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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.'"
Where can I pick up one of those delicate, beautiful supermodels gadgets everyone's talking about these days? At an Apple store?
-Teiresias
People drop them, spill water on them, http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t= 8764 put them in the washing machine, etcetra. People are stupid and careless.
In addition, capacitors and other parts DO have a limited lifetime.
http://pinopsida.com
An original IBM PC cost thousands of dollars when they were new. An iPod costs 200 dollars new, approximately. Surely a 10-fold difference in price reflects more than advancements in technology, it also must reflect a decline in longevity/quality based on price? If you made a $2000 iPod and focused that money on making a lasting piece of equipment, it would probably come out significantly longer-lived than the $200 model.
stuff |
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.
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BMO
The company has more incentive to make products that will break after 2 years of use so that you will be forced to purchase a new product from them. Why make a TV that will last 25 years when I can sell you a high end plasma that you will have to replace in 5 years? By making products that break it ensures that customers will continue to buy from the manufacturers.
"Anything tastes good if you deep fry it."
it's obvious... youre living in america. Do you think ipod nanos didnt exist 7 years ago. Of course they did... but why sell someone ONE mp3 player when you can sell them 5 or 6 of increasing HD space and smaller sizes... that way everyone enjoys getting something "better" while you sell the same product 6 times to each customer. Love America
Rubbish. The RAZR is the rebirth of a much older Motorola design, the Startac. This was the point where mobiles stopped being bricks and started being stylish. Even though the startac had to accommodate a credit-card sizes SIM card it was still only the same size as the RAZR. The Startac was a beautiful phone and easy to use. I paid over £300 for mine almost 10 years ago.
Some phones I guess are like clothes, they come in and go out of fashion. RAZR is just a remake of the classic older design. The design of the Startac and the RAZR are timeless.
Don't blame me - this
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!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Because that's what consumers demand. They'd rather have features than durability, probably because by the time the gadget breaks, there's a better, cheaper one available.
Why does Walmart import tons of cheap Chinese goods? Because customers want them.
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.
And if you compare my new washing machine to a 20 year-old umbrella, you'd reach the opposite conclusion. How about comparing the Razr to a Walkman or a Swatch, not to a cinderblock of a product from a mainframe maker?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
When I bought my DVD player, I got a *really* good deal, and spent $400 on it. I don't even know HOW many years it's been (10 or 11 years, if I recall), and it still works just fine.
These days, people spent $35 on one, and whine when it breaks in a year. C'est la vie.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
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?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I've dropped my share of gadgets and I have to say that it is exceedingly rare that they actually break. My cell phone (A Blackberry 7100t) has been through a considerable amount of abuse in the two years I've owned it (partially due to the badly designed belt clip for this phone, if you run or jump with it the phone will fly out). Other than some scratches on the screen, it's as good as the day I bought it.
The only computer motherboards I've ever had die were an actual IBM motherboard (back before they even formed Aptiva), and a Soltek Socket A that fell victim to cap explosions (which were an epidemic at the time). Otherwise, my tech has all been replaced due to gross obsolescence rather than actual breakage (which is a shame when you're waiting for a Matrox G200 to die so you can upgrade your video card, and eventually just have to buy a Geforce 5900 because the new motherboard didn't support high voltage AGP).
There is a caveat here: When I buy stuff I don't buy it if it feels flimsy or is a cheap knockoff made by a no-name company. Perhaps the lesson for the author is: Stop buying cheap crap and maybe it will last longer?
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
- iPod: almost 4 years. Battery is shot, but that's a physics issue, not a quality issue.
My mp3 player takes standard rechargable AAA battries, I can even replace the battery in my mobile. I think having the battery build in is a clasic quality issue ment to force people to upgrade their ipods every few years
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Over the last couple of years I've been impressed with quality of "cheap" electronics. It's pretty remarkable that companies can cram the amount of functionality into gadgets at the price.... look at cheap gigabit switches... 8 port gigabit for around $150... or wireless routers.... lots of features, small and should last 3 or more years... Most of my gadgets are replaced because I want more functionality or cooler features, not because they broke.
I still have 4+ year old PCs happily working and other electronics that live a long life....
The quality of most devices is extraordinarily high.
I accidentally washed and spin dried my new USB stick and it still works. You go try that with a 5 1/2" floppy and tell me how well that works out for you.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Taking good care of your electronics is the key to making them last. Especially if you pay a bit more for a well engineered one. I know of a lot of original Gameboys that still have life in them.
... your gadgets will simply break within the year".
I'm an electrical engineer. While there may be system-level/market-level planned obselescence (based on outdated protocols, DRM, or style -- think iPod G1-4), there certainly is not one at the component-level (chips/ICs). Microprocessors are reliable as ever.
