Ross Herbert wrote:
On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 18:19:24 GMT, "Rick Brandt"
wrote:

Ecnerwal wrote:
In article ,
"Rick Brandt" wrote:

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances to
see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.
"This part always breaks eventually, we'll isolate it and make it
easy to replace".

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. [snip]

What you say speaks to the issue of why did we repair in the past
and why don't we repair now, but it says nothing about the
comparable reliability. If appliances in the past were "built to be
repaired" that can be interpretted to mean that failures were
expected. If failures were expected and people could make a living
performing those repairs then that suggests that the appliances were
not that reliable.



The main reason we don't repair modern electronic appliances is that
the cost of parts and labour to carry out the repairs is often nearly
as much (or more) than the appliance cost new. Why would anyone pay
for a repair on an item, which may be as good as new when repaired,
when a brand new item may only cost a little more. The new item also
comes with a new warranty.

This will only change when the standard of living in countries
producing the majority of appliances goes up considerably
thus making the cost of producing items more expensive.

It wont change even then, the manufacture
will just move on to new low cost countrys.

That has already happened a number of times now.

However, along with that, in order to make them economical
to repair, they must also be designed for accessibility to
components such that they can physically be repaired.

Not necessarily. You can replace components, like
you do with cell phone batterys most obviously.

Designing in repairability also adds a bit to the cost of production.

Not much tho, again most obviously with cellphones.

Personally, I am all in favour of repairability if for no other
reason than it saves energy and resources across the board.

Its a tiny part of world energy consumption.