On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:08:07 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

terry wrote
Ecnerwal wrote:

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine."

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?".

Doesnt explain stuff like cordless phones that use standard batterys.

Except you can buy much better batteries than the crap that comes with
the chinese built phone from the factory. Likely cost as much as the
phone, but often worth it.

But it's the same reason that I continue to accept
and use old appliances that I can repair myself.

I repair all my own stuff too, but accept that sometimes I need to buy
parts.

That can mean that you have to do without
some of the most elegantly usable appliances tho.

For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates
a digital timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable!

If a digital timer makes it through the first 90 days, and then
through warranty, it may very well outlive YOU. Infant mortality is
the biggest issue with electronis. Mechanical timers simply wear out
or burn out, and although SOMETIMES repairable, they ARE more likely
to fail after the first year or so than electronics. Particularly as
the mechanics were cheapened and electronics become more integrated
and solid.

Mindlessly silly. My microwave is still going fine 30 years later.

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.

Or get a clue and only bother with that if it actually does fail.
And get the benefit of a decent modern design when it doesnt.

I've never actually had a single digital clock in any system
ever fail and I've got heaps of them, plenty 30+ years old.

My experience as well. Electromechanical timers have failed on just
about everything I've ever owned with them except for the old
Frigidaire range (50 years old and still working fine when the oven
element let go and "plasma cut" a big hole in the bottom of the oven)
Several wires had burned off 30 years ago - I repaired them 26 or 27
years ago - otherwise it worked fine. Not so the timer on the water
softener that pumped several hundred gallons of water and350 lbs of
salt all over the basement floor when the timer died--------.



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