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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.'"
An original IBM PC weighed 28 pounds with two floppy disk drives. A cell phone (err... mobile?) with a heavy gauge steel case would probably be pretty durable, but I wouldn't want to carry one around.
yes, yes, planned obsolescense etc...
/few/ people would pay the $120 it would take to create and sell a heavy duty all metal, robust keyboard, it would not be enough to compete with the millions that won't pay over $12.95.
The #1 reason that modern gadgets break is because market pricing pressure makes then that way. They are cheap cheap cheap. While a
I work in the hardware industry and pricing pressure causes manufacturers to do crazy/dangerous things to reduce the cost of every single component in a 1000 component product. Farm out calls for 1000 parts to the lowest bidder and you can pretty much guess what the total end result will be on the quality.
ISO 9000 has pretty much gone out the window in the last few years as being just too expensive to implement and manitain by the entire supply chain. Thus we are now constantly (Yes, still even today) dealing with capaciters that explode after 100 hours use, switches that break after 100 presses and an almost infinate variety of unplanned but inevitable hardware failures.
And in the end, if that means that someone has to buy a new phone and a new keyboard every year well, the companies that make them could have worse things happen than selling another product to the same customer. Even if the customer gets mad an never buys from that company again, it doesn't matter, pissed off customers of the competitor will come running back to THEM. As long as their quality is not significantly worse than their competitiors anyway.
But in the end, the age of the flimsy is mostly the end result of the age of extreme consumerism where everyone must have everything and it must all cost 12.95 or less.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Funny you should mention it. I have made several repairs on my five year old washing machine. I also have a double folding golf umbrella I purchased in London nearly twenty years ago from James Smith & Sons, Umbrella Makers (est. 1830). The umbrella is quite complex; it is nearly golf size when extended but it has extra joints to fold down very small. Given the extra complexity this involves, the ubrella ought to be somewhat prone to break down, but it's in perfect shape. As for being blown inside out, I'd probably fly off like Mary Poppins before that happened.
The issue isn't a general decline in craftsmanship; its a decline in the willingness of people to pay a premium for well crafted items. I don't remember exactly, but I think I paid between £40-50 for mine, which in 2006 dollars would be aroun $150. Naturally, I expect a $150 umbrella to last longer than one I bought from a street hawker for $10 during a rain squall. On the other hand, I bought my wife an even more expensive Smith & Sons lady's umbrella, which I regretted because she left it on the subway a week later. But odds are somebody is still using it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Some of this is just good practice, some means more money must be spent, some means a lot more money must be spent.
In 1980, a new VCR cost $700 at a bargain store. It was heavy because it had a high quality machined cast-aluminum chassis. It was good until the heads wore out or the belts failed. Now, a new VCR costs $50 and has many more features. It's light because it's mostly plastic. Technology has advanced; what was transistorized in 1980 is now integrated. Recordings are better due to video processing tricks and better tape. The machine will last until the heads wear out or the belts fail.
Designing electronics so that cheap, easily replaceable parts fail is generally not an option, with the exception of adding fuses and circuit breakers.
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A while ago, in my search for a small, dedicated word processor with a long battery life, a big screen and a proper keyboard, I bought an HP Jornada 820. It's a great little machine with no moving parts and a flashcard port rather than a hard drive. Awesome. I use it all the time for writing on the go in ways that make regular lap-top and palm users go, "Wow! I wish I had something which served me as well. How much did you spend? Really? Wow. . . If I gave you some money, could you get one for me also? eBay scares me."
The problem, and I was told to anticipate this, is that the screen on the Jornada 820 likes to break off after a period of use.
So when mine did, I pulled it apart to see why. It's pretty amazing! I discovered inside a set of re-enforced bolt holes in the chassis where some scrupulous engineer figured the screen hinging system ought to be attached. But somebody, somewhere, made the call to ignore those bolt holes and instead use these single, weenie screws in a rather less than strong part of the chassis. A ploy which was clearly designed to have HP's cute little Jorna break with ease. And they do. Thank you so very much, HP!
But since planned obsolescence is a given these days, I was overjoyed!
I simply drilled out the never-used re-enforced bolt holes and employed proper bolts to re-attached the screen. (And because I like to do a really good job, I used some spring-steel and washers to make the whole thing even more rugged. Barring accidents, the screen will never come off again.)
So now I have a computer which by design was supposed to be dead several years ago, but which works just fine for me. And unless the (evil) designers were able to sneak any other time-bomb flaws into the device, my little word processor should last me for a very long time. This makes me happy!
The moral of the story? Learn how to fix things or get used to spending hoards of cash because several somebodys over at HP and similar companies are spineless villains.
-FL