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#241
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
"Rod Speed" writes:
Everett M. Greene wrote Rod Speed writes terry wrote Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will exhaust their batteries in approximately one to two years do clearly raise the question? "Designed to fail?". Doesnt explain stuff like cordless phones that use standard batterys. What explains the electric toothbrushes that don't have replaceable batteries? Its harder to design something as compact as that with standard replaceable batterys. What's smaller and more compact than present-day cell phones? ipods too. You have to toss a $60-$120 device just because a $5 battery has failed. Indeed. |
#242
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
clare at snyder.on.ca wrote
Rod Speed wrote clare at snyder.on.ca wrote Rod Speed wrote lsmartino wrote Rod Speed wrote Please explain how the manufacturer of a light bulb, fluorescent lamp or CFL can provide an estimate of the lifetime of the lamp. That is trivial to do by running an adequate sized batch of incandescent light bulbs under appropriate test conditions etc. Donīt say "They canīt because itīs impossible". Explain exactly why itīs impossible. Its up to those who claim that its possible to design a device to die one year after the warrant expires how that can be done. Well, it can be estimated how long will a power semiconductor run if you leave it without a proper heatsink. Not in a domestic environment it aint, because the ambient temperature varys so much. I got a bit of a start relatively recently when someone was having overheating problems with their PC to discover that they were one of the few in this area who were silly enough to have no form of cooling whatever, not even a swamp cooler, in an area which can see 10 days over 40C some summers. We had one just last week and it got to 44C, and it was like walking into a furnace walking outside my airconditioned house. Open any Samsung TV, for instance, to see for yourself how important transistors are left bare, dissipatting heat to the air. I donīt see why it should be difficult for the manufacturer to know that these particular transistors left overheating will fail within a finite number of hours. There is no finite number of hours, because the ambient temp varys so much in domestic situations. Those who dont have any cooling at all in an area which can see a week over 40C wont survive the warranty period and those who have decent air conditioning will find that the TV lasts long past the warranty period. Also, you will notice that the same circuit will have electrolytic capacitors near heat sources, when itīs a well known fact that heat shortens dramatically the life of electrolytics caps. In practice that isnt a significant problem with domestic appliances. Essentially because you dont see many electros in that situation with them. The manufacturer know how to properly design an electronic circuit in order to provide a long life, but it also it knows how to design it to fail within a short term under certain conditions, No they dont on that silly claim about surviving the warranty fine, but failing immediately after that expires. and accordingly they estimate a warranty just long enough to cover the product for a safe term, a safe term for the manufacturer, not the user. Have fun explaining how come not a single electronic device I have ever owned has died just after the warranty has run out. And that includes my latest gigantic widescreen TV too. Of course itīs impossible to predict exactly how many years the TV will last, but the manufacturer count with statistical data which says, for instance, that a TV set is turned on 10 hours per day for instance, and taking that into account, and estimating how long the weakest part of the TV will last under these conditions, they can determine the warranty lapse. Pity about the TVs that get left on all the time. The claim is completely fanciful and those making that sort of claim have obviously never actually designed a damned thing. And only the stupidest manufacturer would deliberatly design their product to die as soon as the warranty has expired anyway, because the bulk of those who had bought such a dud wouldnt be buying another from that manufacturer. They also do product reliability testing to see how long on average it is before a product fails. No they dont with domestic appliances. They dont even do that with mass market hard drives anymore. Yes they do. No they dont. They quote the useful lifetime of a hardrive in MTBF hours. That is calculated, not measured. Convert that MTBF to years and you will discover why they cant possibility have tested them to get those numbers. Donīt answer "itīs impossible" if you are not prepared to give a real explanation. Samsung, Seagate, WD... any decent hard drive manufactures gives an estimate lifetime of their products. These estimates are provided in the datasheet of each harddrive. And they are ESTIMATES, not measured results. Exactly, these are estimates, Pity the claim was about TESTING, which doesnt happen, like I said. and most of the time very accurate, Like hell it is. Have you actually tried converting the MTBF of a current hard drive to years ? The average quality EIDE drive has a published MTBF of 400,000 hours. That wouild be 45 years on my computer. Yep, that's what I meant. I've had LOTS that never made 3 years. You arent cooling them properly. BS. They have NEVER gone over 40 degrees C. They live year round between 65 and 72 degrees F (talking about my own systems) Then there is some other problem with the system they are used in, most likely the power supply. They start losing sectors after about a year, and reach the undependable stage after 2 or three. Have fun explaining how come others dont get that effect with those drives. Some last 2 years, and some are still going after 7. I've even got a Fujitsu MPG still running, and doing just fine (that's one out of well over 100 I put into service) If they test 1000 drives for 400 hours and get one failure, they have their MTBF of 400,000 hours - 1 failure in 400,000 hours of running. Nope, it aint measured like that. They will actually do a larger test sample over a larger time span Likely 2500 for 500 hours. No they dont with mass market commodity drives. Give it up. No thanks. That isnt done with mass market commodity drives. That gives them 125,000,000 running hours and if they have 3.125 failures they have a 400,000 hour MTBF.- They dont determine the MTBF like that either. but that's how the numbers are arrived at if they are not just using statistical analysis methods.(predictive failure). Today's hard drives with S.M.A.R.T. technology can predict their failure date quite accurately. (using third party software). Nope, they cant even consider the majority of drives that fail with no prior indication of failure. Other than bearing failure (which CAN cause S.M.A.R.T. to find anomolies) and drive electronics failures,(which generally do not, as they fail "hard") they can and DO predict failure before any "prior indication of failure" Pity about the drive electronics failure which doesnt and which is now the most significant drive failure mode as long as the drive isnt abused temperature wise or power. I just pulled 2 drives from service because they predicted their own death in less than 60 days. Bet they wouldnt have failed in that time. My time to restore the sytem is worth more than the replacement drive, so I replace when it says there is a problem. Tried stretching a laptop drive that said there was a problem developing and had to replace it and do a complete restore less than 2 weeks later. Plenty have found that steaming turd got the prediction completely wrong and it was obvious why it was getting it wrong from the raw smart data too. AND the smart data isnt necessarily an indication of an imminent drive failure anyway, it can be due to factors outside the drive itself. That steaming turd gets it wrong much more often than it gets it right. One was made on the 123rd day of 2003 (seagate), the other the last day of January 2004 (wd). Being a WD Caviar retail drive it has a 1 year warranty. If it was a "distribution" drive, it would have a 3 year warranty. Might have lasted 2 years - but I don't take a chance on my data. Anyone with a clue has proper backups. Yup - have backups of all the data. So your Might have lasted 2 years - but I don't take a chance on my data. is completely silly. Still have to re-install all the OS and programs, along with the myriad updates and patches. No you dont if you do backups properly. Also, when is the last time you actually TESTED your backup? I do it all the time, essentially because I use image backups quite a bit when deciding if there's a hardware problem of just an OS level problem, image the system, do a clean install, see if the problem