"Mr.T" MrT@home wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

Nope, it simply costs far less for them to make a new
one than to repair it.

A natural consequence of high levels of automation.

Of course. I don't really have a problem with that for
cheap items, but throwing away a $300+ device because of
a faulty connector or worn out battery is bad design done
deliberately.

I don't know about the deliberately part. 3.5 mm jacks have been
problematical as long as I've had experience with them, and that goes back
to the 1960s. Some more so than others, but all of them are susceptible to
wear and use. If there was some magical way to solve that problem head on,
by now someone would have found it, it would seem.

Right now there are two work-arounds to the problem of 3.5 mm plugs and
jacks. One is used by a lot of headphone manufacturers on 3.5 mm headphone
plugs, and it involves making the 3.5 mm plug so that a 0.25 inch plug can
be securily threaded onto it. On the jack side, what a lot of people do is
equip the equipment with a 0.25 jack, and then plug a 3.5 mm adaptor into
it. When the 3.5 mm jack inevitably breaks, you just get a new adaptor.

As far as the problem of $300 equipment that gets trashed because a 3.5 mm
jack gets damaged, the current solution is that the $300 equipment gets
microminiaturized into a $40 piece of equipment that works about as well.
That's what happened when my NJB3 was replaced by a Sansa Clip.


In the past nobody would expect to throw
away a $2000 television after a few years, now it is just
accepted that your large screen plasma/LCD TV has a life
expectancy of a few years and will be replaced rather
than repaired.

If the large screen TV costs like $600, that is almost acceptable. I've seen
50" plasmas for $688.

It's so bad a whole new market has
developed for extended warranties that didn't exist when
ability to repair was considered part of the design
process.

Extended warrantees are just insurance policies.

They charge premium prices because they can.
That's a fundamental rule of business. Buy low, sell
high.

Fortunately not ALL companies are greedy, simply most.
And some are far more greedy than others. I try to avoid
those ones as much as possible.

Agreed.

Someone has to pay for all the advertising and
huge profits.

Nobody is forcing people to buy techno toys. Furthermore
the asking prices for a lot of this stuff is pretty low,
all things considered.

Sure, but some are far better value than others. Take the
PC Vs Mac competition for example, 90% of the hardware is
common, (processors, RAM, hard drives etc. etc.) the
major difference is the operating system, and advertising
campaigns. A similarly specced PC clone is far cheaper
than a Mac. I have no problem with people choosing to
support Apples profits, but when they complain about
Microsoft, I have to laugh!!

There was once a day when all of the cool audio, graphics, and desktop
publishing software ran only on Macs. If memory serves, there was even a
time when the only extant spreadsheet program ran on an Apple. Those days
are long gone.

(Yes I do think MS is just as bad, but OS10 is just a
variation of Unix, and Linux is FREE for your PC. And of
course *many* Macs run MS office anyway! In fact there
are far more free programs available for the PC and Linux
anyway, enough that most users could avoid paying for OS
and software completely *if* they wanted to.)

About 6 years ago I paid about $300 for a NJB3 (Creative
Labs Nomad Jukebox) with 20 GB of storage that weighed
the better part of a pound and was bigger than of a big
stack of CDs. Today the same basic funcionality runs
only a fraction of the price, size and weight;, is far
more durable, plays longer on its batteries, and sounds
just as good. All that, and there were 6 years of
inflation in-between.

Which has what to do with Apple iPods?

One of the smaller, lighter, cheaper, easier to use alternatives to the
NJB3 was the iPod.

Fancy that!

You are making my
point that there are usually better options. The NJB3 was
a good choice at the time IMO. It's competition that
really drives those technology improvements! Be very
thankful we have a choice other than Apple products.

As far as I'm concerned, Apple is just another alternative. If they can
compete, then I'll serioiusly consider Apple. If not, too bad!

Just be thankful it was still under warranty, they
usually last just long enough for the warranty to
expire. And let's not even mention battery replacement!
In this day and age there are many things that are
impractical to repair. OTOH, if the vast proportion of
them last long enough for the owners to lose interest in
them like I lost interest in my NJB3, then they
effectively lasted forever.

Which would be very true *IF* all the latest Chinese toys
lasted 6 years like your NJB3.

It didn't. Surprisingly enough my NJB3's headphone jack lasted, but the line
input jack didn't. It got replaced by a Microtrack. The Microtrack's only
"must have" jacks are USB and 1/4". Both have a far better track record for
durability than the 3.5 mm jack.

Most however will be
landfill **LONG** before that.
The marketing for iPods is for you to throw them away
when the batteries are stuffed, IF they last that long.
What percentage of iPods last 6 years I wonder?

There seems to be a good market for replacement batteries for the iPod. I
even replaced the battery in my MicroTrack - it cost me less than $10 and
about 20 minutes.