Rick Brandt wrote:
terry wrote:
Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?

Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will exhaust their
batteries in approximately one to two years do clearly raise the
question? "Designed to fail?".

But it's the same reason that I continue to accept and use old
appliances that I can repair myself.
For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates a digital
timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable! Eventually can see
myself, however, ending up with one of those and deliberately
disconnecting the digital timer clock or modifying the stove to use
one my older (saved) clock/timers or just dong away with the timer
altogether.

I think another big factor is the ratio of cost on parts versus
labor. In the "old days" you might have a repair that was 70% parts
and 30% labor cost-wise. Nowdays those percentages would be reversed
and that just irks people who just don't see the value of anyone's
labor (other than their own of course).
You see posts about this all the time. "Called a guy to come out and
do foo and couldn't believe what he wanted to charge me!" Labor
really induces a lot of sticker shock these days.

Yep, and thats inevitable when first world wages are involved with
repair and the alternative is some microwage monkey in an asian
factory minimally involved in stamping out a new one hours wise.

Even just the travel time for the repair is vastly more
than any asian ever puts into making you a new one.