goes away, if it doesnt, restore the image and look more closely at the hardware to work out where the problem is. I also routinely image a system before upgrading and do occassionally need to image the new install, restore the original image, to check some config detail etc that I want to reapply to the new clean install etc. I test mine, but the majority have "blind faith" untill the time comes that they NEED to restore. Restoration of the drive can also take the better part of a day of downtime, Only if your backup scheme is completely ****ed. while preventative replacement can take as little as a couple hours in off-time. You'd be better or working out why you get such lousy drive reliability. The Seagate has a 1 year warranty, and was in a computer that only runs a few hours a week - and lasted less than 3 years. I used to work for the (then) largest hard drive distributor in Canada. But didnt manage to work out how the MTBF is determined. specially those concerning the maximum number of startups/stops the drive can tolerate before the heads get completely worn. Wrong again. Its such a round number it cant have been produced by TESTING, and the number of starts and stops dont produce any wear of the heads with modern hard drives anyway. I donīt want to imply that all manufacturers are dishonest per se, but I can easily see how a given manufacturer can produce different items, with differents level of quality of design and manufacture. And these differences *will* impact the useful lifetime of the final product. Separate matter entirely to the claim that they do reliability TESTING with domestic appliances. They dont, and dont with mass market hard drives either to produce the MTBF or the number of start stop cycles either. |
#243
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On 16 Jan 2007 10:32:53 -0800, Too_Many_Tools wrote:
I am surprised that others have not responded to Ig's idea...it is an excellent one. It is also pretty cheap entertainment, since you take that stuff from trash and later throw away just the same (and sometimes keep some parts like screws, though usually screws are worthless on consumer items) Like an archaeologist, one can study the decline and fall of manufacturing by studying discarded goods. yep. It is very apparent when one does this as to how many goods have turned from good implementations to crap. The end result forces the consumer to spend more money on goods that would not need to be purchased. The economic accolades about virtues of competition do not impress me too much. I have economic education myself that is actually half decent (MBA degree from University of Chicago), and hopefully understand a thing or two about competition. Despite that background, I generally share TMT's senstiment about "MBA"s, broadly understood as people interested in making a quick buck and a quick career. Competition is about satisfying what consumers value and care about. Since consumers' preferences are not always in line with their long term interests -- a situation intentionally created by poor education and sophisticated advertising -- their satisfaction centers around styling and cheap initial cost. This is less so with commercial and especially industrial items, though, again, not always. If you do not believe me, take a few things apart and see how they are made. An objection is made that quality comes at a cost. That is, obviously, true, but only to some extent. Some design decisions save very little to the manufacturer (pennies) and result in a large loss to consumers (unusable goods). Example, we had a cheap electric kettle. Because the manufacturer saved perhaps a penny on thickness of plastic, the lid broke at the hinge. Just a mm or two of extra plastic would make it more usable. If it cost a dollar more, if would be a long term usable kettle. This is a result of two things, big chains putting extreme pressure on manufacturers to make cheap substandard stuff (google "Wal-Mart buyers"), and manufacturers' willingness to go along. I try to not buy anything from Wal-mart and other ...marts anymore besides soap and toilet paper etc, because of all this. i |
#245
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
clare at snyder.on.ca wrote
Rod Speed wrote Too_Many_Tools wrote Most companies data isn't worth anything after only a handful of years. Engineering data is the heart of a business. Not data thats a handful of years old. Management often forgets that. Then a competitor eats them alive. Bet you cant list any examples of that with data thats older than a handful of years old. I sure can. Nope, you couldnt. I milwright designs a feed mill. Back in 1966. He rebuilds that mill in 1981. He builds 5 more mills between those dates, and onother 12 since. His office burns down and he loses all his engineering drawings. You cant use a single design over all that time. or the drawings get soaked when a pipe breaks. How much were those engineering drawings from 1965 worth today? Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fantasy. You cant use a single fixed design over all that time. Another firm with current engineering drawings will eat him alive when a new mill is up for tender. That's why he invests in a large format scanner and enters ALL the old drawings into cad, at very high cost, and keeps 2 offsite backups. Or take a land surveyor's office. ALL the surveys done in the past 35+ years are kept onsite, and many are referred to daily to tie in new surveys etc. What would it cost to regenerate even a small fraction of those survey plans? What is their current value??? Significantly higher than the original cost to produce the survey. Adequately covered by his original MOST. Anthony Matonak wrote: John Husvar wrote: "Too_Many_Tools" wrote: Archival storage of data is a BIG deal that the industry doesn't like to talk about. Most companies data isn't worth anything after only a handful of years. Well, I suppose one could print and store all all the data records on acid-free paper and then physically go find the ones they wanted. Shouldn't take more than a medium-sized army of clerks and only a small hollowed mountain range for the storage. The absolute best storage is microfilm or some variant of it. You're pretty much assured that no matter what happens with technology that you'll still be able to read it, even decades later. You can buy computer microfilm printers. Direct print to microfilm, no developing required. Anthony |
#246
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Too_Many_Tools wrote:
There's been various attempts over the years at marketing easily upgradeable computers, but invariably by the time you were ready to upgrade, the cost of a new CPU module was a sizable portion of the cost of a whole new PC, as well as the rest of the major components were showing their age. The upgrade of electronics would not be a significant cost if the true cost of a computer was borne by the company and not the public. Fantasy. And the cost is ALWAYS borne by the public, regardless of how the company may be slugged by hare brained penalty schemes anyway. We keep hearing how the economy of electronics lowers the cost of a product but one of the greatest costs to society is the cost of production, distribution and disposal of electronic items. They are a tiny part of the total production distribution and disposal costs of everything else. Even just food alone leaves it for dead. It occurs because it is allowed to occur. It occurs because there is no practical alternative with an industry as fast moving as electronics. James Sweet wrote: And I want to add something about "planned obsolescence" because it is often misused. If people are choosing to buy cheap, it's hardly that the manufacturers are making things so they will break. The consumer often wants that cheaper tv set or VCR. Rather than planned obsolescence, it's normally more a case of how many cost reducing corners can they cut and still have it last "long enough". It's hard to blame the manufactures, they're supplying what the average consumer is demanding. If my computer from 1979 had been intended to last forever, it would have been way out of range in terms of price. Because they'd have to anticipate how much things would change, and build in enough so upgrading would be doable. So you'd spend money on potential, rather than spending money later on a new computer that would beat out what they could imagine in 1979. And in recent years, it is the consumer who is deciding to buy a new computer every few years (whether a deliberate decision or they simply let the manufacturer lead, must vary from person to person.) There's been various attempts over the years at marketing easily upgradeable computers, but invariably by the time you were ready to upgrade, the cost of a new CPU module was a sizable portion of the cost of a whole new PC, as well as the rest of the major components were showing their age. |
