On 30 Nov 2009 22:12:19 GMT, Allodoxaphobia
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:09:10 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

-snip-

The good part about all this is that problem products just don't last
very long. Soon after the problems are found, the replacements appear
in the stores. The replacements have all the latest features, use all
the latest designs, and follow all the latest fashion trends.

... and are cursed with brand new problems.

If you find yourself cursed, hire an exorcist.

Yep, we're all doomed. I'm looking at Rev 1.0 of a just released
consumer electronics product. All of the ASIC's inside are custom.
Most of the glue chips didn't exist 6 months ago. The date code on
some of the parts are about 2 months ago. The plastic doesn't quite
fit. The firmware is a bugfest with the latest update scheduled to
hit their web pile real-soon-now. The user interface resembles a
student effort which will fail any usability test. No, I won't
disclose the product. My point is that if you want the absolute
latest, you're going to have to tolerate a certain level of rush to
market, complete with bugs.

Most products are NOT revolutionary. They evolve based on previous
products or are stolen from the competition. The problem is that as
one product is manufactured, there anywhere from one to three future
replacement versions of the same product somewhere in the design
cycle. With such a derangement, even if the problems were known on
the original product, the fixes will not appear in the updates or
replacements until after one to three hardware revisions.

However, there's hope. With hardware bugs, it's not unusual to use
software and firmware updates to work around the bugs. Where this
goes awry is when vendors decide that it's not worth supporting
products that they no longer sell, making old bugs permanent. I give
great credit to some manufacturers (such as Linksys) for producing
firmware updates for products or versions that haven't been sold for
many years.

The point is that bugs and glitches are inevitable with rush to
market, but can be dealt with given sufficient time. It's the
sufficient time that's really the problem. Many suppliers of retail
products are sufficiently isolated from the retail sale that they have
no real interest in supporting end users, much less even identifying
themselves. By the time a complaint dribbles back down the supply
chain, it's usually lost. If it does arrive, it usually lands on the
very bottom of the priority pile, or is so late that the next release
or model of the product is in production making it too late to do
anything about the old product.

Even if the factory has a long term delivery and release contract,
there's still a problem. Features and functions get added faster
than bugs get fixed. The result is a feature infested but seriously
buggy product that never seems to get fixed. Most manufacturers
recognize this and compensate by slowing down the development cycle
enough to do minimal testing, debugging, and damage control.

Unfortunately, not much can be done if defective or counterfeit parts
are used. Incidentally, counterfeit components and products are a
serious problem and involve far more than just low-ESR capacitors. I
had a series of motherboards fail due to bulging capacitors. There
were about 15 machines involved. Only 5 of them had bad caps. I
removed some caps from both the good and bad boards and tried
determine if there was a measurable difference. Yep. The ESR was
radically different. Yet, the package, labeling, color, coining, and
everything about the caps were identical. I could not tell the
difference visually. What this tells me is that there are still some
bad caps mixed in with good caps in the manufacturers inventory. It
may only be one bad reel of caps among hundreds, but it only takes a
few caps to trash a product. It's also possible that the capacitor
manufacturers are shipping old inventory in order to make a fast
dollar. Hard to tell from here.

What I find amusing is asking friends and customers how long they
expect some consumer electronics device to last (with some repair).
The older ones expect their TV to last as long as their hand wired
1960's Zenith TV. 20 to 30 years would be typical. Younger buyers,
that have had some experience with contemporary product lifetimes will
usually say 5 to 10 years at best, as if this was considered normal.

Quality, features, price. Pick any two.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558