This essay lacks references. And, following argument is groundless: "The electronics industry has clearly spotted this problem, and
Explain.
idm owns me
As much as I love a good conspiracy products like the RAZR are flimsy because that's what the market demands. People want something that looks cool and is light and... uhm... looks cool. Surprise! You don't get heavy-duty parts with that.
On the other hand the original IBM PS2 tower (which the article doesn't mention by name, but was of that same era) was marked "Two person lift" complete with nifty stickers of people injuring their backs on it. It wasn't supposed to be light and pretty, it was meant to win a fight with a Mack truck.
Two person lift towers are out, Mac minis are in. The market wants pretty...
in addition (and this goes for products as a whole, not just consumer electronics) the market wants the cheapest thing out there. Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper! Why buy a $2000 computer when you can have one for $500? Guess what... this means cheaper, flimsy parts.
Offer the author a 5lb $800 cellphone that can be dropped from the top of the Empire State Building and he'll pass, just like the rest of the market.
They're flimsy because the mass production scales cut costs by automating out repairs by humans in favor of manufacture and replacement by machines.
Replacement for wearing out offers the chance to get a new one with some incremental features, and the newer styles that have so much social value.
The hidden cost remaining in these gadgets is discarding them. Either labor-intensive recycling, or environmental pollution plus increased scarcity of materials. The original seller doesn't pay most of that cost, so it doesn't show up in the sale price. But it costs the consumers in increased aftermarket costs and labor.
We should take the flimsiness that economics encourages to the next step: biodegradeablility. Make them flimsy not just to human mechanical use, but to our ecosystem, including bacteria. Or even feedable to our pets. That will cut the costs of discard way down. Which will leave us more money to buy new ones.
Until we can get those little buggers to reproduce themselves. Eventually, they'll be recycling us.
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make install -not war
If it used standard sized NiCd or LiIon batteries and the back was easily removable, any putz with a screwdriver would be able to replace them. Sealed devices are silly unless there's a compelling reason to seal them (water pressure resistance or something).
-b.
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!
I'm not shure what's most scary. The fact that a properly taken care of powerbook will only last 4 years, or the fact that you are happy with this. I have a pair of boots thats lasted me 4 years, used regularly for long hiking trips in rough terrain, wet terrain, rough and wet terrain, and so on... How many times can you jump on your powerbook? (Of course, the (modern) gore-tex liner lasted only a few months...)
My mothers old washing machine lasted 26 years before giving up. When I went and bought a new washing machine for myself 5 years ago, I was expecting it to last for at least 10 years. It lasted 3! And I'm single, have no kids, etc...
I've almost given up on cell-phones. Even if I buy one specifically marketed as sturdy (e.g. Nokia 514), it is almost guaranteed to fail within two years (usually within a year). I would be willing to pay a lot more to get a phone where I don't have to worry about random breakage any time I fall on it.
The thing with gadgets is, I'm not interested in "being careful" with them. I'm interested in getting something that works. 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. If I buy a washing machine, I want it to wash my clothes, not randomly fail. If I buy a car, I want it to keep driving, not require expensive maintenance, and having expensive parts fail all the time. And if I buy a laptop, it should survive a little rain, being dropped on concrete, being dropped in salt water, having someone fall on it, etc, all common things happening to transportable items.
Actually, some people just want a phone that works as a phone.
Bit of clarification. The Powerbook didn't die after 4 years. It's still going strong, and I rather expect it to indefinitely (except for maybe the HD).
And please, don't compare boots to electronics. It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.
Many engines that supposedly need a rebuild, actually don't, though, and taking the whole motor apart and "rebuilding" it can make things worse if the rebuilders isn't both skilled and obsessive. Case in point: 3 years ago, my Volvo 245 started making a clanking sound and running on 3 out of 4 cylinders. I took it to the mechanic: "probably threw a rod (broke one of the rods connecting a piston to the crankshaft). You'll need a new motor. We can swap you in a used motor for $2000."
I went home and removed the spark plug on the dead cylinder. Stuck a wire down there and cranked it over - the piston was still moving so the rod wasn't broken. Turns out a valve spring had fractured and wasn't letting the exhaust valve on that cylinder return to the closed position. Total cost in parts to fix - $250 including a new head gasket, various other gaskets, timing belt, spring, valve, and a case of beer. Time 8 hr - I did the job myself with a friend, but that would have come to about $560 assuming a rate of $70/hr. The engine is still running fine 30,000 miles later with 215,000 miles on it.
-b.
Nowadays engineers can find the exact minimum amount of materials and the like to use to acheive their goal. Back int he day they'd find an approximate and double it too make sure. That'd be my guess.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I wasn't around to compare, but every older member of my family tells me that cars last much longer than they used to. Most modern cars last 150K+ miles easily, provided they're driven by someone who isn't constantly pushing the limits of the vehicle. The fact that no one will repair banged up sheet metal or broken plastic parts so hitting a deer runs you $5000 has roots in the same throwaway culture, but isn't caused by lack of initial quality.