#247
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote:
TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. How odd that I have never found a single example of that. And I repair most things when its feasible. |
#248
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Everett M. Greene wrote
Rod Speed writes Everett M. Greene wrote Rod Speed writes terry wrote Although recent discussion/discovery that IPods will exhaust their batteries in approximately one to two years do clearly raise the question? "Designed to fail?". Doesnt explain stuff like cordless phones that use standard batterys. What explains the electric toothbrushes that don't have replaceable batteries? Its harder to design something as compact as that with standard replaceable batterys. What's smaller and more compact than present-day cell phones? ipods, USB keys, ear buds, etc etc etc. ipods too. You have to toss a $60-$120 device just because a $5 battery has failed. Indeed. |
#249
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Too_Many_Tools wrote:
I am surprised that others have not responded to Ig's idea...it is an excellent one. Nope, a complete dud. All I have ever found is examples of bad design. Like an archaeologist, one can study the decline and fall of manufacturing by studying discarded goods. There is no 'decline and fall' there has in fact been a tremendous SURGE in manufacturing instead. It is very apparent when one does this as to how many goods have turned from good implementations to crap. Mindlessly silly if you actually analyse the reliability of even the most trivial stuff like moulded power cords and plug packs. The end result forces the consumer to spend more money on goods that would not need to be purchased. You can keep repeating that mindless line till you are blue in the face if you like, changes nothing. And it is intentional. The only intention is to produce cheap product in very high volume and that inevitably sees some crap product aimed at those who concentrate on JUST the price when buying stuff. Even you cant seriously believe that the lousy reliability of US cars compared with the best of the Jap imports is due to deliberately designing the cars to fail early. Or maybe you actually are that silly. Ignoramus16071 wrote: TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. i |
#250
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
It occurs because it is allowed to occur. It occurs because there is no practical alternative with an industry as fast moving as electronics. LOL...you mean an industry that has so far been able to dump long term costs on the public. When you see electronics being dumped in Africa to avoid the cost of disposal, I think we are seeing the responsibility coming home to roost soon. And when the cost of disposal is finally taken into account, the true cost of electronics will be adjusted for that disposal. It can't come soon enough.... TMT Rod Speed wrote: Too_Many_Tools wrote: There's been various attempts over the years at marketing easily upgradeable computers, but invariably by the time you were ready to upgrade, the cost of a new CPU module was a sizable portion of the cost of a whole new PC, as well as the rest of the major components were showing their age. The upgrade of electronics would not be a significant cost if the true cost of a computer was borne by the company and not the public. Fantasy. And the cost is ALWAYS borne by the public, regardless of how the company may be slugged by hare brained penalty schemes anyway. We keep hearing how the economy of electronics lowers the cost of a product but one of the greatest costs to society is the cost of production, distribution and disposal of electronic items. They are a tiny part of the total production distribution and disposal costs of everything else. Even just food alone leaves it for dead. It occurs because it is allowed to occur. It occurs because there is no practical alternative with an industry as fast moving as electronics. James Sweet wrote: And I want to add something about "planned obsolescence" because it is often misused. If people are choosing to buy cheap, it's hardly that the manufacturers are making things so they will break. The consumer often wants that cheaper tv set or VCR. Rather than planned obsolescence, it's normally more a case of how many cost reducing corners can they cut and still have it last "long enough". It's hard to blame the manufactures, they're supplying what the average consumer is demanding. If my computer from 1979 had been intended to last forever, it would have been way out of range in terms of price. Because they'd have to anticipate how much things would change, and build in enough so upgrading would be doable. So you'd spend money on potential, rather than spending money later on a new computer that would beat out what they could imagine in 1979. And in recent years, it is the consumer who is deciding to buy a new computer every few years (whether a deliberate decision or they simply let the manufacturer lead, must vary from person to person.) There's been various attempts over the years at marketing easily upgradeable computers, but invariably by the time you were ready to upgrade, the cost of a new CPU module was a sizable portion of the cost of a whole new PC, as well as the rest of the major components were showing their age. |
#251
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Too_Many_Tools wrote
It occurs because it is allowed to occur. It occurs because there is no practical alternative with an industry as fast moving as electronics. LOL...you mean an industry that has so far been able to dump long term costs on the public. There is no practical alternative, like I said. The public certainly isnt going to wear 'environmental' fools proclaiming that they cant have modern electronic devices because of some purported long term costs. And what long term costs there are are completely trivial compared with the long term costs of the food industry alone, let alone the car industry, etc etc etc anyway. When you see electronics being dumped in Africa to avoid the cost of disposal, I think we are seeing the responsibility coming home to roost soon. Nope, all you are actually seeing is the inevitable result of terminally silly 'environmental' legislation. And when the cost of disposal is finally taken into account, the true cost of electronics will be adjusted for that disposal. Just utterly silly pointless paper shuffling. It can't come soon enough.... Taint gunna happen, you watch. Its only the europeans that are actually stupid enough to even attempt something like that. And even they arent actually stupid enough to do much in that area anyway. Because even the stupidest politician realises what the electoral consequences of that would inevitably be. They'd be out on their arses so fast their feet wouldnt even touch the ground. Rod Speed wrote: Too_Many_Tools wrote: There's been various attempts over the years at marketing easily upgradeable computers, but invariably by the time you were ready to upgrade, the cost of a new CPU module was a sizable portion of the cost of a whole new PC, as well as the rest of the major components were showing their age. The upgrade of electronics would not be a significant cost if the true cost of a computer was borne by the company and not the public. Fantasy. And the cost is ALWAYS borne by the public, regardless of how the company may be slugged by hare brained penalty schemes anyway. We keep hearing how the economy of electronics lowers the cost of a product but one of the greatest costs to society is the cost of production, distribution and disposal of electronic items. They are a tiny part of the total production distribution and disposal costs of everything else. Even just food alone leaves it for dead. It occurs because it is allowed to occur. It occurs because there is no practical alternative with an industry as fast moving as electronics. James Sweet wrote: And I want to add something about "planned obsolescence" because it is often misused. If people are choosing to buy cheap, it's hardly that the manufacturers are making things so they will break. The consumer often wants that cheaper tv set or VCR. Rather than planned obsolescence, it's normally more a case of how many cost reducing corners can they cut and still have it last "long enough". It's hard to blame the manufactures, they're supplying what the average consumer is demanding. If my computer from 1979 had been intended to last forever, it would have been way out of range in terms of price. Because they'd have to anticipate how much things would change, and build in enough so upgrading would be doable. So you'd spend money on potential, rather than spending money later on a new computer that would beat out what they could imagine in 1979. And in recent years, it is the consumer who is deciding to buy a new computer every few years (whether a deliberate decision or they simply let the manufacturer lead, must vary from person to person.) There's been various attempts over the years at marketing easily upgradeable computers, but invariably by the time you were ready to upgrade, the cost of a new CPU module was a sizable portion of the cost of a whole new PC, as well as the rest of the major components were showing their age. |
