Carl McIver wrote:
"Rick Brandt" wrote in message
...
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
total.

On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new
dryer will only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a
guy" who replaced a five year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of
the simplest and most reliable things in the home. There just isn't
that much to go wrong.


When you don't compare appliances to the rest of the
machinery/equipment/vehicles that an average household owns nowadays,
it's easy to think that appliances aren't meant to be repaired
anymore. Compared to everything else in your life, reliability and
repairability is pretty much the same, because the consumer has
raised their expectations, so the market adjusted.
I used to get into the points/electronic ignition argument all the
time. The opposing thinking was that points could be adjusted, and
that you knew when it was time to replace them, and mine was that you
never had to do either, and the reliability of electronic ignition
was so much higher than points that you had enough time worrying
about other things that you could afford to think that, instead of
spending all your time maintaining things. Model T's used to come
with tools and a manual that guided you through a complete engine
overhaul, because every few thousand miles they knew you were gonna
have to!
Yup, electronic circuit boards aren't as structurally durable as
the spaghetti mess behind most older machines, but I can pretty much
assure you that you won't be messing with it near as often. If you
have to repair a particular brand machine, you will think less of
that brand. When there was only five or so brands, that were all
made in the US, the makers didn't mind trapping the consumer, but now
that machines are built all over the world, competition says that the
customer is now highly concerned about reliability, and won't even
bother try to find the most reliable one out of a selection of crap,
but will buy what they don't have to hassle with. Which one would you
pick?

I'm not sold completely on that commentary as it relates to _all_
machinery, however. I won't buy a Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord, or
any of the million clones, simply because everyone else has one, and
I can't find mine in a parking lot.

I fixed that by getting a bright yellow mass
market car with the best warranty around.

If you dont like that approach it would cost peanuts to
have a remotely controllable flashing light mounted on it.

I'm confident that I've acquired a less reliable automobile that reflects my personal taste in
transportation, and when the mass produced muck has passed on its appeal to much newer cars I'll
still be driving my own car, which retains its own appeal and uniqueness much longer.

You can have both, with decent reliability as well.

My previous car lasted 35 years with very little maintenance
at all, and only got binned because I was stupid enough to not
fix the leaking windscreen because it was only a trivial nuisance.

It wasn't uncommon to get comments like: "Cool car, what is it?" on my much older rides, from
folks of all ages.

I never got any of those, but thats likely because I only ever washed it
before the rego check because it was more likely to pass without quibble.