The good company pays attention to what their customers do with their purchases and upgrades so that the next version will be able to do it better.
A lot of products have a dropproof/waterproof/dustproof alternative, at an increase in cost. People opt for the cheap model. The consumer makes the choice in the end.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
>1. Design specifications intentionally limit durability
>2. Business decision to make the device fail. If I can't sell any more widgets, then how will I stay in business?
>3. No consumers want something to last for decades.
Aren't the first two of these points business decisions that got American auto manufacturers in trouble. Ever since the Japanese started taking the lead in quality, the market share has been going in their direction.
And doesn't this go against point 3 ? For many products consumers do want reliability.
Our cordless phone's "1" stopped working after two years, conveniently past the 1 year warranty period - I'd be happy if it lasted decades. Personally, I've never seen an AT&T rotary phone fail, nor even an older touchtone phone.
And if I buy a laptop, it should survive a little rain, being dropped on concrete, being dropped in salt water, having someone fall on it, etc, all common things happening to transportable items.
but you are not willing to pay for that, otherwise you would own a panasonic toughbook that CAN withstand all that.
What?? you dont want to pay $4000.00 for your laptop? well then take this piece of crap fragile Dell for $1500 and shut up.
Not being rude, but most of you that whine about it refuse to pay for the durable goods.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Adjust that for inflation as well and it's staggering. An IBM XT Model 5160 was $8000 for a full system in 1983 when it came around. Adjust that for inflation today and that's about $15,500. Turns out, you can get some pretty serious computer for 15 grand, one that will be pretty well built.
However if you want a $400 computer from Dell, which would be about $200 in 1983, well don't be surprised if there's some compromises made and it doesn't last all that long.
Also something people seem to forget is that the examples of old things around today that we see are the good ones by definition. Sure that XT that still works today is reliable, but what about the ones that failed? Well you don't see them because they are on the trash heap. Just because there's a few examples of old items that have survived doesn't mean they were all well made, may have just been some that were particularly lucky.
Clarification: It's not whether it's known to the manufacturer, it's whether it's known to the customer. If the customer expects and accepts failure within a couple of months, then it is not a quality issue if the product does just that.
The problem comes in when the manufacturer designs for months, but the customer expects years.
It's very simple. People are idiots. That's why gadgets break. Not because people break them, but because when people see things like the iPod that have a battery that you can't replace yourself, they buy them, anyway! What kind of idiot buys a gadget with a battery sealed in it? I know that I certainly wouldn't, but millions upon millions of people continue to throw their dollars at these pieces of crap, and when they die, they buy ANOTHER one, often from the same company.
The companies are laughing all of the way to the bank. They have mindless drones buying everything that they release, no matter how shitty, and the people come back and buy more! With so many stupid people buying these pieces of crap over and over, the only incentive that the manufacturers have is to make cheaper crap that breaks even quicker, because they know that no matter what, people will buy them again, and again, and again...
Oh yeah. This was typed on a IMB XT keyboard that I bought at a thrift store for one dollar. It was manufactured in 1993.
I've read it. And just after I finished it, they brought out a 2nd edition!
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Yes, I was referring to devices that are made to take alkaline batteries. Their low battery warnings are voltage based, and they tend to kick in when NiMH or NiCads still have lots of juice. THAT'S annoying. Building your device to only work properly with alkaline batteries has got to be some kind of ploy by battery manufacturers.
Building a device that has a specialized battery pack made up of soldered in NiMH AAs is annoying too. There's no reason for it. Cordless phones still do that, and notebook computers used to before they switched to lithium.
Now, the battery in my iPod (also the one in my cell phone) is too thin for standard sized batteries. I like those devices being that thin, so a built in battery pack is a good solution. The battery in my iPod has lasted two years and is still going with no problems, and a replacement is available, including the tool to install it, for $16.
The fact that a properly taken care of powerbook will only last 4 years, or the fact that you are happy with this.
After 4 years, the new state of the art in mobile computing will be such that you won't WANT to use that old notebook computer anymore, even if it works as well as the day you bought it.
My mothers old washing machine lasted 26 years before giving up.
And for maybe half of that time, I'd bet she was wasting more energy (and therefore money) running the old machine instead of buying and using a newer, more efficient model.
That's why you get a good European or American luxury car and not a cheap Japanese or Japanese-rip-off city-driving gas-saving minicar.
I have a Buick Park Avenue, 25-30mpg and a good 250.000 miles on the odometer. The only things I had to repair were the usual O2 sensors, lights and EGR valve and I am not an old-man's driver, I usually go 5-15mph over the speed limit for hours on end.
