Toshiba TV29C90 problem; Image fades to black...

[Nate Nagel]

Tracey wrote:

"Too_Many_Tools" <too_many_tools@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1168795859.447722.255770@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?


One thing that you might not have considered is Energy Efficiency. Sure,
your refrigerator from 1950 might appear to be working fabulously. However,
it probably costs an awful lot more in electricity to operate it than a
newer model would cost. Likewise with your hot water heater, oven,
diswasher, washing machine, etc.

Its just something else to keep in mind...

You are indeed correct, but at least when it comes to motor vehicles, it
still makes sense to keep an older car on the road even from an
ecological standpoint as the energy required to make a new car is so great.

I'm not sure how it works out for appliances, but I tend to agree with
the OP that a lot of times older machinery seems to be better built and
easier to service. I have lots of tools that are older than I and I am
more protective of them than of ones that I bought a month ago.

nate

--
replace "fly" with "com" to reply.
http://home.comcast.net/~njnagel

 

I bought my first CDplayer a Sony discman for $199 in 1987. That was
after shopping all over. Today I can get a good DVD player for $30 and
a cd player for $15. I like how things get cheaper.

Logan Shaw wrote:

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

I don't think planned obsolescence is a good thing or a bad thing,
because in most cases it's fictional. Appliances and other items
you buy aren't designed to fail. They are designed to be cheap to
manufacture.

The article you mentioned quoted a repairman saying that lots of
new devices are made with circuit boards (rather than discrete
components). There's a reason for that. Circuits built with
circuit boards and integrated circuits cost much, much less to
produce than ones made of discrete components. Probably half
as much, maybe even less than that.

I'm not sure people understand how streamlined and optimized modern
manufacturing techniques are. The reason we get all these appliances
and electronics items for so cheap is the way they are made. To me,
it is truly remarkable that you can go to the store and buy a DVD
player for $30. It might only last 2 or 3 years, but 10 years ago,
it would have cost $10,000 to build an equivalent machine (just
because of the processing power).

So the question, to me, is this: do you want to buy a new item
for $100 and have it last 5 or 10 years, or do you want to spend
$200 for it and have it last 10 or 20? My answer would be that
I'd rather have the item that costs half as much and lasts half
as long. Why? Because I can take the $100 I saved and put it
in the bank. In 5 or 10 years when the item breaks, I can take
the $100 out of the bank, and it will have grown with interest
that has outpaced inflation, so it will be worth more than $100
in inflation-adjusted dollars, and at that time, the price of the
device may have gone down to less than $100 in inflation-adjusted
dollars, and it will certainly be more up to date (more energy
efficient, better support for new media formats, smaller, whatever).

To put it a slightly different way, for that $30 DVD player, it
costs something like $10 labor and $10 materials to put that thing
together in the first place (because there are packaging and shipping
costs and profit). So how efficient is it to spend $30 labor fixing
it? It isn't efficient. Repairing mass-produced items isn't
efficient because one person working on one item and doing everything
by hand simply doesn't have the same economies of scale that a
highly-optimized manufacturing environment has.

- Logan

 

[tim]

Logan Shaw <lshaw-usenet@austin.rr.com> wrote in
news:45aabcb4$0$8973$4c368faf@roadrunner.com:

To put it a slightly different way, for that $30 DVD player, it
costs something like $10 labor and $10 materials to put that
thing together in the first place (because there are packaging
and shipping costs and profit). So how efficient is it to spend
$30 labor fixing it? It isn't efficient. Repairing
mass-produced items isn't efficient because one person working
on one item and doing everything by hand simply doesn't have the
same economies of scale that a highly-optimized manufacturing
environment has.

- Logan

To give a better example, look at the HP higher-end credit card sized
calculators like the HP-35 and -45. They are designed to not be
repairable. All they are are a circuit card, a keypad and a display.
They did the analysis, and it was cheaper to design the unit with an
assemble-only push-together design and handle warrenty work by just
replacing the unit, then designing it with screws so that the failed
part could be replaced. Needless to say, they also went through the
entire product and tightened up on everything they could so that they
could cut down on the incidence of repair at the same time.

