Michael Kennedy wrote:

Separate matter entirely to the mindlessly silly claim that
its even possible to design an appliance to break about a
year after the warranty runs out, with most appliances.

Why do you say it is impossible?

Because it is impossible ? Novel concept I realise.

When designing the product the engineers figure the average useage of the appliance every day and
then calculate about how long it will take before a failure.

Nice theory. The reality is that that isnt even
possible with most domestic appliances.

It isnt even feasible with stuff as basic as an incandescent light bulb.
A CFL in spades. A moulded power cord or plug pack in spades.

They also do product reliability testing to see how long on average it is before a product fails.

No they dont with domestic appliances.

They dont even do that with mass market hard drives anymore.

Many times they use methods for speeding up the process, ex acid or amplified sunlight.

Not with domestic appliances they dont.

And even the stuff which can be designed to do that like
the stuff with microprocessor control that can certainly
be programmed to do that, no one is actually THAT stupid

If I remember correctly I read about a certain laser printer on this group that would stop
functioning after it prited a certain amount of pages.

Not in the sense that it will never work again and you need a new one.

It had to have a reset button pushed on its mainboard before it would start working agian. I don't
know this to be a fact since I've never experineced this myself though.

That is done with copier etc too, but thats nothing
like the planned obsolescence being discussed.