Jeff Jonas wrote:

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
products 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 main problem there is that I need a proper modern cordless
keyboard. I compute from a deep armchair with my feet up and
have the keyboard in my lap when entering text like now.

Even the pre PC double injection moulded keyboard,
a DEC LK01, was much too heavy in that situation.

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.

Yeah, thats the only effect I ever got with those.

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

I dont, I prefer modern scroll wheels.

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":

Its not that so much as just that hardly anyone liked trackballs.

There is no race to the bottom with high end
cordless mice like the Logitech MX700 etc.

And they use standard AA NiMH batterys so its trivial
to replace those when that is necessary, for peanuts.

whoever sells the parts with the lowest price or highest markup wins
by slowly deleting or removing options until they're no longer available.

That isnt happening with high end cordless mice.

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 is a much more cost effective approach.

(which are a nightmare to configure & update).

Doesnt have to be.

Similarly:
- VCRs have been stripped of all their buttons so
there's no way to use them without the remote control.

Yes, because so few use those buttons and so few are
silly enough to use them even when they lose the remote.

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.

It makes a lot more sense to have replacement remotes available
than to have the buttons on the front of the VCR itself.

- 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.

And because its such a tiny niche market now.

- 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.

Reliability is irrelevant now with DVD burners so cheap.

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.

Thats bull****.

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 :-(

Anyone with a clue burns more than one copy on
different media even with something like a Yamaha.

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.

I've never had a problem with CD blanks except one
spindle that someone else bought for me at a dollar store
which were so bad you could literally see right thru them.

All the rest have never been a problem.