 

[JR]

JR wrote:

Mark D. Zacharias wrote:
JR wrote:
Arfa Daily wrote:
"Mark D. Zacharias" <spammenot@nonsense.net> wrote in message
news:OrPih.2018$x67.528@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net...
JR wrote:
Mark D. Zacharias wrote:
jrgreene1968@suddenlink.net wrote:
Hello, i have a problem with a 3801 denon receiver, ..I bought
this receiver from a guy on the internet, said to be in exellent
shape, when it arrived, i plugged it in and it will not do
anything, no display, no standby light, no click when you hit
power switch nothing. I have checked all 7 fuses on the receiver
with an ohm meter, they are all ok. checked voltage where power
cord plugs into board, shows 120 volts, if you unplug receiver
and checked switched outlet on back of receiver, the outles show
open with ohm meter, unplug yellow and white wire on transformer
to board and now switched outlets are no longer reading
open....does this sound like a power transformer, any way to
test?

OK, tried to send you the manual - it bounced because it was too
big. I'l split it and send it in 2 parts.

Mark Z.

man i really appreciate it...it looks like i have a bad relay, im
gonna get on the phone and see if i can find parts

Actually had to split it into about 6 parts. What a pain.These PDF
split programs could be better designed. One has to experiment with
page ranges, etc to get an acceptable size. Could be done better
with a graphical interface.

I really doubt you have a bad relay, more likely a circuit board
crack.

Mark Z.

Agreed

Arfa


well i finally give up, couldnt find the problem, so i sent it off to
an authorized denon repair center, they called me today, said the
micro processor is out, and probably alot more but they would ave to
replace processor before doing any more troubleshooting...i said..how
much? he replied, 170.00 to replace processor and as much as 760.00
for other problems, i told them to forget it and send it back to me,
so i guess im back to the drawing board

OK, read the other post which didn't really express the "two-tiered"
estimate. I can understand the possibility that the shop, after not finding
any obvious cracks, etc gave the estimate to replace the micro as an initial
step. Done this myself sometimes, usually after a lightning strike. I'll
tell the insurance company it's so much to replace the micro, win, lose or
draw - then we'll see what doesn't work after that.

Mark Z.

well i have pulled receiver apart, and have been checking traces with
ohm meter. I have traced voltage from ac input all the way to a
capacitor right before the relay, i have voltage on 1 side of the cap
but nothing on the other side, i checked the cap with a ohm meter also
it shows nothing..according to the schematic the power has to come
through this cap and relay before going into the fuses...could the c525
cap be causing all this problem

i just found several problems....it looks like lightning must have got
this thing, or the guy majorly shorted it out..i checked readings
against a good working receiver...found mini trans bad, 1 bad cap,
several resistors bad, etc etc...

 

[betrtimes@green acres.far]

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
total. The washer lasted 18 years before the hard water ruined it,
and it had a timer replaced when it was 12 years Old. You think that
the new designs are an improvement?

My mom is using the following:

gas range, Magic Chef 1977- coppertone
refrigerator, Kennmore 1984- almond
washer Maytag 1986- white
dryer (electric) Whirlpool 1981- white
microwave Panasonic 1998 ( city blew out the 1987 microwave with a power
surge)

the dryer has had belts, drum rollers, and heating elements replaced.

washer... broken pushbutton (18 cents), and the timer

refrigerator- arm that dispenses ice through the door broke

thats all the repairs

 

[Mark Lloyd]

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:59:14 -0600, Alan Moorman@visi.com wrote:

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:46:09 GMT, "Rick Brandt"
rickbrandt2@hotmail.com> wrote:

Too_Many_Tools wrote:
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."

This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
often is because we don't repair them.



I think the main problem with today's appliances is that
they are NOT made so that they can be repaired.

Modules are stamped together, molded together, whatever and
the little part that wears out can't be replaced without
replacing the whole module, which probably isn't available,
anyway, so the appliance gets tossed.

I have an old toaster from the '40s or '50s. It is a
mechanical thing, not electronic, and is made of individual
parts that can be cleaned, oiled, and if you could get them,
replaced as needed. When something like this stops working,
less than an hour's work will set it up to run for another
25 years!