#252
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 12:12:19 -0500, clare at snyder.on.ca wrote:
On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:16:05 +1100, "Rod Speed" wrote: How many people who owned Chevy Vegas bought a second one? THOUSANDS. Bugger all that had one blow up their face. How about under their ass? You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Before I stasrted innthe computer business I had 25 years under my belt in the automotive service industry. Ten of those years as a service manager. I was in the industry when the Vega was produced and sold. I saw them fail. I saw the owners buying new vegas. I saw them buying no Chevies after the vega was no longer made. They bought Chevy Cavaliers ten and 15 years later. They bought new ones when the head gaskets blew and the heads cracked. Man, it takes a lot of bad Ju-Ju to get a died in the wool Chevy man to switch brand loyalty!!!!!! There's Chevy men and then there's Chevy men. People who were ignorant enough to buy Vegas didn't know squat about cars. I personally knew one victim. They are now most likely Toyota and Honda men, which is good for them. Some Vega "facts:" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Vega Keep in mind that *all* cars of that era were junk compared to most of today's offerings. Toyotas, Datsuns and Hondas were also junk. The only solid plus-100k engines were 350's and GM and Chryco straight sixes, and the 350's heads weren't the best. I'll add the 318 as a good one but I never had one. Besides, the cars usually rusted out before the engine could test the 100k range. You can still find junk in recent American car offerings. Can't point them out as I'm not in the market now. But I've heard mentions. Since I'm reading this in the "frugal" group I'll note that as a value proposition (cost vs use) I recognize Chevy as Champion, but others may see from a different perspective. I do know how to buy cars, and have my own discriminations. BTW, I only buy used cars which have a model/engine record. I "pay" for that in my own way, which is where " Planned Obsolescence" or MTBF may be relevant. For instance, I plan to replace my Delco Chevy alternator long before a Nippo/Denso would fail. Same with the GM water pump versus Jap. This can be done very cheaply, whether I turn the wrench or hire it, but you have know "stuff" about cars, wrenches and hiring. Understandably, most people find it best for them to just get a Toyota/Honda and pay a higher cost for less maintenance. Too bad for the American car companies they kenned to that too late. But I have confidence that current Chevys will serve me well when it's time to buy them. This is all outside of "handling" and "driving the twisties" issues, which I have no interest in since the roads are easy wherever I drive and I am a mundane driver with no need for speed or compulsions to spastically jerk the steering wheel. Now there ARE lots of people who will buy anything - don't mater who made it - but in North America there are Ford people who will never own anything BUT a Ford. There are Chevy people who would never buy a Pontiac or a Buick. Make any sense? Nope. You're right if the person is a "brand loyalist." And you're right there are plenty of them still around, But it makes perfect sense if they specialize in the marque with open eyes and the marque provides models that suit their needs. In terms of cost/reliabilty knowing a brand intimately makes used car selection pretty easy on those terms. Even people who quit buying Chrysler products when they could no longer buy a Plymouth. Buy a Dodge? Not on your life.Old habits die hard - particularly with old guys and cars. Yep. Strange. Sometimes these guys seem to value their "relationship" with the dealer service department. They're "good guys" and "take care of me." "Excellent coffee." Go figure. I think the Chryco fans are the worst, then maybe the Caddy guys. It could be argued that Chevy never had the same kind of fanaticism. Since it's the "low-end" marque and sold more cars, it just exposed more people to its "charms ". Nobody much brags about Chevy except in terms like "hey, my Chevy goes where your Lexus goes at 5% of the cost." And how many who bought Vega bought another Chevy? Thousands and thousands and tens of thousands. A larger amount by far never bought a Chevy again. I'd guess that most people (Honda-heads and Toyota-Hindus being notable exceptions) aren't "brand loyalists." Most of those who brag that what they have is the "best brand" will turn on a dime, then brag about the new brand. And many just like the looks of their car and care about little else unless or until it proves a lemon. --Vic |
#253
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote:
TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. i Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? |
#254
Posted to misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Rod Speed wrote: clare at snyder.on.ca wrote Rod Speed wrote Too_Many_Tools wrote Most companies data isn't worth anything after only a handful of years. Engineering data is the heart of a business. Not data thats a handful of years old. Management often forgets that. Then a competitor eats them alive. Bet you cant list any examples of that with data thats older than a handful of years old. I sure can. Nope, you couldnt. I'm sure he could, and I can add a few more, both of own and from other references as well-- From own experience, it's a regulatory requirement of NRC to keep _all_ safety-related design documentation and calculations for 40 years of "life of the plant". That's simply one instance of on need for longterm records-keeping. There's a whole industry dedicated to preserving data for companies from finanical to manufacturing and everything in between. It's a major use of the excavated areas of the salt mines in central KS as they're fantastically dry, constant temperature, fire and vermin-free and of humongous size. For a couple of stories you might check out Jack Ganssle's columns that he writes for Embedded System magazine -- a mostly unheard of by very important niche of the microprocessor world. In fact, there are far more processors used in such applications than in PCs though they don't have the glamour of the "lastest and fastest" whatever of the day... http://www.embedded.com/columns/bp/s...cleID=22103292 Jack also distributes a monthly newsletter that has had as one of its subjects recently reconstructing "legacy" systems. I myself have had requests for modifications of some systems I had previously worked on that I would have thought long since "dead and buried" having moved on to other projects and even other companies, but was tracked down as the only individual they could find that had any recollection of the actual system. Another reader of Jack's newsletter sent an interesting tale of his experience -- .... "I was brought in as a consultant for one of the downstream users of an early video-on-demand companies, who supplied complete systems and programming to hotels and hospitals, even providing a broadband network infrastructure for free to sell their services. "There was a need to add new educational programming services for a client market, or be displaced by a competitor. "The company had not built their code from scratch in more than 10 years. In fact, they had decided to move to cross compilation rather than self hosting for a while, had bought a commuter and new tools, never tried the tools, and had subsequently sold the cross host machine for scrap. "Our first task was to put together a development environment hosted on a "dead" OS, including compilers, linkers, and build control files, gather known source, and attempt to rebuild the shipping object from known source. "This took several months, and was a real adventure. A year and a half down the road, job complete, ..." He goes on to describe the system and other technical details probably of little if any interest here, but needless to say, that little misadventure of not preserving nor updating their ability to rebuild their product's software undoubtedly cost that company a pretty penny and without that effort likely could indeed have put them out of at least that particular business. Undoubtedly, these few instances given here are far from the only occurrences of such in industry. And, for every one that did manage to recover, how many were there who were unable to? |
#255
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Your thoughts?
