I have to make a comment here, from the view of a 23 year old male.
While you prefer to have your TV and Microwave last 20+ years, I prefer
to have a "nice, new" one every 5. I find myself replacing my cellphone
yearly, dvd player about every 2, tv every 3-5, microwave every 3-5...
not because they go bad, but because I like to have the latest and
greatest. It's not about having too much money money, as I make a
measly 40k a year... but now days you don't spend as much on an
appliance as you used to. I think of them more as a lease... I'd
rather spend $1000 over 10 years on 2-3 tv's then $1000 for one.

And here's a response from another 23 year old male.

I have a Panasonic microwave that still works after 22 years. Did have to
replace the internal interlock switches, but that's just $2 worth of parts and
my own labor versus spending $50 or so on an oven that isn't as powerful and
isn't built nearly as well. Why replace it with something that's less when all
it needed was simple service to fix it?

I have a Sony Trinitron TV I built from two defective units of the same model.
It's been calibrated, so it beats the crap out of almost any other NTSC
television, new and used. It also has a hidden 16x9 mode so I can enjoy DVDs
with anamorphic enhancement. Why replace it when it works better than just
about any other TV I've seen in a lot of areas? I'd go HDTV when it becomes
far more widespread and when NTSC broadcasts are halted. But until then...

My cellphone is an old Motorola StarTAC. It's a tri-mode so it still works
with the Verizon system fully. AND, it also transceives at the full legal
limit so it can take and make calls in places where my sister's Verizon LG
camera phone can't. Why replace it when I don't really need the niceties of
games, customizable ringtones, color screens, and a camera? Why does a phone
need these things, for crying out loud! The basic function of a phone is to
make and receive calls, and if a phone can't do that as reliably as my StarTAC
(mainly because newer phones have to divide the battery power to operate the
non-essentials in addition to the transceiver as well as to address potential
legal trouble from the idiots who think that using cell phones will give you
tumors), I won't bother with it.

My Sony DVP-S360 DVD player. Five years old and it still works and delivers a
picture that is not crippled by a lousy analogue stage like those found in
cheap Apex players, so what's the point in replacing it? When it croaks, I'll
go out and buy another Sony, particularly the models that use the
PrecisionDrive 3 system as they do not have layer change pauses unlike a lot of
the cheapie DVD players sold today. I don't need a player that can read CD-R
discs or MP3 support. I just want a DVD player that can play DVDs decently.

As for my audio system? Heh, hardly anything short of full blown exotic setup
really beats an almost full-fledged Sony ES system with a class A amp. And, it
does support the latest including Dolby Digital EX, ProLogic IIx and DTS ES.
It will blow those lowly HTiB systems, computer 5.1 setups, and Bose
shelf-systems out of the water and into the stratoshpere. And, it sounds great
with CDs, cassettes, and LPs in addition to digital surround sound. The
receiver, the STR-DA4ES, is about three years old. My tape deck, a TC-K707ES,
has three heads with a closed loop capstan and supports Dolby S and is about 11
years old and sounds great. My CD player, a CDP-X229ES, is about 12 years old
and works marvelously. Note that I said Sony ES. ES is the Elevated Standard
series, which is heads and tails superior to the regular Sony line of products
and are sold only at authorized hi-fi dealers.

And I'm just some college student who seems to have a particular knack at
obtaining quite a few good things at great deals or getting something broken
and fixing it back into somehing that's great.

Seeing and knowing what goes inside of something like, say, a lot of TVs from
the decent brands versus the cheapies, I'd rahter spend the extra bucks to get
a Sony over an Apex.

Buying crap like Apex and the like is not buying the latest and greatest. It's
throwing money away on substandard junk. I see these things get dropped off on
the repair bench fairly frequently, quite a few only several months old. They
fail because they just quit working. Cheap parts and cheap design are the
culprits, yet we have a public that are not convinced and continue to burn cash
on garbage that will require replacement within two years instead of lasting up
to 10 years or so which is typically the case with good brands like Sony and
Hitachi.

Buy something decent and it won't come to this! - Reinhart