Alan

When I bought this house, there was a problem with the built-in oven
(an older Frigidaire). The (mechanical) clock (that I didn't need)
wouldn't keep time but made a loud UHH-UHH-UHH noise all the time. I
disconnected the wire to it, something I would never have been able to
do with a modern oven.
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent
force for atheism ever conceived." -- Isaac Asimov

 

[Rod Speed]

clare at snyder.on.ca wrote

Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote
terry <tsanford@nf.sympatico.ca> wrote
Ecnerwal wrote:

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,
and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated to render them
effectively non-economic to repair. "This part will (by design) break
about 1 year after the warranty runs out - let's put in in a monolithic
module containing all the most expensive parts of the machine."

Maybe that's stating it rather strongly?

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.

Except you can buy much better batteries than the crap
that comes with the chinese built phone from the factory.

Not true of the chinese built Panasonics I bought.

I deliberately chose cordless phones that take standard AA NiMH batterys.

Likely cost as much as the phone,

No they dont with standard AA or AAA batterys.

but often worth it.

I doubt it. It may be truer with digital cameras tho.

But it's the same reason that I continue to accept
and use old appliances that I can repair myself.

I repair all my own stuff too, but accept
that sometimes I need to buy parts.

That can mean that you have to do without
some of the most elegantly usable appliances tho.

For example I refuse to buy a stove that incorporates
a digital timer/clock; they are virtually unrepairable!

If a digital timer makes it through the first 90 days,
and then through warranty, it may very well outlive
YOU. Infant mortality is the biggest issue with electronis.

And is really just a nuisance given that its covered by the warranty.

Mechanical timers simply wear out or burn out, and although
SOMETIMES repairable, they ARE more likely to fail after the
first year or so than electronics. Particularly as the mechanics
were cheapened and electronics become more integrated and solid.

Yeah, in spades with mics where the antique phone mics were
steaming turds reliability wise before all phones became electronic.

Mindlessly silly. My microwave is still going fine 30 years later.

Eventually can see myself, however, ending up with one
of those and deliberately disconnecting the digital timer
clock or modifying the stove to use one my older (saved)
clock/timers or just dong away with the timer altogether.

Or get a clue and only bother with that if it actually does fail.
And get the benefit of a decent modern design when it doesnt.

I've never actually had a single digital clock in any system
ever fail and I've got heaps of them, plenty 30+ years old.

My experience as well. Electromechanical timers have failed on
just about everything I've ever owned with them except for the old
Frigidaire range (50 years old and still working fine when the oven
element let go and "plasma cut" a big hole in the bottom of the oven)
Several wires had burned off 30 years ago - I repaired them 26 or 27
years ago - otherwise it worked fine. Not so the timer on the water
softener that pumped several hundred gallons of water and350 lbs of
salt all over the basement floor when the timer died--------.

The main thing I detest with modern products is keyboards. I used
to be able to buy proper double injection moulded keyboards in the
pre PC days but they arent even buyable now even with the branded
produces like Microsoft and Logitech and the stupid cheap stuck on
lettering never lasts very long at all.

But I wouldnt go back to corded mice and keyboards again.
In spades with non optical mice either.

 

[Rod Speed]

clare at snyder.on.ca wrote

Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote
Ecnerwal <LawrenceSMITH@SOuthernVERmont.NyET> wrote
Rick Brandt <rickbrandt2@hotmail.com> wrote

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

Or perhaps you havent.

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.

Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug packs etc.

"This part always breaks eventually, we'll
isolate it and make it easy to replace".

That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.

And even that has changed just recently too.

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,

Oh bullshit.

and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
to render them effectively non-economic to repair.

More bullshit. I've done just that fine with a modern electric chainsaw.

"This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty runs out -

Not even possible.

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost.

Separate matter entirely to the mindlessly silly claim that
its even possible to design an appliance to break about a
year after the warranty runs out, with most appliances.

And even the stuff which can be designed to do that like
the stuff with microprocessor control that can certainly
be programmed to do that, no one is actually THAT stupid.

