Why Do Gadgets Break?

TurboTurnip writes "A post on the Crave blog at CNET asks: Why are modern consumer electronics so easily broken? It argues that the 21st Century is 'The Age of the Flimsy' where 'your gadgets will simply break within the year.' Post author Chris Stevens talks about how computers are fast enough for the average user, and the only way to make consumers upgrade is 'increasingly poor build quality ... Engineers have built obsolescence into mass-produced technology since the 1920s. There are two kinds of planned deterioration in a product: one is technical, the other is stylistic.' The writer compares the build quality of a 20 year-old IBM XT to the modern Motorola Razr phone and concludes that modern gadgets are 'delicate, beautiful supermodels that can't go the distance.'"

Comments

Supermodel Gadget.

[teiresias]

Where can I pick up one of those delicate, beautiful supermodels gadgets everyone's talking about these days? At an Apple store?

Keyboards

[bmo]

Keyboards these days are neither supermodels nor even remotely stylish. Yet they are exceedingly flimsy. If you bludgeon someone over the head with a keyboard these days, it simply shatters into dozens of pieces. The old XT keyboard, however, could have been used to dispatch Jimmy Hoffa.

--
BMO

I still have an XT - 3 of them!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I will testify to their sturdiness! They are being used as blocks, to hold up my 1962 Jaguar XJ12 - itself another of those time-honored robust technologies, in contrast to today's delicate and tempermental flim-flams!

Oh yeah?

[MillionthMonkey]

I found my Razr after it was missing for three weeks. Somebody had buried it in the backyard.

There was not a scratch on it, and it worked just fine after a recharge.

This guy must be using one of the pink ones- those are sissy phones.

The funny part

[ArchieBunker]

Is seeing how much older electronics are still around compared to new. I have tube amplifiers that are over 50 years old and still operate because the parts are easily servicable. IMHO most of the electronics that fail early are due to bad solder joints. Your average tv is probably assembled by children in an open air factory somewhere in the pacific. Parts are bought from different suppliers constantly to save a penny here or there. Remember the recent rash of motherboard failures due to leaking capacitors?

Re:Use a bit of care...

[cerberusss]

If I buy a mobile phone, it's because I want to bring it with me to become mobile, not to keep it inside original packaging with temperatures between 15-25 celcius and low air humidity.

Welcome to the real world. I wished for a chick with long legs and a tight pussy but instead I got an ostrich and a cat who lets me pay everything.