Then you have those 50-60mpg Japanese cars with 3 cylinders being sold here in this area, that is just laughable. Even 4-cylinder Japanese SUV's here are a joke. The USA is too spaced out and has too much hills and warm/cold areas to get a car built to drive in Tokyo. One of my friends has a 4-cylinder Japanese SUV with 7 seats and when it goes uphill on a 15% slope at 35mph it makes unhealthy noises (grinding in the engine) while traffic is building up behind them (the speed limits are 45mph).
Then you also have Chevy with the 4-cylinder cheap Japanese-modelled cars and my parents have those. They have all types of problems. A bicycle ran in the side on one of them - an 11 year old with a bicycle - and bent the hell out of the front fender, breaking a spring and the switch that controls the interior lighting when the door is open. I had my Blazer come to standstill hitting a pole while spinning out of control at 40mph (winter, ice) and I got a scratch. The front fender hit a tree while off-roading and only the rusted-out breakline pinched.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Actually everything but the body is much more durable, but auto body is much harder to repair today, at least in some ways. Back in the olden days people used to do metal finishing on cars, which means that there's no filler used whatsoever. This is still fairly common on show cars, but on nothing else. Basically any damaged metal is either beaten back into shape (stretching and shrinking as necessary) or cut out and a patch welded in. If the body man can't repair the damage with hammers, dollies, and a torch from that point, then if anything, lead is used to smooth out surfaces.
The new way to repair auto body is to get it within 1/8 to 1/4" (hopefully closer to 1/8") and then use body filler. Depending on who you talk to the filler is either spread over bare metal or primer. Either way it seals itself to the body in a way that lead doesn't. Then you prime the hell out of it because any non-plastic filler (plastic filler is expensive) is hygroscopic and attracts water.
Okay, so with all that said; modern automobiles are made of a much harder steel than old ones. I'm not sure when the first 100% high strength steel car was made, but I know Mercedes did it in 1981 if that's any help. Today basically every vehicle that is not a full size truck uses a unibody design consisting of 100% high strength steel. Besides its various other characteristics which are not very important right now, HSS is hard. The harder steel is, the harder it is to work, and the more brittle it is. It's also easier to push it past its elastic limit, which is the point at which deformation becomes permanent to some degree. This makes metal finishing of modern vehicles all but impossible which is why we have to use filler.
But on top of that, they're all unibody vehicles. If you get a chance to inspect a modern vehicle which ran into something fairly straight at high speed, open up the trunk and lift up the carpet. Odds are you'll see deformations in the floor of the trunk area. When a unibody vehicle takes a serious impact, the force is spread throughout the vehicle. This is what makes a unibody car so much safer than a full-frame vehicle like, for example, a 1963 Lincoln Continental. Oh sure, that continental might weigh 5000 pounds, but it won't crumple when it hits a wall unlike a 2000 pound honda civic; furthermore, the stress is not distributed throughout the car. These two things combine to make it as if YOU had simply hit the wall, in comparison to being in a unibody vehicle with crumple zones. The unibody is so successful at transmitting force that up to 40% of the force of a front-end collision can be transmitted to the back of the car through the windshield.
Anyway, repairing banged up sheet metal is literally twice as hard as it used to be, if not more. Repairing torn up plastic parts costs just as much as buying new ones - the plastic weld compound is quite spendy and you need to use a special primer to get anything to stick to a polyurethane part. This is not the problem. The reason it costs $5000 when you hit a deer is that the body shops are continually getting away with insurance fraud. For instance, I rear-ended someone (I know, I'm an idiot) with a silverado. I bent his bumper and the brackets. The body shop ordered a complete bumper kit instead of the bumper metal and the brackets. Because they bought all the plastic bits that weren't even damaged, this raised the price of the job by $400. They also charged four hours of work to replace a bumper. This is a job that would take me maybe half an hour.
I took two years of auto body and paint classes from a body man who has been in the business long enough to have repaired cars with lead back when it was simply the way things were done...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's good hardware out there. You can buy more rugged phones, especially for Nextel's network. The Motorola i530 meets the MIL-STD-810F ruggedness specification. It has all the usual stuff (camera, Bluetooth, web browser, etc.), it's much tougher than most phones, it's about the same price as most phones, and it's not much thicker. Available in black or bright yellow.
Shuttle PCs, the little breadbox units, are very well made mechanically, with good internal rigidity, support for cards on multiple sides, and a liquid cooling heat pipe system that really works in high ambient temperature environments.
You don't have to buy the crap.
I think build quality has declined with the ever increasing desire to keep costs down. I see several problems. First, companies seem to be so eager to do business in China that they're willing to tolerate anything. When it's a company's primary goal to cut costs, why would they want to spend any more money than necessary to ensure a higher standard of quality? The consumer is clearly content with the current standard of quality at low prices so why bother with anything more? So they dump manufacturing in Chinese hands and let them deal with everything. In the end, all many companies are doing is slapping their own logo on the product.
Which leads me to the second problem. Too many American companies seem to have given up on producing quality products and instead have focused on being cheap. This means that they are no only outsourcing manufacturing, but design as well. So instead of having products that are thoughtfully designed and aestetically pleasing we're getting an overwrought messes that aren't particularly easy to use. How many American companies are left that are actually involved in every step of the design and manufacturing process for consumer products. One of the few is Apple and they do an amazing job. But look at Dell, or HP who are essentially sticking their logo on someone else's product.
These companies are going with Chinese suppliers because they adhere to the same principles of cheap manufacturing. The end result, of course, is something that doesn't look very good and isn't particularly reliable. The Chinese don't yet have the product design experience that the Americans should have, and the Japanese and many Europeans definitely do have.
The problem ultimately is that American companies seem to have gotten obsessed with making money first and foremos. Pride in quality products has taken a back seat. There are American companies out there that used to produce respected products that now only offer crap products. They want to do things that require a minimum of effort but produce a maximum of income, hence the apparently popularity of web-based businesses. The Koreans, by contrast, have done quite well because they have a lot of nationalistic pride. They want to outdo the Japanese in every way they can. The Chinese are also quite ambitious so although they're still well behind most of the world they're making a lot of headway.
The Taiwanese also produce excellent products, but there in a similar situation as the US. They lack a lot of the pride other asians have and they continue to try to stick to the easy way of doing things. The problem is that the Chinese can do what they do more cheaply. So their chance for success is to move upmarket much in the way Japan did in the 70s and the Koreans more recently, pushing their own brands and improving quality.
That's an important point... It's why the Japanese and some Europeans to a lesser extent thrive. They're not competing for the bottom of the barrel. They're producing higher quality products which offer both technological innovation and design sophistication. They care about making quality products. To many American companies seem to be stuck producing the same old crap and constantly reminiscing on the supposed glory days of the 50s and 60s.
Here's a example I face on occassion. I walk into a Staples looking for office supplies. Because I'm in design I care about having a space that actually looks appealing. But all I see at office supply stores in the US is garbage. Complete and utter garbage. Completely uninspired and bereft of any design sensibility. It's all industrial-looking transparent crap. Why? Couldn't they hire some damn designers and an engineer or two to put a little effort into something that feels durable and looks good? Contrast that with when I was living in Taiwan and I could walk into any of a number of Taiwanese or Japanese supply stores and find some neat looking stuff that actually worked well. Some of these products even had ingenious little features.
I guarantee you, however, t
My experience is the exact opposite. Here are the cars my wife and I have owned and approximately how many miles we had them before they were replaced:
1. 1989 Chevy Baretta. Traded it in at about 80,000 miles because we needed a "family car". It had frequent engine problems and needed repairs often.
2. 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix. About 30,000 miles. Absolute piece of junk, spent as much time in the shop as on the road.
3. 1993 Toyota Corolla. Lasted 190,000 miles. Was still running perfectly, when we got rid of it because it was too small for our needs. Never had anything done except routine maintenance (tires, brakes, oil changes, etc).
4. 1994 Pontiac Trans Sport. Needed to have the engine entirely rebuilt after about 30,000 miles (thank God it was still under warranty). Practically coasted it into the dealership at 70,000 miles to trade it in. Another piece of absolutely shit.
5. 1999 Toyota Sienna. Still going... at about 125,000 miles now and running perfectly. Nothing major done except some body work after hitting a deer.
6. 2002 Nissan Altima. Traded it in after 40,000 miles...not because of any problems, but because my wife didn't like the "feel" of it. Don't ask. My wife is picky.
7. 2006 Toyota Camry. Up to about 15,000 miles and still perfect.
Moral of this story? Don't buy GM cars... ever. 3 times we did, 3 times they sucked. Toyota has never failed us... we have a combined nearly 350,000 miles on Toyota vehicles and NEVER anything more than routine maintenance.
You can keep your Buick... your experience with that GM car is an anomaly, in my opinion.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Every time you fall on it?
Man... that just sounds weird. Do you fall that much?
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
What are you talking about?? As long as the standard regular consumables are maintained (oil, spark plugs, brakes, etc...), of all cars, Toyotas are the ones that will basically last forever. As will most cars if they are properly maintained (except TVRs - they're just awful for build quality).
And you can't go saying you shouldn't have to do maintenance on them - you use the analogy of aircraft - they have more maintenance than anything. If you serviced and THOROUGHLY inspected your car from tip to tail every 100 hours of use, I'm sure it would last a hell of a long time too. And I would disagree that a plane has a more punishing life than a car - 90% of its life is spent in a gentle cruise. The only stressful part of flight is really the takeoff and landing. A car is constantly in contact with the road surface, meaning more moving parts, and quite often more complexity. Your average automobile suspension & braking setup is A LOT more complex than the same systems on your average light aircraft. And the engine on a car has to work a lot harder, constantly moving through its rev range, whereas a light aircraft's engine is pretty much always sitting between 800-2500 rpm, or thereabouts. And don't forget that owners of cars very rarely treat them with the care and affection with which an aircraft owner treats his plane.
And when it comes to light bulbs, when you're paying 50c or less for a bulb that can easily last years, then I don't see your problem. The incandescent bulb by its nature will slowly deteriorate with use. And it has nothing to do with oxygen in the bulb. Inside the bulb is a vacuum. As the filament is heated by the current passing through it, slowly but surely, some of the tungsten on the surface of the filament will vapourise, then re-condense on the filament in a different place. This results in sections of the filament getting thinner over time, so that any spike in the current can cause one of those thin spots to overheat and break apart, killing the globe. Making the filament thicker wouldn't work, as the resistance of the filament would drop, and it would generate less light. It's just the nature of the design.
I once read a comment from a Ford designer regarding the Pinto. He stated that it was DESIGNED to only last 5 years. Yet I still see them on the road.......albeit, in pretty bad shape most of the time.
My point is that it was designed, by the company that made it, to only last a certain amount of time. Why? Obviously, to sell the consumer another car in 5 years.
I work with automotive computer systems and I see it first hand all the time. I will cite the most frequent example I see.
Mercedes uses Bosch components in its computer controlled systems and fuel injection systems. I cannot state how many times I have had a customer come in with a "check engine" light on (in various models) only to hook up a scanner to pull trouble codes only to find NONE. Yet the car runs like crap, the light comes back on after being reset and the customer is still not amused.
After diagnosing quite a few of these I now do one thing soon as I get in the car. I look at the odometer. If it has a little more then 60,000 miles on it(the warranty period has JUST expired), I can almost ASSURE you the cause of the problem. A "faulty" Mass Air Flow Sensor.
Why can I say this? Because Bosch, and more then likely Mercedes, have designed and installed a component with a "desired" life span of just over 60,000 miles.
The reason for this is money (sales). The device fails (parameters within spec, no trouble codes set)in such a way that standard trouble shooting procedures will not locate the problem. The "average" independant shop then refers the customer to the dealership(Mercedes)thus assuring the dealership (and thus Mercedes) of the repair sales AND the replacement sensor. And ALWAYS after the warranty has run out.
It got to the point that we kept several "known good" sensors of various part numbers around the shop to simply install one and see if the problem went away. It usually did. The dealership, having a parts department, foregoes standard diagnosis and simply throws a new sensor at it. They then charge you for a "full diagnostic scan and testing".
So, not only have they found a way to charge you to replace the part, but to charge you for service to diagnose it as well. This repair, by the way, if done at the dealership, usually costs the consumer about $750-1000, parts and "labor". This also has the added benefit of making the dealership "look good" in the eyes of the consumer because they were able to fix it and the independant was unable to. Thus, the consumer returns to the vastly more expensive dealer when something else goes wrong.
Planned obsolescence is a reality. Even supposedly "well made" products are subject to this. Simply look up the "reliability" rating for autos and you will see that Mercedes sucketh quite badly in that department. They figure that if people can shell out 60k+ for a Benz, they can shell out $350 + "labor" for a new sensor every 60k miles.
They only cure for this is to research products and their reliability before buying them. Eventually, when sales slumps, they will curtail the practice to some extent (again, I cite Ford here. In the 70's Ford had a HORRIBLE reliability record and suffered heavy sales declines because of it. They changed their ways. At least until the last decade. They are doing it again........)
Consumer electronics don't make much money which is why 95% of the PC companies are dead and gone now compared to the early-mid '90's. Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple and everyone else. So if you're only making 2-5% on every sale what can you afford in terms of quality. For an extra hundred or two hundred bucks you'd have a hard time convincing a consumer that the engineering life of your product is longer than the economic life of your product which is probably 3 years whether it continues to work or not.
I have a house full of PCs which will probably be the last MS OS code I ever buy. Buy the time it comes to replace the machines, which I'm in no hurry to do, the hardware costs for whatever is MS code current at that time will be too costly for my taste. So I will go with down level machines and run something else like Linux or perhaps just scrap them all and buy cheap mini-Macs. But if I was the kind of person who slavishly followed MS's lead and ran out and bought new machines just to run Vista, I'd find myself in an endless upgrade cycle to keep pace with all of the MS requirements. So it's entirely probable that my 'old' hardware would only have to work for 2 years or so. Given that most hardware lasts for more than two years and the vendor gambles that x% of their market churns their machinery every two years then the value I place on having that hardware last reliably longer than two years is almost zero. I can use cheaper parts, purchased on commodity market with little or no QA or standardization. I can assemble it in the cheapest factory I can find and I will make more money not less even if a large percentage of the product fails between 2 years and some arbitrary date but less than a 'reasonable' period of time.
I addressed this earlier in another post that was flamed when I suggested that MS be assessed a recycling tax for every turn of the OS version crank based on ever increasing hardware requirements that drive needless hardware sales. If they want to sell more software then they need to absorb the cost of churning the old hardware. If they want to pass that cost on to the consumer then we'll see just how receptive the consumer is to the real cost of bloated software. It's really the flip side of the same issue.
When I worked for my father making gears for textile machines we would make gears out of
steel, nylon, plastics, and softer metals. The softer items like nylon was designed so
that if there was a jam it would break. The mill would typically have a box of these gears and simply
replace it when the teeth would break off. It is better to replace a smaller, cheaper, and easier
to reach item than have to tear down a whole machine.
I remember hearing an engineering professor talking about how a lot of newer products are often lighter and less strong because of the newer tools and computing power available when designing them. Like parts for cars; it used to be that it wasn't worth it to figure out exactly how strong a part needed to be built so you would just do a rough estimation and end up with something that could probably take twice the amount of abuse it was built for. But now all the numbers are just plugged into a computer and it's easy to design things exactly to specification.
I wonder if a similar thing has occurred with technology related devices? With better manufacturing systems and more experience in designing things like MP3 players and laptops, perhaps companies are now building these things to only take a specific amount of abuse that fits into their pricing scheme where before they were overbuilt to take into account unknown factors and manufacturing issues?
People are stupid and careless. In addition, capacitors and other parts DO have a limited lifetime.
Let me relate to you a story about my Rogers cellphone, and I'll ask where would you reasonably draw the line...
I obtained a Motorola phone from Rogers Wireless a bit over a year ago, and almost from the start I found I could not get good signal strength on most occasions. I thought it was just crappy coverage from Rogers but then a friend of mine notices we got the exact same model of phone from the same provider and her phone reported full strength and mine showed one "stair step" even when put side-by-side. Obviously Rogers is doing their job so it must be the phone.
I took the phone to a Rogers service centre, where a well-pierced-and-dyed punk looked at it and said "hmm this looks wierd dude...maybe there is a firmware or SIM card problem--we got a couple recalls on this model" (Hey Motorola, where'd you learn your testing and QA procedures from--the old-Microsoft-school of paying-customers-as-testers? People don't like to buy their stuff already broken). Lucky me, after running some tests and looking in ther database it appears that Rogers fixed my phone before issuing it to me (How uncharacteristically thoughful of them!). "Must be something wrong with the radio hardware" said the cellpunker, "We'll have to send it to Motorola in Vancouver. They ususally take 4 weeks to look at it so we'll give you a (crappy) courtesy phone.
After the wait (at least it wasn't delayed) I received my phone...working much better! But it appears that the journey through Rogers, the courier and Motorola was a rough one, as there is now a crack in the pretty brushed-metal front cover. Stupid and careless SERVICE people! I'm then told that such cosmetic damage is not covered under warranty and they'd replace it but I'd have to pay...for THEIR carelessness! Oh well, I can live with the hairline phone fracture.
I'm further told how to minimise the risk of things like this happening again. Don't expose it to cold for too long (HOW cold? It's nearly -30C here right now--it THAT too cold? For how long? Can I keep it in my coat pocket when I walk to the 7-eleven or is that too long? "Just be on the cautios side" I'm told). Don't leave it in a hot place for too long...like your car in the summer. Don't leave it on the charger too long. Don't take it off the charger too soon for too often. Cellphones are sensitive electronic devices, make sure to avoid static discharge (in -30 weather that can be a tall order).
I understand these environmental hazards can be a design challenge...but it's a CELLPHONE...a MOBILE DEVICE. It can be dropped, it can be zapped, it can be exposed to temperature and humidity extremes. It's sold with 2 and 3 year service contracts SO THE DAMN PHONE SHOULD SURVIVE AT LEAST THAT LONG.
My old-school Nokia survived well past the original contract. It was rained on, it was dropped (and the faceplate cracked, but it was removable and replacements were cheap...and the phone sitll worked). It was operated and transported in a temperature range exceeding 60C. It was done before...why can't it be done now? Because cellphones are so much more sophisticated? That's crap. If you cand feature-flood me without making the product flimsy then ditch the extra features. As for limited lifetimes...if the capactitors cannot even last 3 years they are pretty sh*tty capacitors and a new supplier should be found immediately, especially given that a cellphone is a relatively low-power device and that the majority of the internal parts are solid state (the only moving things in them are electrons). To me, this isn't about user abuse or the natural lifetime of internal components--it is about maintaining corporate revenue streams.
I found that ALL cell phones - flip or not, tend to suck. I've had belt-clip phones of several different models. It is inevitable that at some point, you bump it and the phone pops out, dropping 3 feet onto the ground, and the battery cover pops off and you scramble for 6 o 7 different parts that are spread over a 15' diameter area.
Now I finally have a heavy-duty nylon holster with a sturdy velcro flap. The only negative is that the belt clip is still plastic (although thicker) instead of metal. If it breaks, I'll get a metal clip and retrofit myself.
The larger problem is the Walmart syndrome. Walmart demands lower prices from manufacturers, who make up for it in reduced quality. Now, because of walmart, you can't get a good quality product from ANY store that carries that manufacturers goods since they are all made to the walmart spec. Walmart, for example, demanded that Matel lower costs by 20% one year or they wouldn't carry their products at Walmart which forced Matel to shut down all US plants and drop quality. Remember when Tonka toys were sturdy? No longer. The quality of toys for kids these days is horrible. Nothing lasts more than a year - many things are broken in shipping before they even get to the store.
I can do a "ditto" with snow shovels. Walmart, Kmart, Lowes, and Home Depot all carry the same shitty chinese shovels. My local hardware store (which just closed this past summer due to competition from Lowes and Home Depot that moved in) carried shovels made in Canada, which are awesome. Now I will have to travel 30 miles to the next dealer just to get a fucking snow shovel that works (when the canadian one wears out in a few years.)
By the way - did you know that if you buy a DeWalt drill at Lowes or Home depot they come with PLASTIC gears? If you go to a contractor tool store, you get the metal gear models for only a few dollars more.
I've had enough of the big-box stores. I buy local / regional whenever possible, then mailorder, and if all else fails, will finally try a big box store as a last resort.
I use Gentoo, and I upgrade every day.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
inefficient 4M+
Look, I've got a nice Ricoh CL2000 with nice power management. It cost a lot of money, and it will have to last for another 5 years. So, I'm okay with power savings... but the 4M+ goes into power management too. You don't hear them, and they don't use much power when not used. I know, I was in an office where they had 4 of those powered continously.
Don't diss old "office printers", they are perfect for light-home usage.
Besides, I doubt your new PC uses less power than your old one. Especially not at peak usage, and your old one did have power managment features... So that won't make a difference.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
TV is a bad example. The US Government is going to break your TV in 2009 when it is ILLEGAL for anyone to transmit the analog signals needed by "old" TVs. They are going to force everyone to go digital, to put more money in the pockets of the electronics manufacturers and so they can put force DRM down consumers throats - making it illegal under the DMCA to exercise fair use rights.
Thank you Michael Powell (of the FCC). You did this!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
To have a gear or cam designed to break under mechanical overload is stupid. The proper way to provide a mechanical weak point is to use a shear pin. This is a plain cotter pin in an accessible drive shaft coupling, or in the hub of that gearwheel, that will shear under overload. It may be mild steel, or even aluminium in a light mechanism. Such a part is much cheaper to replace than a gearwheel, and can even be made by the user with basic workshop facilities rather than having to go back to the manufacturer.
Shear pins are common in machine tools for example, and are the mechanical equivalent of a fuse, which answers your point about electronics.
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
In Standby the Laserjet 4m+ uses 80W, over the course of a year that's 700KWHr's or about $100 worth of electricity. Cheap laser printers today cost less than $200 so I doubt their cost of manufacture and transportation in energy is more than the 2 year energy usage of the 4m+ (HP's proclivity of using the razorblade model notwithstanding since there are others in the low end laser market that don't follow that model). Standby on the Laserjet 1020 is 2W, meaning if the 1020 lasts more than 2 years it's payed for itself in power saving.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Markets aren't 100% efficient and only support a finite # of suppliers. They often can support fewer suppliers than there are permutations of consumer demand. The lament isn't that there are no suppliers willing to take an unprofitable stance on a small market segement. The lament is that other conusmers have made the "quality" demographic too small to support through shortsightedness that actualy costs them more in the long run to boot.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
Like so many things, predicted by the late, great, Douglas Adams. But for shoes.
From Wikipedia:
In the critical condition, demand for shoes rises faster than the capacity to make good quality footwear. As shoe quality decreases, the demand increases further because shoes wear out faster and need to be replaced more often; as the demand for shoes increases, cheap mass production causes shoe quality to drop even more. What results is a spiral of increasing shoe demand and decreasing shoe quality. Eventually, this destabilises the economy to the point where it is "no longer economically viable to build anything other than shoe shops", and planetary society collapses.
Sean Ellis
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