Or even stupid enough to try it with a random component added either.

The engineers then have to decide where to cut costs.
Sometimes they win, sometimes you loose.

And with much of the chinese manufactured product now, they dont even bother.

Cost to assemble dictates design more than sevicability.

Yes, but that can produce much better reliability too,
most obviously with modern molded appliance cords.

If they can save a dollar in total per machine by making assembly
easier (or by cutting out a procedure, like de-burring drilled or
stamped holes) without increasing their warranty exposure, they do it.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with what is being discussed,
the mindlessly silly claim about PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE.

This could all change OVERNIGHT if all the cheap B@$7@rds in North
America wouldn't insist on buying the cheapest whatever possible.

Nope, because so few of them have a clue about even
the most basic stuff that determines what will last longer.

If there was a market for quality products at a price that companys could
afford to build them and sell them for, quality goods would still be available.

There still is with tradesman's tools.

That market just does not exist any more.

Yes it does.

If it did, Wallmarts would be closing all over North America,

Nope, they'd just sell those products if thats what the customers wanted.

instead of continuing to displace the established
specialty shops that used to sell the "good stuff".

They have got displaced for other reasons,
essentially the cost of making the individual sales.

For the same reason the old style grocery stores where you
asked for the items you wanted and an individual got them
off the shelves behind him for you except with fresh food now.

 

[Carl McIver]

"Rick Brandt" <rickbrandt2@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:UGwqh.1264$O02.862@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
total.

On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new
dryer will only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a guy"
who replaced a five year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of the
simplest and most reliable things in the home. There just isn't that much
to go wrong.

When you don't compare appliances to the rest of the
machinery/equipment/vehicles that an average household owns nowadays, it's
easy to think that appliances aren't meant to be repaired anymore. Compared
to everything else in your life, reliability and repairability is pretty
much the same, because the consumer has raised their expectations, so the
market adjusted.
I used to get into the points/electronic ignition argument all the time.
The opposing thinking was that points could be adjusted, and that you knew
when it was time to replace them, and mine was that you never had to do
either, and the reliability of electronic ignition was so much higher than
points that you had enough time worrying about other things that you could
afford to think that, instead of spending all your time maintaining things.
Model T's used to come with tools and a manual that guided you through a
complete engine overhaul, because every few thousand miles they knew you
were gonna have to!

Yup, electronic circuit boards aren't as structurally durable as the
spaghetti mess behind most older machines, but I can pretty much assure you
that you won't be messing with it near as often. If you have to repair a
particular brand machine, you will think less of that brand. When there was
only five or so brands, that were all made in the US, the makers didn't mind
trapping the consumer, but now that machines are built all over the world,
competition says that the customer is now highly concerned about
reliability, and won't even bother try to find the most reliable one out of
a selection of crap, but will buy what they don't have to hassle with.
Which one would you pick?

I'm not sold completely on that commentary as it relates to _all_
machinery, however. I won't buy a Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord, or any of
the million clones, simply because everyone else has one, and I can't find
mine in a parking lot. I'm confident that I've acquired a less reliable
automobile that reflects my personal taste in transportation, and when the
mass produced muck has passed on its appeal to much newer cars I'll still be
driving my own car, which retains its own appeal and uniqueness much longer.
It wasn't uncommon to get comments like: "Cool car, what is it?" on my much
older rides, from folks of all ages.

 

[John Husvar]

In article <pWuqh.1194$O02.980@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net>,
"Rick Brandt" <rickbrandt2@hotmail.com> wrote:

I think another big factor is the ratio of cost on parts versus labor. In
the
"old days" you might have a repair that was 70% parts and 30% labor
cost-wise.
Nowdays those percentages would be reversed and that just irks people who
just
don't see the value of anyone's labor (other than their own of course).

You see posts about this all the time. "Called a guy to come out and do foo
and
couldn't believe what he wanted to charge me!" Labor really induces a lot of
sticker shock these days.

Except in my game, power wheelchair repair, and maybe a rare few others,
where parts cost far more than labor, that is probably true.

A new joystick for a programmable wheelchair controller can cost ~$800 -
$1000 and take less than an hour to swap.

