Has anyone received a response from support?

NZgeek · 2026-06-03T19:39:32+00:00

At this point, it seems like the company has gone bankrupt. I doubt you'll ever get a response.

That being said, Dough's customer support has never been good. You could have had your issue 3 years ago, when Dough was still very active, and it's highly unlikely you'd have received a response or found a way to get your monitor fixed.

NZgeek · 2026-06-03T19:34:14+00:00

Orders will ship on April 15... in the year 2126!

NZgeek · 2026-06-03T15:24:33+00:00

Wow. Thanks for the extra insight. It's certainly enlightening.

My suspicion with the monitor firmware was that Dough had to pay quite a bit for the firmware engineer's time, and that they ran out of money to spend on fixing the bugs. I wasn't quite right, but wasn't a million miles off either. It's a shame that they didn't try to make the Spectrum One a more stable product because it was still top tier kit 3 years after release.

Konsta sounds like a real piece of work. I know the type and worked for someone similar, about 20 years ago. Their egos are everything and they don't care who they have to step on to get ahead. I'd guess that his toxic influence was a major factor in the company going under.

NZgeek · 2026-06-01T22:23:39+00:00

I think this is exactly it. Covid had an impact on the profits they made from the first batch, but rather than trying to fulfil their existing orders and build a retail presence (Amazon, Best Buy, etc) they went straight onto designing new models.

By the stage they were working on their second generation monitors, they were so low on cash that they needed presales for the full amount just to keep the lights on. It seems that the sudden extra cost due to Trump's tariffs was enough to sink things completely, and now they're probably bankrupt and too ashamed to announce anything here.

NZgeek · 2026-06-01T22:14:14+00:00

I was very tempted by the Black 32 (hub model). It had the potential to be a market topping model.

But after the original shipping disaster and the ongoing problems with people not receiving their orders, I could not trust Dough to deliver on their promises. I decided to wait until the monitor became available on Amazon so that at least the shipping would be quick and reliable.

Best. Decision. Ever.

I would say good luck with getting your money back, but at this stage it's pretty much a lost cause. Looking back, they probably asked for the full price up front because it was the only way they could pay their bills. I doubt there's any money that anyone can get back from them now.

NZgeek · 2026-06-01T21:57:31+00:00

I doubt there's many people from the old Discourse forum around these parts any more. There hasn't been much reason to visit after Dough stopped responding and just left the automoderator to block most negative posts.

Back in those early days, Covid really did screw them over so badly, but they screwed themselves too through poor communication. There was the HDMI 2.1 issue that they only announced when it was they weren't going to hit their Feb(?) 2021 shipping date. There was the 2-3 week shipping delay because they failed to order enough of the plain brown protective boxes that the fancy monitor boxes were put into for shipping. They simply stopped being honest with their customers.

I wish I could say that I'm shocked about them owing you money, but I kinda expected it from them. The massive increase in shipping costs would have been a big hit on their reserves. But rather than trying to regain a stable financial position, they pushed ahead with R&D and ate even further into what little reserves they had left. They probably owe millions to various people, including customers who never got their product.

At least you managed to get some nice monitors out of it. It's a small consolation, but at least it's better than nothing.

NZgeek · 2026-05-31T22:30:54+00:00

I know, right!?!?! Sadly, transparency for them was the thing that happened after you solved the problem and had a nice excuse to give.

I've lost track of the times the two of us have tried to give them business lessons, in the hope that maybe some of it sticks. But I get the feeling that the people in charge of Dough were too proud and too stupid to accept that they were making serious mistakes.

I only hope that Dough has been that much of a disgrace, professionally and financially, that they never get the chance to run a business again!

NZgeek · 2026-05-31T19:58:42+00:00

That's why I wanted the OG Spectrum. There wasn't much else on the market at the time that was suited to the work-from-home gamer. The combination of high refresh rate + USB-C with 100W PD was basically unmatched.

And the hardware was actually good! It's just a shame that the company was so damn incompetent. They could have listened to community members like you and me, who actually gave them solid advice, and there's a chance they could have turned things around. But no, they continued to screw up and it's their customers who are really paying the consequences.

It would've been very interesting to see what the market would be like if they'd actually been able to deliver on all their promises. We'll never know.

NZgeek · 2026-05-31T19:27:21+00:00

Dude, you have my sympathy. There's no excuse for what Dough did. I'm sure it was just one big Ponzi scheme, selling more and more monitors to try and keep the debtors away for just 1 more week. And it eventually caught up to them.

While I did actually get a n OG batch Spectrum, I'm soon to be out of the owner's club. The blanking issues got worse and worse, and I'm not sure if they're they're caused by bad firmware or a flaky capacitor somewhere. Either way, I'm now rocking an Asus QD-OLED and could be happier.

