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Consumers Starting To Realize Gadgets Can Be Fixed
An anonymous reader writes "Consumers seem to be paying more attention to the possibility of fixing gadgets instead of sending them to the landfill. It may be because 10gb in your iPod is more than enough for any normal person, it may be a deep, abiding love for the environment or it may just be the price. A New York Times article explores how new sites like FixYa and old standbys like Macintouch can aid the average user in restoring their 'slightly used' gear. Practically every gadget has their own website devoted to helping owners help each other deal with problems that arise. I personally like AVS Forum for my living room needs. From the article: 'Most other gadgets come with batteries that are easy to replace without custom tools. Replacement batteries for cellphones are often marked up by the devices' manufacturers, while third-party replacements are often available for 60 percent to 80 percent less. Companies offering replacement batteries for iPods often offer better batteries with higher capacities and longer lifetimes. Ipodjuice.com, for instance, sells a 1,200-milliamp-hour battery that will replace the 600-milliamp-hour battery that shipped with a fourth-generation iPod -- an improvement that lets the Web site claim that the repaired iPod will "last 100 percent longer."'"
I think this may have more to do with the abilityto upgrade computers. Due to the original IBM PC architecture, it was easy to make your computer run better - some simple screws, plug-in cards, simple electrical connections. Lots of folks who would never dream of opening up their VCR - still flashing 12:00 - have upgraded memory or a hard drive.
Now those same folks who have cut their teeth on PC's look at broken electronic gadgetry and think:
1) How hard can it be?
2) If I screw it up, no big deal - it's a loss now as it is.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
From the article: 'Most other gadgets come with batteries that are easy to replace without custom tools.
When i'm working on a piece of electronic equipment and I see "custom tools", my brain responds with "hammer". But then, that might be part of the problem in the first place.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Ah, the perfect thread to brag about an accomplishment about which I am (perhaps even unduly so) proud. You see, I have a Netgear combination ADSL modem/router, and after about 3 years of use it started to sporadically malfunction. The connection would drop, sometimes not coming back until the next day, only to quickly drop again. After a painful call to SBC (now ATT) tech support, I was able to determine that it was not a line problem. Being that the router wasn't exactly cheap (150ish?), I hated to buy a new one, so I went searching online...
:P (I could be described, when it comes to electronics, as at BEST a very inexperienced hobbyist)
Interestingly, I eventually discovered that I had been the unwitting casualty of industrial espionage! Apparently, a capacitor company, wanting to do things on the cheap, had tried to steal the recipe that a rival company used to manufacture capacitors. Apparently, however, the rival company got wind of this and planted a FAKE recipe for the ne'erdowell to find. The eventual fallout was that a little while down the road, this company's faulty capacitors started malfunction en masse.
Long story short, my modem used one such capacitor, and apparently a great many users were reporting similar problems. So, out come my trusty soldering iron and jeweler's screwdrivers, and the modem is quickly disassembled. Lo and behold, there is indeed a bulging capacitor. A quick trip to radio shack and a little painstaking soldering work later, I had a DSL modem working good as new. That was about two years ago, and I'm still using the same modem.
I'm still pretty damn proud of myself
Until the late '70s / early '80s, things were designed to be fixable. I remember going to the store with my Dad to get a cord for my Mom's clothes iron. The iron was designed so it could be opened up so that the old cord could be replaced. The power cord would fray from use over time and need to be replaced, but the iron itself was designed to last for years.
Now the iron is designed to be disposable. There is no way to replace the cord even if the iron would last longer than the cord. Forget the waste -- it is more profitable to make you buy a whole new (cheap) iron instead of a cord. The extra waste in the landfill is not the corporation's problem.
Rinse and repeat for most consumer products today -- most products are designed with to be replaces after x amount of time instead of lasting for years so that people with be forced to throw away the old and buy the new. I hope this will change, but I am not holding my breath.
Beware of Sleestak
One of the things keeping me from buying a PS3 is the fact that I feel like I'll be less comfortable taking a look under the hood. I'm a ME, not and EE, and I've learned that it's REALLY important to limit the dollar-amount of damage I can do when it comes to the more complex gadgets. I can never figure out how to get the magic smoke back in those little chips...
"This thing does science so hard, you say, 'I've never seen that much science.'" -Sam
I have seen so many otherwise workable items about to be thrown out because of a minor, easily fixed issue (sometimes even just needing some superglue!)
I have a collection of about 6 DVD players, a few audio tape players, VCR's, etc that people have handed me when I said "it's probably an easy fix"; their response was "if you can get it working it's yours." Invariably the repair was simple, in the case of the DVD players just needed a lens cleaning (not one of those crappy sale unit lens cleaners, a real opening up and swabbing with some rubbing alcohol).
Basic principles of home electronics:
NOTHING is all that complicated. If it were that complicated, it would cost $20,000 or more. Even a DVD recorder sold 5 years ago for $1000 is still frighteningly similar to the one you got for $30 last week, and probably even easier to trace loose connections and items since it's not been subjected to 5 years of component consolidation and micro-sizing.
VCR repair, DVD repair, most anything else is just a matter of having a few basic tools. Well, that and using the grey matter between your ears. You can tell if there's a broken belt, you can visually tell if a capacitor has blown, you can smell if something has shorted out and you can usually see the scorch. Sometimes it's repairable, sometimes you just learn more about the standard innards (and if you think Company #1's VCR or DVD player is that much different from Company #2's or Company #3's, you're delusional).
You wouldn't believe how many times a "dead" PS2 can be revived just by cleaning the firking lens.
And if you kill it... parent point #2 is dead-on correct. You have nothing to lose opening up something that's long out of warranty and broken; the worst that can happen is that it's still broken when you're done with it.
Of course, when I've mentioned this to some of the people out there, they're terrified of the "warning, voltage" and "warranty void if removed" stickers plastered all over their stuff. We really need to teach people that they can do this stuff safely and without a lot of worry; I'm starting to be convinced most of these "warnings" are just there to scare people into not getting perfectly serviceable products repaired.
I work in print production. We have some inkjets and some laser machines. All the printers we use (and I'm guessing lots of others) have at least one part which has a chip that's designed to stop working before the life of the part is used up. It drives us nuts here. My boss has taken to pulling the old chips off old broken parts, for use in other parts with "used up" chips.
We've since been switching our inkjet machines to use ink resevoirs, which are these big tanks that sit outside the body of the printer, and can be refilled while the thing is printing. They're clear plastic (lexan, maybe?) so you can see how low they are.
Planned obsolescence should be punishable by some sort of recursive punishment.
Yeah, they can be repaired... it's just not always practical.
My girlfriend's expensive iPod speaker system got its volume stuck at full, and it fell to me to repair it. Actually, her remedy was just to pile pillows on top of it, but we don't really have enough pillows to get a decent volume control range, and it took up a lot of space.
I didn't have too much trouble tracking down the faulty volume control IC, but it helped that I have a workshop with several thousand dollars of test and rework equipment. Honestly, it could have been done with a cheap voltmeter or logic probe and some patience.
I knew exactly what chip to replace, but there are NO distributors of that part in North America. Minimum order from Taiwan was something like 10,000. No equivalents available, either. I managed to talk the company into sending a couple of engineering samples - 'free' parts that only cost me $70 in FedEx charges. (Ah, the things us geeks do for love.) Installing the part was again not a big deal, but only because I have a hot air rework station designed for the task.
Component availability problems can be overcome, but the bigger problem is lack of information. Without at least a schematic it can be very tough to troubleshoot modern electronics, and good luck getting that sort of information out of a manufacturer.
Still, I suppose it's worth pointing out that 3 of the last 4 cellphones used in my house have had their lives extended significantly through repair. 90% of the time the problems there are related to mechanical and interconnect parts - charging connectors, flex cables in hinges, speaker contacts, and so on, and it doesn't take a genius to spot and fix those problems. The last phone I fixed turned out to have a failed connection where some foam had worn out. The fix was to jam a piece of paper in its place.
Forty years ago my dad had a TV and general electronics repair shop, and customers could bring in any random gadget and reasonably expect that there was a good chance he'd be able to fix it, or at least tell them what was wrong with it and why it wasn't worth fixing. Those days are long gone, at least in the realm of consumer electronics. Yeah, you can specialize in XBox repairs, or iPods, or some limited scope like that, and folks like me will make their best attempt at fixing devices for their friends and family, but doing general repairs commercially? Your success rate is going to be too low, and the chances of breaking things further is too great. And the situation is only going to get worse as integration increases. Just wait until all of our electronics are made in 3D fabricators, with each IC die and passive component buried in a solid block of material and no possibility of access to ANY discrete part.
Yep. I opened up an old transistor radio a year or two ago. It came from Radio Shack in the late 70s or early 80s. I was floored to see, stuck to the inside of the back case, a full schematic of how the radio worked. That kind of thing (even if it only showed the ICs and not their functions) is basically unthinkable today.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The reason why people are suddenly more interested in the possibility of fixing their gadgets instead of throwing away old/broken items and buying new stuff is because the economy is tanking big-time right now.
The high rising price of gasoline is one of the biggest key factors. Next is the rising basic cost of living. All around me I know people who now can barely afford to buy food plus pay the rent/mortgage plus pay their utilities after filling up their cars every week so they can drive to work. Buying new clothes or new gadgets? Ha, they wish they could, but just can't anymore. Luxury stuff like cable TV, and a landline plus cellphone went away for them a few months ago. Their $14.95/month basic DSL internet line will have to go by January, and they'll just do without internet, or go to the public library.
Salaries / wages are not keeping up with inflation and increased cost of living either.
The higher-paid technogeeks like me aren't hurting nearly as much, but some of the people I know can no longer make ends meet and it's starting to get ugly among the blue collar working stiffs out there.
No wonder people are fixing stuff instead of buying new stuff lately.
Duh.
Go ahead and mod me down as flamebait. I'm angry as hell right now and need to vent.
One of my blue collar buddies, who's brother just got blown up in Iraq last week, is having to charge his trip to Arlington Cemetery to attend the funeral on his almost maxed-out credit card (maxed out due to unexpected medical expenses for his kids, not because of bad spending habits), since the military offered him a "discounted" military/bereavement airline ticket at nearly $600 when he was able to find his own on Expedia for only $350. I offered to buy his ticket and hotel but he is too proud and refused to accept. Me and the rest of his friends will gang up on him when he returns and we'll fill his kitchen full of groceries for a couple months or something that he won't be able to refuse to help him out.