A wheelchair controller is basically a 24 Volt, two-channel, variable DC
Motor Control.

A new motor/gearbox runs ~$1000. (and you couldn't until recently buy
only one or the other, but it's an aftermarket company specializing in
old chairs and they're higher than new) It takes about an hour to two
for R&R.

A main power/control module may cost upwards of $2000. The simplest
programmable, integrated joystick control/power module is routinely
~$1200.

Oh, about that motor/gearbox ass'y: Power wheelchairs have two.

Scooters mostly have just one motor/transaxle. Replacement is only ~$900
+ labor

Our shop charges $40/hour labor with one hour minimum and we're by far
the cheapest in the area. Average is ~$75.

When there's a captive market and nearly guaranteed funding of a
purchase, (Medicare, Medicaid, Insurance, Charity) prices can do some
craaaaazy things.

--
Bring back, Oh bring back
Oh, bring back that old continuity.
Bring back, oh, bring back
Oh, bring back Clerk Maxwell to me.

 

[Michael Black]

(Alan Moorman@visi.com) writes:

Planned obsolescence has been a tenet of the automobile
industry since the '30s. General Motors, in particular
used styling to make a 2 or 3 year-old-car look "old" and in
need of replacement with a newly styled model.

A bigger engine, prettier colors, new styles, all those
things are at the heart of 'planned obsolescence.'

"Improving" the features on your cell phone every year is
the result of planned obsolescence.

No, that's fashion. If the old still works, then it's not

obsolete.

People who follow fashion trends are in the same boat. Their
clothes aren't obsolete, they simply don't want to wear them
anymore because they want the latest.

"Fashion" allows companies to sell the same thing to the same
people.

But the notion of "planned obsolescence" is that it's designed
from the beginner to not last long.

I'm not arguing that fashion causes people to buy new things.

Michael

 

[Too_Many_Tools]

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs.

The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.

Good designs are allowed to turn to bad designs to cut a fraction of a
penny.

The sooner the product dies after warranty, the sooner the customer
will be buying another NEW item.

As has been pointed out, the repair inventory is considered a "profit
center" which is code for gouge the customer if he wants to repair the
item.

And yes it IS a conspiracy....to get more of the public's money.

TMT


clare wrote:

On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:02:25 +1100, "Rod Speed"
rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote:

Ecnerwal <LawrenceSMITH@SOuthernVERmont.NyET> wrote
Rick Brandt <rickbrandt2@hotmail.com> wrote

This raises an apparent contradiction.

Perhaps you've not been adequately involved with your appliances
to see that there is not a contradiction, even "apparently".

Or perhaps you havent.

The old ones were, for the most part, designed to be repairable.

Yes. And so are the current ones too with the exception of plug packs etc.

"This part always breaks eventually, we'll
isolate it and make it easy to replace".

That is just plain silly with domestic appliances. There is bugger
all except light bulbs that cant be designed to last indefinitely.

And even that has changed just recently too.

The new ones are, for the most part, designed NOT to be repairable,

Oh bullshit.

and/or parts prices/availability are manipulated
to render them effectively non-economic to repair.

More bullshit. I've done just that fine with a modern electric chainsaw.

"This part will (by design) break about 1 year after the warranty runs out -

Not even possible.

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants over-ruling
engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost. The engineers
then have to decide where to cut costs. Sometimes they win, sometimes
you loose.
Cost to assemble dictates design more than sevicability. If they can
save a dollar in total per machine by making assembly easier (or by
cutting out a procedure, like de-burring drilled or stamped holes)
without increasing their warranty exposure, they do it.
This could all change OVERNIGHT if all the cheap B@$7@rds in North
America wouldn't insist on buying the cheapest whatever possible. If
there was a market for quality products at a price that companys could
afford to build them and sell them for, quality goods would still be
available. That market just does not exist any more. If it did,
Wallmarts would be closing all over North America, instead of
continuing to displace the established specialty shops that used to
sell the "good stuff".

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

 

[Martin H. Eastburn]

Or the plastic and pot metal unit isn't worth fixing.

I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade. Those I
will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old and have served
me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet. