In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" writes:
In article ,
Grunff wrote:
Worse still is the current fashion for stainless steel kettles - these
take ages to boil. A few years back we were given a stainless kettle and
toaster matching set. The performance of both was awful. We've gone back
to using nice plastic ones, which boil quickly.

Leaving aside the fact I don't like boiled toast I'll warrant both your
plastic toaster and kettle will fall apart long before stainless steel
ones. Plastics simply don't like heat long term.

What's actually happened, as with so many other appliances, is
that kettles have changed from being capital purchases into
consumables. Manufacturers have cleverly changed peoples'
expectations, and kettles, like light bulbs, are no longer
expected to last for years. This gives the manufacturers a
higher and more predicably stable revenue stream. As geoff
said, he chucks his when the element dies, which is a bit
like chucking out your desklamp every time the light bulb dies.
This is also down to consumers not being prepared to pay for
long life in appliances anymore, so such products vanish from
the marketplace. Strangely, they'll pay for designs which look
to be long life, e.g. those with stainless steel styling, but
most of these are still basically plastic under the skin.

I still have a 30 year old Russell Hobbs stainless steel
kettle which just predates the conversion into consumables.
I can't see any reason why it won't carry on going another
30 years. A couple of years ago, it spent a while being
used as a builders kettle, and got very mucky. I decided
to take it apart to thoroughly clean all the plaster etc
from it, and it came up like knew.

--
Andrew Gabriel
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