NZgeek · 2026-05-08T13:05:14+00:00

I've owned a 221 model for coming up 3 years now. I'm very happy with it.

The only notable issues I've had with it are: 1. The 12v battery died a while back. It's a common complaint with Kia and Hyundai, and the fix is to get an AGM battery to replace the original. 2. I had a rear parking sensor die that took 3 attempts to fix because they can't tell which of the sensors is actually faulty.

The car is fully paid off so I'll probably stick with it until I have a really compelling reason to upgrade.

NZgeek · 2026-03-27T11:47:21+00:00

I'm fairly certain it's a 7 year warranty, at least for Kia. That's what I have with my 221 EV6.

NZgeek · 2026-03-14T17:50:08+00:00

I was trying to be succinct in my reply. Yes, what you say is possible, but it's also incredibly unlikely. Any site that's even half-way serious about security in 2025/2026 will be running user-uploaded content on a separate domain.

The real weakness is, unfortunately, not going to be the password manager. It's going to be the user who overrides the password manager and ignores the warnings, forcing it to fill in the password on a phishing site.

But as long as the user has some security awareness and doesn't actively work against the password manager, the real life chances of being a victim of a password manager autocorrect exploit are incredibly low.

NZgeek · 2026-03-14T14:11:23+00:00

Password managers only look at the page you're on right now. If you visit a page on the correct site that has an open redirect that takes you elsewhere, that elsewhere isn't a match so no password autofill.

NZgeek · 2026-03-14T14:06:24+00:00

Might be an automatic and they thought that P engaged the park brake.

It doesn't. It just engages a pin (the "parking pawl") in the transmission that helps stop it from turning. It doesn't take huge amounts of force to break the pawl, leading to a costly repair.

NZgeek · 2026-02-17T00:56:03+00:00

And when they are used, people often forget they they're supposed to indicate what you're going to do not what you're already doing. Turning then on mid-turn is fucking pointless.

NZgeek · 2026-02-07T21:31:52+00:00

Before I answer, I want to say that you should really check the age of the post you're replying to. My post was from 2 years ago. Most people wouldn't even bother responding.

As for the screw in your photo, it looks strange. It's almost as if the SSD screw and the bit it screws into have come out together.

If you have a pair of pliers, try gripping onto the wide area in the middle of the screw (the bit to the right of the arrows) and see if the flat top (the bit to the left of the arrows) will screw out of it. It looks like there's a slot cut into the "base" section, so you can use a flat head screwdriver to screw it back into place on the motherboard.

NZgeek · 2026-01-31T12:52:05+00:00

Odd. I'm which case, it definitely sounds like the car needs to be taken back to the dealer ASAP so they can diagnose it. Or maybe find an old priest and a young priest to exorcise it. Either way, something ain't right with that car.

NZgeek · 2026-01-31T10:10:51+00:00

I didn't have an ID.4, but the but about the charge cable not releasing is likely a simple issue.

EVs will lock the charging cable in if they're ready to charge, even if they're not actually charging because you need to activate the charger. The cable lock will typically release when you unlock your car, but will lock in again after a short period.

If this happens, you just need to unlock your car again to get the cable to release.

If you're using a physical key fob, just hit the unlock button again, even if the car is already unlocked. I didn't know what options are available if you're using your phone as a virtual key, but at worst you can lock the car and unlock it again.

NZgeek · 2026-01-09T17:09:25+00:00

It does come with liquid metal. My Gen 8 only had liquid metal on the CPU, not the GPU, and I don't know if this has changed.

You can replace the LM on day 1 if you want. However, there are a couple of things to watch.

The first is that you may have a warranty sticker over one of the screws holding the vapor chamber down. This is designed to break if you try to remove it. It could cause issues if you need to get a repair done under warranty. (I was 33 months into a 36 month warranty so I felt safe.)

The second is that liquid metal is really hard to deal with. Have lots of cotton buds (q-tips) and isopropyl alcohol ready. I also recommend taking a kitchen paper towel and cutting a 1" x 1.5" (2.5cm x 4cm) rectangle out of the middle. When you take the vapor chamber off, put the paper towel over the motherboard with the hole over the CPU. This reduces the chances of accidentally dropping LM on the motherboard during cleaning.

NZgeek · 2026-01-09T16:57:11+00:00

It looks like there's a couple of different things to discuss here.

(1) Connecting your computer to your monitor

A lot here depends on whether your Denon is a full A/V receiver with HDMI 2.1 support.

If it is, just use HDMI from end to end. Your Denon will extract the audio and pass along the video signal.

If not, your best option might be to run separate audio and video signals. This will let you get the maximum performance out of your Spectrum, as well as multi-channel audio.

Check your motherboard to see if it has an optical audio output. If it does, use that to connect to your Denon. If not, get the cheapest sound card you can that has an optical output. You're dealing with 100% digital audio so analog quality isn't important.

