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On Tuesday, 13 October 2015 19:08:28 UTC+1, Rod Speed wrote:
nt:
polygonum wrote
nt wrote
polygonum wrote
MM wrote

"Every" ten years? Just how long do you expect your
machine to last? Judging by what I see, heard and
read, more than 19 years would be a miracle.

I've had many miracles then.

How many? Seems a bit odd to have machines which last so
long and yet to have had two or more of them. Surely if they are
so long-lived, you wouldn't get through many even in a lifetime.

Almost all my household appliances are miracles according
to your definition. Several are multi-miracles.

Yeah, all of my major appliances like dishwasher, wall oven, cooktop,
washing machine, microwave etc have all managed 40+ years. Some
like the original fridge has managed 60 and I stopped using it
because its just too small and has bugger all frozen storage.

No so true of the smaller appliances. Wouldn't like to count how many
toasters I have been thru, dozens of them. Not quite as many of the
small glass convection ovens, but I have only been using them for a
much shorter time. They mostly don't last as long as the toasters and
the current one does get used at about the same frequency, most days.

The old Dualits last well,

Never tried one of those, the price is too silly.

but little else seems to.

Yep.

No idea if the wildly overpriced modern ones will.

Never tried one of those either. I was tempted with
one of them that was a lot more fancy than most of
them with a fancy system for showing you the toast
and you being able to say 'that needs a bit more etc'
and it remembers that for next time.

I think the issue is generally that people have
no idea how to buy long lasting appliances,

I'm not convinced that they ever did or that its even possible.

Even the sort of life stats that operations like Which attempt
isn't much use at all. By the time they have any useful stats,
you can hardly ever buy that model new anymore.

and no idea when to repair and when to chuck.

That mostly isn't knowable either.

Too many people chuck out good stuff to
replace it with short lived gimmicky crap.

And it can take a while before it becomes
clear that some approaches really don't
work that well like the washer/dryers.