"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 3 Jan 2015 07:10:25 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
. ..

The reason for the designed in failures is the need for manufactories
to continue selling replacements. If they actually made a device that
lasts forever, they will sell a few years worth, and then go out of
business because there will be no replacement sales. Reliability is
bad for (consumer) business.

What about lighting for new buildings?

It's strictly a question of selling price.

Joe Sixpack is not going to tolerate $8 "60 watt" lamps in his house.
He wants cheap, at any cost, even if it blows up every few years. I've
noticed that most of the homes that I see that have all LED lighting,
also have a hybrid car, grid tied solar systems, and other energy
conservation devices. They tend to be affluent but not very good at
calculating the alleged savings or comparing with alternatives. When
I do this for them, some don't want to hear the bad news. They'll pay
any price, to save a few pennies. Seriously expensive LED lighting is
not a problem for this market.

However, the rest are tightwads or just plain cheap. They look at the
store shelf and see $1 CCFL lamps next to $10 LED lights. My guess is
they'll buy the $1 lamp and wait for the price of LED's to drop. I
saw this happen at the local hardware store. The flooring manager
said that when he puts the two types of lights next to each other, the
sales of CCFL lamps go up and LED's drop. When he separates them,
putting the LED's in a garish impulse buy display near the cash
register, CCFL sales drop, and LED's go up. The bottom line is that
Joe Sixpack wants cheap lights,

Yes.

and the only way the industry is going
to supply those is to cut corners,

No, most obviously with the change from
incandescent torches to LED torches.

which show up as increased infant mortality and lifetime failures.

No, most obviously with the change from
incandescent torches to LED torches.

And with cars in spades. MUCH more reliable than they used to be.

However, high reliability lighting (towers, airports, buildings,
etc) are in a different class from Joe Sixpack. You don't find those
lights at the hardware store or supermarket. They're industrial
specialty items, with high quality LED's, and high prices to match.
Reputation is a big thing in such markets, so anything designed
to fail prematurely is not going to last very long.

Same with systems like Amazon and ebay where
its so easy to see how long things have lasted.

And you get the short life problem even with the brand name
high end items too. Have a look at logitech mice for example.
The microswitches fail with monotonous regularity, multiple
clicking when you only intended a single click. That's been
going on for more than a decade now even with their most
expensive mice selling for $100 each with 5 or 7 year warrantys
where its in the manufacturer's interest to fix the problem
because they have to wear the replacement under warranty.

Your claim that logitech deliberately designs them
to fail like that just can't fly with warrantys like that.

From my perspective, the cost savings outweigh the "premature" failures.

That totally depends on how you rate lifetime. I get
about 2 years on most of my commodity CCFL lights.

I'm currently seeing more than 10 out of
mine and that one is used every single day.

I haven't blown out enough lights to produce useful
statistics, but mostly I break them from impact damage,

Those don't count.

or something in the electronics burns out, usually
with a puff of smog and a noxious smell. A
capacitor would be my guess from the smell.

However, these are not the best CCFL lights. Why would
this company advertise that their CCFL lamps have 2.5 to
6.6 times the lifetime of ordinary CCFL lamps?
http://www.ccfllamps.com/_en/02_technology/01_detail.php?fid=3
Is it because their lamps are better, or because the ordinary CCFL
lamps have been cost reduced to produce a shorter lifetime?

Or they have put more effort into a decent design.

Dunno, but I suspect the latter.

LED's are probably similar. You can get those that last forever,

And virtually all of the lowest power indicator leds do just that.

and those that are cost reduced to blow
up just after the warranty expires.

I don't believe that that last is even possible.

The reality with the cheapest **** from china is that
you're lucky if all of them work out of the box.

If you do the math, my guess is the
price/performance ratio is about the same.

Fraid not with my CFLs.

That also begs the question "Why did Arfa Daily post the article"?
My best guess(tm) here is that he's still having problems adjusting
to LED lighting and needs a new reason to not use LED lighting.

Like most people, Arfa doesn't like high-K lighting. I switched to 5000K
CFLs, and though it took a couple of weeks to adjust, I much prefer light
that more-closely resembles daylight, and is subjectively brighter.

It's been a while, but I recall that he could not adjust to LED
lighting. He's not the only one. The neighboring architects
office has two people that claim eyestrain from the replacement
LED lighting. Their section of the office uses ordinary fluorescent
tubes and incandescent desk lamps. (I once suggested kerosene
lamps with predictable results).

I've done some testing on myself to see what works best.
6000K daylight LED lighting seems best for doing fine detail work.
2700-3000K is much easier on my eyes for reading, but I have trouble
focusing on detail and fine print. I use both where appropriate.