I recall the 1960's: - TVs going out until a repairman with a bunch of tubes showed up. - Automobiles needing constant maintenance. (Why was there a "Service Station" on every corner? Hint: Cars needed *constant* service.) - 20,000 miles on bias-ply tires was more than you could expect. Lately, having gone over 80k miles on tires, and no service in 150k miles, it's true: "They Don't Build Them Like They Used To -- Thank God!" ;-) -- Mark |
#256
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:41:59 GMT, James Sweet wrote:
Ignoramus16071 wrote: TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. i Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. If anyone has suggestions for a really good three section leather wallet, I will appreciate. i |
#257
Posted to alt.home.repair
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
David Starr wrote:
.... 1st hard drive - 80mb, $800.00 current HD - 350mb, $120.00 1st hard drive - 10mb, $10,00 (probably closer to $20k in today's $$$) |
#258
Posted to misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
dpb wrote
Rod Speed wrote clare at snyder.on.ca wrote Rod Speed wrote Too_Many_Tools wrote Most companies data isn't worth anything after only a handful of years. Engineering data is the heart of a business. Not data thats a handful of years old. Management often forgets that. Then a competitor eats them alive. Bet you cant list any examples of that with data thats older than a handful of years old. I sure can. Nope, you couldnt. I'm sure he could, Unlikely given that he clearly didnt. and I can add a few more, both of own and from other references as well-- Adequately covered by the original MOST. From own experience, it's a regulatory requirement of NRC to keep _all_ safety-related design documentation and calculations for 40 years of "life of the plant". That's simply one instance of on need for longterm records-keeping. Different matter entirely to the original point. WORTH isnt the same thing as a legal REQUIREMENT. There's a whole industry dedicated to preserving data for companies from finanical to manufacturing and everything in between. It's a major use of the excavated areas of the salt mines in central KS as they're fantastically dry, constant temperature, fire and vermin-free and of humongous size. Irrelevant to whether that data is engineering data that is WORTH much. Of course there is plenty of data that needs to be kept long term, most obviously with birth marraige and death records etc etc etc. For a couple of stories you might check out Jack Ganssle's columns that he writes for Embedded System magazine -- a mostly unheard of by very important niche of the microprocessor world. In fact, there are far more processors used in such applications than in PCs though they don't have the glamour of the "lastest and fastest" whatever of the day... http://www.embedded.com/columns/bp/s...cleID=22103292 Adequately covered by the original MOST qualification. Jack also distributes a monthly newsletter that has had as one of its subjects recently reconstructing "legacy" systems. I myself have had requests for modifications of some systems I had previously worked on that I would have thought long since "dead and buried" having moved on to other projects and even other companies, but was tracked down as the only individual they could find that had any recollection of the actual system. Adequately covered by the original MOST qualification. Another reader of Jack's newsletter sent an interesting tale of his experience -- "I was brought in as a consultant for one of the downstream users of an early video-on-demand companies, who supplied complete systems and programming to hotels and hospitals, even providing a broadband network infrastructure for free to sell their services. "There was a need to add new educational programming services for a client market, or be displaced by a competitor. "The company had not built their code from scratch in more than 10 years. In fact, they had decided to move to cross compilation rather than self hosting for a while, had bought a commuter and new tools, never tried the tools, and had subsequently sold the cross host machine for scrap. "Our first task was to put together a development environment hosted on a "dead" OS, including compilers, linkers, and build control files, gather known source, and attempt to rebuild the shipping object from known source. "This took several months, and was a real adventure. A year and a half down the road, job complete, ..." He goes on to describe the system and other technical details probably of little if any interest here, but needless to say, that little misadventure of not preserving nor updating their ability to rebuild their product's software undoubtedly cost that company a pretty penny and without that effort likely could indeed have put them out of at least that particular business. Adequately covered by the original MOST qualification. Undoubtedly, these few instances given here are far from the only occurrences of such in industry. And, for every one that did manage to recover, how many were there who were unable to? Adequately covered by the original MOST qualification. |
#259
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Too_Many_Tools wrote: .... The upgrade of electronics would not be a significant cost if the true cost of a computer was borne by the company and not the public. You said somewhere else you had an education in economics, but it certainly doesn't seem to show. Even if you could somehow come up with this mystical "true cost of a computer" to tax the manufacturer for, where but from the eventual customer would "the company" have to generate this revenue? And, having done so, what else could happen but to raise the cost to "the public"? Of course, the employer pays that 6.25% FICA tax, too. |
#260
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote:
On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:41:59 GMT, James Sweet wrote: Ignoramus16071 wrote: TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. i Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. Both of those are just lousy design, not planned obsolescence or designed deliberately to fail. If anyone has suggestions for a really good three section leather wallet, I will appreciate. |
#261
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Mark Jerde wrote:
I recall the 1960's: - TVs going out until a repairman with a bunch of tubes showed up. - Automobiles needing constant maintenance. No they didnt. (Why was there a "Service Station" on every corner? Hint: Cars needed *constant* service.) And you dont need one on every corner even if they did. Even you should have noticed that they did manage to get further than the next corner the vast bulk of the time. - 20,000 miles on bias-ply tires was more than you could expect. And that is a lot more than to the next corner. Lately, having gone over 80k miles on tires, and no service in 150k miles, it's true: "They Don't Build Them Like They Used To -- Thank God!" ;-) |
#262
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:57:15 +1100, Rod Speed wrote:
Ignoramus16071 wrote: On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:41:59 GMT, James Sweet wrote: Ignoramus16071 wrote: TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. i Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. Both of those are just lousy design, not planned obsolescence or designed deliberately to fail. If it is obvious, to a layman, by looking, that it will fail, then it was designed to fail. How can you say that that design was not deliberate? i If anyone has suggestions for a really good three section leather wallet, I will appreciate. |
#263
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote
Rod Speed wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote James Sweet wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Nope. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. Nope, just bad design. Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. Both of those are just lousy design, not planned obsolescence or designed deliberately to fail. If it is obvious, to a layman, by looking, that it will fail, then it was designed to fail. Wrong, most obviousy with the card pockets that the cards wont fit into. Anyone with a clue would return a wallet like that, so there is absolutely no point in designing it like that deliberately. How can you say that that design was not deliberate? Because it clearly wasnt. Novel concept I realise. |
#264
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
... Mark Jerde wrote: I recall the 1960's: - TVs going out until a repairman with a bunch of tubes showed up. - Automobiles needing constant maintenance. No they didnt. Rod -- Please realize newsgroup messages about "The Good Old Days" (we weren't good, we weren't old, and we're talking about the nights -- (someone)) have certain artistic license. ;-) Of course most vehicles could make it more than from one corner to the next. But there is also no denying the fact I froze my buns & fingertips off many a South Dakota winter evening working on "Timing" and "Points" and "Condenser" in the 1970s. (Why was there a "Service Station" on every corner? Hint: Cars needed *constant* service.) And you dont need one on every corner even if they did. Even you should have noticed that they did manage to get further than the next corner the vast bulk of the time. Sigh Of course I was exaggerating. These are newsgroups. ;-) But the essense of my post is true. My dad's cars (when I was a kid) needed *constant* servicing compared to mine (as a grown up). - 20,000 miles on bias-ply tires was more than you could expect. And that is a lot more than to the next corner. Maybe knot -- ;-) -- I know people that live more than 6 miles from their next door neighbor. "They Don't Build Them Like They Used To -- Thank God!" ;-) I stand by this. I have three TVs in my house and their _combined_ _cost_ is less than IMO an inflation-adusted *repair* of a 1960's B&W console TV. I recall $600.00 CD players, and it wasn't that long ago. I also know modern portable CD players: one chip and a bunch of membrane switches. If/when something goes wrong, toss the $35 player & get a new one. You can't repair a single-chip device. -- Mark |
#265
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:24:22 +1100, Rod Speed wrote:
Ignoramus16071 wrote Rod Speed wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote James Sweet wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Nope. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. Nope, just bad design. Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. Both of those are just lousy design, not planned obsolescence or designed deliberately to fail. If it is obvious, to a layman, by looking, that it will fail, then it was designed to fail. Wrong, most obviousy with the card pockets that the cards wont fit into. Anyone with a clue would return a wallet like that, so there is absolutely no point in designing it like that deliberately. Except that I have it as a gift without a receipt. How can you say that that design was not deliberate? Because it clearly wasnt. Novel concept I realise. Yeah, very novel concept of people making stuff that cannot possibly perform as advertised, but claiming that it "was not deliberate". |
#266
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Rod Speed ha escrito: B Electronic CRT chassis are so flimsy that if you take the chassis out the plastic wont support the CRT. Doesnt need to, the CRT is the guts of the system everything is attached to. .....You haven't repaired many of the later CRT sets then have you? So progress is both good and bad. Not much bad with electronics. Rubbish. Take a look at a repair shop dealing with any mass produced, mid- to low- priced electronic item (which seem to make up the bulk of sales) and you'll typically see : electrolytics failed in TVs and set top boxes/decoders due to proximity to heat, (or just poor or poorly rated components), transistors failing due to skimping on metal heat sinks, vcrs with plastic parts breaking, mobile phones and mp3 players with defective jacks and buttons etc etc. What we have are many more features than before. and at cheaper price, and often in smaller machines so there is progress in that sense, but build quality and longevity are WELL down, coincidentally along with parts support and repairability, which means more failure, more landfill material. As I mentioned earlier , I don't think it is planned obsolescence, just a desire for increased sales and profits (which any business aspires to) and a lack of regard for the environment, playing on the ignorance of consumers about the REAL cost of all this replace not repair mentality. -B. |
#267
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
b wrote
Rod Speed wrote Electronic CRT chassis are so flimsy that if you take the chassis out the plastic wont support the CRT. Doesnt need to, the CRT is the guts of the system everything is attached to. ....You haven't repaired many of the later CRT sets then have you? Guess who has just got egg all over its face, as always ? So progress is both good and bad. Not much bad with electronics. Rubbish. Nope. Take a look at a repair shop dealing with any mass produced, mid- to low- priced electronic item (which seem to make up the bulk of sales) and you'll typically see : electrolytics failed in TVs Nothing to do with what was being discussed, PROGRESS. Failed electros have been around ever since they were invented. and set top boxes/decoders due to proximity to heat, (or just poor or poorly rated components), **** all of those fail. No point in looking in repair shops, they only see the failures. What matters is the percentage of failures. And that is very low. PCs in spades. transistors failing due to skimping on metal heat sinks, You dont see much of that either. vcrs with plastic parts breaking, They always did. mobile phones and mp3 players with defective jacks and buttons etc etc. **** all of those too. What we have are many more features than before. and at cheaper price, and often in smaller machines so there is progress in that sense, but build quality and longevity are WELL down, Bull****. coincidentally along with parts support Because they dont fail much anymore. and repairability, Because they dont fail much anymore. which means more failure, No it doesnt. The lack of repairability often means increased reliability most obviously with sealed plugpacks and moulded power cords. more landfill material. Thats mostly due to changed tastes like with CRT monitors that work fine being replaced with LCDs etc. As I mentioned earlier , I don't think it is planned obsolescence, just a desire for increased sales and profits Its actually a desire for competitive pricing which does sometimes see the designer getting too carried away doing that. (which any business aspires to) and a lack of regard for the environment, The environment is completely irrelevant. Discarded electronic devices are a trivial part of the total waste and manufacturing stream and the environmental downsides are back in china with the manufacturing anyway. playing on the ignorance of consumers about the REAL cost of all this replace not repair mentality. There is no 'playing on', its the consumers who have decided that with new stuff so cheap, it makes absolutely no sense whatever to pay an expensive first world tech to repair something like a VCR when a new one would cost less and have a full warranty. |
#268
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote
Rod Speed wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote Rod Speed wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote James Sweet wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Nope. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. Nope, just bad design. Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. Both of those are just lousy design, not planned obsolescence or designed deliberately to fail. If it is obvious, to a layman, by looking, that it will fail, then it was designed to fail. Wrong, most obviousy with the card pockets that the cards wont fit into. Anyone with a clue would return a wallet like that, so there is absolutely no point in designing it like that deliberately. Except that I have it as a gift without a receipt. Irrelevant to the vast bulk of their sales. How can you say that that design was not deliberate? Because it clearly wasnt. Novel concept I realise. Yeah, very novel concept of people making stuff that cannot possibly perform as advertised, but claiming that it "was not deliberate". No one is going to design a wallet deliberately with card pockets that wont take cards. Thats always going to be a design ****up or manufacturing ****up. The only thing you did manage to get right was your nick. |
#269
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Mark Jerde wrote
Rod Speed wrote Mark Jerde wrote I recall the 1960's: - TVs going out until a repairman with a bunch of tubes showed up. - Automobiles needing constant maintenance. No they didnt. Rod -- Please realize newsgroup messages about "The Good Old Days" (we weren't good, we weren't old, and we're talking about the nights -- (someone)) have certain artistic license. ;-) Pathetic, really. Of course most vehicles could make it more than from one corner to the next. But there is also no denying the fact I froze my buns & fingertips off many a South Dakota winter evening working on "Timing" and "Points" and "Condenser" in the 1970s. Irrelevant to the silly claim about why there was a service station on every corner. And I didnt spend much time on my points and timing in the 60s. Condensers in spades. (Why was there a "Service Station" on every corner? Hint: Cars needed *constant* service.) And you dont need one on every corner even if they did. Even you should have noticed that they did manage to get further than the next corner the vast bulk of the time. Sigh Of course I was exaggerating. These are newsgroups. ;-) But the essense of my post is true. Nope, there was one on every corner and often more than one on many corners, for a completely different reason. Nothing to do with the servicing at all. My dad's cars (when I was a kid) needed *constant* servicing compared to mine (as a grown up). Nothing like constant and I was grown up in the 60s too. Yes, modern cars need a lot less routine maintenance, but its silly to claim that those in the 60s needed CONSTANT maintenance. - 20,000 miles on bias-ply tires was more than you could expect. And that is a lot more than to the next corner. Maybe knot -- ;-) -- I know people that live more than 6 miles from their next door neighbor. Irrelevant to the silly claim about corners. "They Don't Build Them Like They Used To -- Thank God!" ;-) I stand by this. Sure, and I didnt even comment on that bit, just the other silly stuff. I have three TVs in my house and their _combined_ _cost_ is less than IMO an inflation-adusted *repair* of a 1960's B&W console TV. And need a lot less maintenance too, like none. I recall $600.00 CD players, and it wasn't that long ago. I also know modern portable CD players: one chip and a bunch of membrane switches. If/when something goes wrong, toss the $35 player & get a new one. You can't repair a single-chip device. Depends on what broke. Whether there is any point in bothering is another matter entirely. |
#270
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote:
On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:41:59 GMT, James Sweet wrote: Ignoramus16071 wrote: TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. i Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. If anyone has suggestions for a really good three section leather wallet, I will appreciate. i There's the key, an extra few cents. 2 cents times 2 million kettles and you're talking 40 grand, that's not minuscule, even for a big company. 10 cents is even more significant, when you're manufacturing millions of things, pennies *do* matter. You can get something that cost an extra 10 cents to make, but it will cost you an extra 10 bucks to buy and the average consumer not knowing the difference will buy the cheaper one. It's all about offering the lowest price and making the most profit per sale, they don't intentionally try to make it break, they just don't care if it does so long as it lasts through the warranty. |
#271
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking,misc.consumers.frugal-living,sci.electronics.repair,alt.home.repair,misc.consumers.house
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
clare ha escrito: On 15 Jan 2007 19:53:30 -0800, "lsmartino" wrote: A lithium cell WILL produce 3V regardless of itīs type. A rechargeable lithium battery or a non rechargeable one will have the same voltage output. Thatīs what the chemistry produces, and you canīt reduce that voltage chemically, so they must have some built in electronic method to reduce the voltage to the standard 1.5 V a AA cell should produce. You need to learn to do your research before you make statements you cannot support. You've proven yourself to be a blowhard. I was mistaken and I admit it, but that doesnīt make me a "blowhard". Show me in which part of my posts I presented myself as an specialist in anything. Your post was accurate, but this part was completely unnecessary. Wasn't responding to you with that comment (at least knowingly). I understand you. It happened to be just a miss quoted reply. :-) |
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 10:13:34 +1100, Rod Speed wrote:
Ignoramus16071 wrote Yeah, very novel concept of people making stuff that cannot possibly perform as advertised, but claiming that it "was not deliberate". No one is going to design a wallet deliberately with card pockets that wont take cards. Thats always going to be a design ****up or manufacturing ****up. The only thing you did manage to get right was your nick. You do not u nderstand what is the meaning of words such as "intent" or "intentional". An act is intentional if its outcome is known. So if tey make a wallet that would not hold credit cards, or a tea kettle with obviously inadequate hinges -- the outcome is known and that is, therefore, an intentional outcome. i |
#273
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:04:59 GMT, James Sweet wrote:
Ignoramus16071 wrote: On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:41:59 GMT, James Sweet wrote: Ignoramus16071 wrote: TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. i Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. If anyone has suggestions for a really good three section leather wallet, I will appreciate. i There's the key, an extra few cents. 2 cents times 2 million kettles and you're talking 40 grand, that's not minuscule, even for a big company. 10 cents is even more significant, when you're manufacturing millions of things, pennies *do* matter. You can get something that cost an extra 10 cents to make, but it will cost you an extra 10 bucks to buy and the average consumer not knowing the difference will buy the cheaper one. It's all about offering the lowest price and making the most profit per sale, they don't intentionally try to make it break, they just don't care if it does so long as it lasts through the warranty. If they know what happens with their product -- and they do -- then it IS intentional. If I set a fire on my kitchen floor, hoping to cook a pig that would not fit in a stove, knowing that my house would burn down, and the house burns down, the result is intentional -- even though the fire was started to cook a pig. Same here -- if they try to save 2 cents and make products that they KNOW do not perform their intended purpose, then making substandard products is intentional on their part. That's why I do not patronize cutthroat retailers such as Walmart. Because they are looking to screw ME by selling products that do not perform their intended purpose (and by forcing manufacturers to make such via abusive methods). I do not like such capitalists and to not want to give them any of my business. I would rather pay 3x more to businesses such as McMaster-Carr, or Bosch, etc, to get a product that actually works. My experience with Harbor Freight has been spotty, but most of the products that I bought from them, do work as advertised. i |
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote:
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 10:13:34 +1100, Rod Speed wrote: You do not u nderstand what is the meaning of words such as "intent" or "intentional". An act is intentional if its outcome is known. So if tey make a wallet that would not hold credit cards, or a tea kettle with obviously inadequate hinges -- the outcome is known and that is, therefore, an intentional outcome. "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence". (or something similar) |
#275
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote
Rod Speed wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote Yeah, very novel concept of people making stuff that cannot possibly perform as advertised, but claiming that it "was not deliberate". No one is going to design a wallet deliberately with card pockets that wont take cards. Thats always going to be a design ****up or manufacturing ****up. The only thing you did manage to get right was your nick. You do not u nderstand what is the meaning of words such as "intent" or "intentional". You dont. An act is intentional if its outcome is known. Wrong. That act was intentional if they were intending to make the card pockets too small to take cards. No one would actually be that stupid. The problem must have been with the manufacturing process that was used after the intention to produce a usable wallet. So if tey make a wallet that would not hold credit cards, or a tea kettle with obviously inadequate hinges -- the outcome is known and that is, therefore, an intentional outcome. Wrong. No one would be stupid enough to deliberately make the wallet with card pockets that couldnt have cards put in them. You dont know that anyone intended the tea kettle hinge to break either. Its MUCH more likely that they decided that the amount of plastic used was adequate and that it wouldnt break, and that they got that wrong, or a weaker plastic was used without realising that it would break. |
