on strike in solidarity). It’s just stupid if the Google Wifi app is installed on it and you can no longer access the Google Wifi configuration without Internet access. Because there is no configuration option from the computer, only apps work. Quickly dig out the old Android phone, wonder about 50 update requests, and then quickly download the Google Wifi app. No problem. The network was running. Why didn’t iPhone and iPad want to go into Google Wifi anymore?

After half an hour, I had the idea to take a look at the IP address, the router address and the DNS servers that the iPhone and iPad had pulled. The error was that the DNS server had the same IP as the router, in this case 192.168.86.1. I don’t know if it was in there before, but it definitely didn’t work. In the Google Wifi app, “DNS of the ISP” was set, but apparently it didn’t work. So I entered a different DNS server under the iPhone settings, and it worked again. Google’s DNS server 8.8.8.8 is quite easy to remember, I recommend FreeDNS (37.235.1.174 and 37.235.1.177), as it does not log or redirect. So far, I haven’t discovered any difference to Google’s fast DNS servers. The problem with this approach, however, is that you can no longer make all settings with the app, because even if you are connected to the Google Wifi, the error message is that you should still connect to the Wifi.

SONOS and Google Wifi

Now let’s move on to SONOS. At first, I had given the Google Wifi the same name as my old WLAN, hoping that I wouldn’t have to change anything else. That didn’t work out. Then I remembered that a SONOS device is connected to the router with an Ethernet cable to have the advantages of a BOOST setup (independence from the router’s WLAN). In fact, however, Google Wifi is located on a different network, i.e. it assigns its own IP addresses to the connected devices. If the Fritzbox router assigns everything in the 192.168.178.x network, the Google Wifi is on the road with 192.168.86.x. The Google Wifi device offers a LAN connection, my Fritzbox 4, where Synology and an Arlo are in addition to the SONOS. The Arlo doesn’t matter, but the Synology and SONOS should be on the same network. Of course, you could also use the Google Wifi in bridge mode (and thus use the IPs of the Fritzbox and be on the same network), but then you can no longer build a mesh network. So that’s out of the question.

The remedy should be to reconfigure the SONOS system from BOOST to standard setup. This is not quite as easy as it sounds, because first of all at least one SONOS device has to be connected to Google Wifi via Ethernet. To make a long story short, uninterrupted music playing was only possible from the local music library, not Spotify or Soundcloud. I suspected that this was mainly due to the fact that the WLAN does not reach into the back rooms. My Synology NAS was connected to the LAN socket of the Google Wifi, which I’m not willing to dive against SONOS again and again, so either a switch has to be made… or just a second Google Wifi, which I bought. A SONOS device into the second Google Wifi, switched back to BOOST, and already… it didn’t work. Supposedly, the SONOS system automatically switches to BOOST as soon as a device is connected to the WLAN with Ethernet, but you still have to set up the wireless network again under the advanced settings. And then it worked without any problems with Spotify. I wonder why this is still necessary, because after all, in BOOST mode, a separate network is created for the SONOS devices. At least the controller app says that I’m in BOOST mode.

Google Wifi and Synology NAS

But then it gets really problematic with the Synology NAS. This should continue to be accessible from the outside. And this is where it gets difficult. Because the NAS is now connected to Google Wifi, it can no longer be accessed so easily via DDNS. Strangely enough, however, the QuickConnect link still works. I haven’t found a solution here yet…

Result

The setup is probably the easiest setup procedure I’ve ever seen on a Wifi device. The network seems more reliable, although the problems that occurred could probably not have been solved by a normal user. Only the long-term test will reveal how reliable this new network really is. The fewer complaints come from the family, the more the exchange was worth the money

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Vorwerk Thermomix, Cook-Key, Cookidoo: Good and Bad Experiences

Last updated on July 17, 2024.

Overview

  1. Introduction
  2. Why a Vorwerk Thermomix at all?
  3. The Thermomix Party system
  4. Thermomix representative lied
  5. Commissioning and initial experience with the Vorwerk Thermomix
  6. The Thermomix as a data octopus
  7. What good is the guarantee of success and guided cooking?
  8. Conclusion: Is the Thermomix worth it?

Introduction

Either you hate him, or you love him. In between, there seems to be hardly anything on the net. Some say that you can buy something for a lot of money that you could do with a stove and good pots, others say that it is a huge relief in their lives and they don’t want to miss it anymore. We are talking about the Vorwerk Thermomix with all its accessories. This article is about the previous model of the current version, and some points have become obsolete: The WLAN module, for example, is now already included from the factory, but this was not the case with our TM5. But anyway, here is the original article!

Even after two months with the TM5, I find myself somewhere between anger about how dubious the business practices of the Vorwerk participants are in some places and what bad experiences have been made with the Thermomix, and the admission that cooking yourself is also satisfying and, above all, cheaper than delivery service, etc. The thought that you can save money by cooking more and ordering less, I can say that right away, you should get rid of it. It is very unlikely that the acquisition costs will ever be amortized,

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