The main thing I detest with modern products is keyboards. I used
to be able to buy proper double injection moulded keyboards in the
pre PC days but they arent even buyable now even with the branded
produces like Microsoft and Logitech and the stupid cheap stuck on
lettering never lasts very long at all.

I'm pleased to agree with that comment since it's on topic
and something that's near and dear to my heart.
I use my computer keyboard every day so it's not just an appliance,
it's a tool. It ought to fit my hand and operate reliably.
You'll have to pry my original IBM PS/2 space-saving keyboard
from my cold dead hands - I ain't giving' this up for anything!
The keys FEEL RIGHT and really click, not fake springs here!
It's survived a lot of pounding and frustration
and NONE of the keycap legends are smudged.
Only recently I noticed that the matte finish has rubbed off
the left shift key and the "A" key, making the surface smooth.
The keyboard has been in daily use for perhaps 10 years.

But I wouldnt go back to corded mice and keyboards again.
In spades with non optical mice either.

I favor trackballs and I lament how the award-winning ergonomic ones
are not available anymore.
That's not planned obsolescence or feature-itis
so much as the "race to the bottom":
whoever sells the parts with the lowest price or highest markup wins
by slowly deleting or removing options until they're no longer available.
My Itac trackball's buttons are fully reprogrammable so they work without
any specialized drivers. Nobody else does that in hardware,
it's always part of their drivers (which are a nightmare to configure & update).

Similarly:
- VCRs have been stripped of all their buttons so there's no way
to use them without the remote control. If the remote is lost or broken,
then most of the features are "lost" because the universal remotes
don't give all the original buttons.

- home camcorders keep losing features such as aux mic input,
which several friends require for their taping.
They can't afford the $xx,000 "professional" cameras just to get
features that are no longer included in the $x00 home versions.

- high end audio equipment is hard to get: some is no longer made
AT ANY PRICE due to Chinese products flooding the market
with lower prices and lowered expectations.

- similarly, the Yamaha CD burners were top rated for reliability of
mechanism and firmware. They're no longer available thanks to market erosion
to Chinese CD burners. For the home-professional,
I don't care if I can buy a new CD burner every week or every day,
I need RELIABLE OPERATION that these new disposible ones cannot provide.
I need CDs that are burned precisely to read well a week, a year or 10 years later.
It's unsure if the cheapie CD burners can really achieve that :-(
And similarly, the CD blanks are sometimes crap-tastic
despite all the advances in manufacturing tech that makes it possible
to create high-reliability media, if anyone's willing to pay the extra pennies.


--

-- mejeep deMeep ferret!