"The environment is completely irrelevant. Discarded electronic
devices are a trivial part of the total waste and manufacturing
stream and the environmental downsides are back in china
with the manufacturing anyway. "

Wrong...it is one of the worst.

As I said, the industry will need to deal with it.

TMT

Rod Speed wrote:
b wrote
Rod Speed wrote

Electronic CRT chassis are so flimsy that if you take
the chassis out the plastic wont support the CRT.

Doesnt need to, the CRT is the guts of the system everything is attached to.

....You haven't repaired many of the later CRT sets then have you?

Guess who has just got egg all over its face, as always ?

So progress is both good and bad.

Not much bad with electronics.

Rubbish.

Nope.

Take a look at a repair shop dealing with any mass produced,
mid- to low- priced electronic item (which seem to make up the
bulk of sales) and you'll typically see : electrolytics failed in TVs

Nothing to do with what was being discussed, PROGRESS.

Failed electros have been around ever since they were invented.

and set top boxes/decoders due to proximity to heat,
(or just poor or poorly rated components),

**** all of those fail. No point in looking in repair shops, they only see the
failures. What matters is the percentage of failures. And that is very low.

PCs in spades.

transistors failing due to skimping on metal heat sinks,

You dont see much of that either.

vcrs with plastic parts breaking,

They always did.

mobile phones and mp3 players with defective jacks and buttons etc etc.

**** all of those too.

What we have are many more features than before. and at
cheaper price, and often in smaller machines so there is progress
in that sense, but build quality and longevity are WELL down,

Bull****.

coincidentally along with parts support

Because they dont fail much anymore.

and repairability,

Because they dont fail much anymore.

which means more failure,

No it doesnt. The lack of repairability often means increased reliability
most obviously with sealed plugpacks and moulded power cords.

more landfill material.

Thats mostly due to changed tastes like with CRT
monitors that work fine being replaced with LCDs etc.

As I mentioned earlier , I don't think it is planned
obsolescence, just a desire for increased sales and profits

Its actually a desire for competitive pricing which does sometimes
see the designer getting too carried away doing that.

(which any business aspires to) and a lack of regard for the environment,

The environment is completely irrelevant. Discarded electronic
devices are a trivial part of the total waste and manufacturing
stream and the environmental downsides are back in china
with the manufacturing anyway.

playing on the ignorance of consumers about the
REAL cost of all this replace not repair mentality.

There is no 'playing on', its the consumers who have decided that
with new stuff so cheap, it makes absolutely no sense whatever
to pay an expensive first world tech to repair something like a
VCR when a new one would cost less and have a full warranty.