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 06:13:03 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote: You arent cooling them properly. BS. They have NEVER gone over 40 degrees C. They live year round between 65 and 72 degrees F (talking about my own systems) Then there is some other problem with the system they are used in, most likely the power supply. Nope - the particular units in question are running on dual conversion UPS power - a perfectly clean and seperately derived power source. Also running high end SMPS power supplies. They start losing sectors after about a year, and reach the undependable stage after 2 or three. Have fun explaining how come others dont get that effect with those drives. They do. -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com |
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Ignoramus16071 wrote:
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:04:59 GMT, James Sweet wrote: Ignoramus16071 wrote: On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:41:59 GMT, James Sweet wrote: Ignoramus16071 wrote: TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. i Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. If anyone has suggestions for a really good three section leather wallet, I will appreciate. i There's the key, an extra few cents. 2 cents times 2 million kettles and you're talking 40 grand, that's not minuscule, even for a big company. 10 cents is even more significant, when you're manufacturing millions of things, pennies *do* matter. You can get something that cost an extra 10 cents to make, but it will cost you an extra 10 bucks to buy and the average consumer not knowing the difference will buy the cheaper one. It's all about offering the lowest price and making the most profit per sale, they don't intentionally try to make it break, they just don't care if it does so long as it lasts through the warranty. If they know what happens with their product -- and they do -- then it IS intentional. No one is stupid enough to design a wallet with card pockets that they know arent big enough to take cards. If I set a fire on my kitchen floor, hoping to cook a pig that would not fit in a stove, knowing that my house would burn down, and the house burns down, the result is intentional -- even though the fire was started to cook a pig. Same here Nope. -- if they try to save 2 cents and make products that they KNOW do not perform their intended purpose, You dont know that they did KNOW that. The much more likely possibility is that they decided that the amount of plastic used was adequate and it turned out that it isnt. then making substandard products is intentional on their part. You dont dont know that they did know its substandard. That's why I do not patronize cutthroat retailers such as Walmart. More fool you. Because they are looking to screw ME by selling products that do not perform their intended purpose Corse the bulk of them do. (and by forcing manufacturers to make such via abusive methods). Walmart isnt stupid enough to deliberately sell stuff that will have to be exchanged under warranty. I do not like such capitalists and to not want to give them any of my business. Bet that will have the Walmart suits pouring from their windows like lemmings as soon as they read your post. I would rather pay 3x more to businesses such as McMaster-Carr, or Bosch, etc, to get a product that actually works. The products that Walmart sells work. My experience with Harbor Freight has been spotty, but most of the products that I bought from them, do work as advertised. True in spades of what most buy in Walmart. |
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 06:21:05 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote: clare at snyder.on.ca wrote Rod Speed wrote Too_Many_Tools wrote Most companies data isn't worth anything after only a handful of years. Engineering data is the heart of a business. Not data thats a handful of years old. Management often forgets that. Then a competitor eats them alive. Bet you cant list any examples of that with data thats older than a handful of years old. I sure can. Nope, you couldnt. I milwright designs a feed mill. Back in 1966. He rebuilds that mill in 1981. He builds 5 more mills between those dates, and onother 12 since. His office burns down and he loses all his engineering drawings. You cant use a single design over all that time. Tell that to the guys that build the elevator portion of the mill. All the pipe transitions etc. have been standardized for many years by these guys. They designed something that works, that is relatively simple to build, and they just keep right on using it. or the drawings get soaked when a pipe breaks. How much were those engineering drawings from 1965 worth today? Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fantasy. You cant use a single fixed design over all that time. Another firm with current engineering drawings will eat him alive when a new mill is up for tender. That's why he invests in a large format scanner and enters ALL the old drawings into cad, at very high cost, and keeps 2 offsite backups. Or take a land surveyor's office. ALL the surveys done in the past 35+ years are kept onsite, and many are referred to daily to tie in new surveys etc. What would it cost to regenerate even a small fraction of those survey plans? What is their current value??? Significantly higher than the original cost to produce the survey. Adequately covered by his original MOST. Anthony Matonak wrote: John Husvar wrote: "Too_Many_Tools" wrote: Archival storage of data is a BIG deal that the industry doesn't like to talk about. Most companies data isn't worth anything after only a handful of years. Well, I suppose one could print and store all all the data records on acid-free paper and then physically go find the ones they wanted. Shouldn't take more than a medium-sized army of clerks and only a small hollowed mountain range for the storage. The absolute best storage is microfilm or some variant of it. You're pretty much assured that no matter what happens with technology that you'll still be able to read it, even decades later. You can buy computer microfilm printers. Direct print to microfilm, no developing required. Anthony -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com |
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
"Rod Speed" wrote in message ... Wrong. No one would be stupid enough to deliberately make the wallet with card pockets that couldnt have cards put in them. I've seen Chinese made devices such as flashlights that won't take Chinese made batteries as they are too long! -- |
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Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:24:22 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote: Ignoramus16071 wrote Rod Speed wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote James Sweet wrote Ignoramus16071 wrote TO the skeptics of the "planned obsolescence" and "designed to fail" theory, I have a simple suggestion. Take household machines from trash and take them apart. Look for signs of above mentioned behaviours -- and you will find plenty. Nope. Such as parts that are obviously designed to fail. Nope, just bad design. Designed to fail, or designed to be cheap? When you see these "designed to fail" parts, does it often appear that they could be made to last much better for the same cost? Well, let me give you one example. We had a electric tea kettle. It broke the hinge on the lid. Postmortem indicated that it broke because it lacked material around the hinge. At the cost of extra 1-2 cents, they could have a few mm more plastic around the hinges so that they hold up better. The extra cost is minuscule. Another example, I received a KMart wallet as a gift and it is unusable -- the credit card pockets are too tight and it is generally too tight for money also(I like to carry a few hundred $$ in cash etc, which does not affect credit card pockets). Again, at the cost of perhaps 10 cents per wallet, it could have been made into a better wallet. Both of those are just lousy design, not planned obsolescence or designed deliberately to fail. If it is obvious, to a layman, by looking, that it will fail, then it was designed to fail. Wrong, most obviousy with the card pockets that the cards wont fit into. Anyone with a clue would return a wallet like that, so there is absolutely no point in designing it like that deliberately. How can you say that that design was not deliberate? Because it clearly wasnt. Novel concept I realise. Just not designed for american sized money and cards. Would likely hold the currency of half the world with no problem. Ditto for the cards?? Mabee. Part of the "global economy". ANd you can't buy an american made leather wallet any more - at least I haven't seen Canadian or American made ones in over 5 years. -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com |
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