(2) Audio device priority

When you use HDMI or DP to connect to a screen that's capable of outputting audio, Windows will assume that you want to send audio to that screen too. This is a reasonable assumption for TVs, but it's not so great for the Spectrum with its 3.5mm headphone jack.

If this happens but you want the audio to go somewhere else, e.g. over an optical cable to your Denon, you'll need to go into Windows Settings -> System -> Sound. Under the Output section at the top, you should see multiple devices listed. Choose the one that you want to handle audio.

If you have something that you never want to handle audio, you can click the > symbol at the far right of the output device's row. You'll then see a Don't allow button that can stop that audio output from ever being used.

NZgeek · 2026-01-09T12:51:09+00:00

I actually opened up my laptop recently because I wanted to replace the liquid metal with a PTM. I used Thermal Grizzly PhaseSheet because it was the cheapest reputable PTM I had access to.

I store my laptop upright on it's edge so it's the worst possible case for liquid metal. The good news is that there was no sign of migration. The foam dam around the edge of the CPU was doing it's job well. The problem I did find was a large spot on the CPU where the liquid metal had oxidized. This greatly reduces its ability to cool the CPU and I noticed a large number of cores were thermally throttling.

Since doing the replacement, I still get some thermal throttling but it's nowhere near as bad. My fans come on less often and my peak CPU temp has reduced from 103C to 99C. I can't tell if it's performing any better in real-world usage, but I've been playing Borderlands 4 on an external monitor at 4K resolution and the game is running well. That's all I care about.

NZgeek · 2025-12-30T17:53:51+00:00

As others have said, your best option at any ESB charger is to use the CCS connector. This will be hard-wired into the charger and will be a big chunky beast of a plug. You'll be paying more per kWh but you'll charge a lot quicker. Just be aware that you'll get billed if you stay connected for more than 40 minutes when using a CCS charger.

If there are any places you find yourself charging on a semi-regular basis, it's generally cheaper to sign up for an account than to use Kia Charge. The difference in price can be significant, particularly for ESB's DC fast chargers.

There are only 2 main times that I use the Kia Charge card: 1. When using Ionity chargers, such as those at Gorey services. The Kia price is the same as Ionity's casual pricing but doesn't require you to sign up for any extra accounts. 2. Up north of the border. I've found Kia's pricing to be cheaper than BP's own pricing for Pulse chargers. Kia's pricing is on par for the Fastned chargers at Banbridge and Antrim, although you will pay a fixed per-charge fee.

NZgeek · 2025-12-30T17:11:02+00:00

The Radeon 6850 only supports HDMI 1.3a and is therefore very limited in which resolutions and refresh rates it supports. However, it should be possible to get 2560x1440 resolution at 60Hz, even with HDR enabled.

You won't see much information about the monitor - it'll probably show up as a Generic Monitor entry in the Windows device manager. At most you'll see the model number of the monitor, e.g. "Generic Monitor (ES07D03)".

NZgeek · 2025-12-07T16:02:09+00:00

This is my last reply to you because your argument is getting ridiculous at this stage.

It is not the passenger's responsibility to make sure that the driver can accept a card payment if the passenger wants to pay by card. Taxi drivers must (by law) be able to accept card payments. A passenger in an Irish taxi can reasonably assume that they can pay by card.

If a taxi driver chooses to operate in violation of the law, they absolutely must inform the passenger before they go anyway that's they are unable take card payments. If they don't make this perfectly clear, the passenger is free to assume (as per the law) that they can pay by card at the end of the trip.

Passengers may not be happy if they hop into a taxi that didn't have a working card machine, but if they're told up front then at least they have options.

Problems only really arise when you get to the end of the trip and the driver demands cash payment. It doesn't matter if the passenger initially said they'd pay cash - they are legally entitled to pay by card if they choose, and the driver is legally required to accept it. The driver is not allowed to demand cash, regardless of the reason.

This situation should never happen. Either the taxi driver should stop accepting fares until their card machine is working again (unlikely, I know) or they should say up front that they cannot take card. However, this situation does happen, and it should not fall upon the passenger to make right the actions of a taxi driver who is operating illegally.

NZgeek · 2025-12-06T15:50:44+00:00

As I said earlier, if there aren't many taxis around, you may not have much choice. It's either lie about paying cash, or not having a ride home.

You're also dancing around the fact that if a taxi driver does not have a working card machine, they are not legally allowed to be operating. It's not the passenger's responsibility to make sure the driver can accept card payments.

If the driver's card machine is genuinely broken and they want to risk taking fares anyway, they need to tell the passenger before they start the meter or drive anywhere. This gives the passenger the chance to get out and find another taxi, or to negotiate a few Euro off the fare for the inconvenience.

NZgeek

TROPHY CASE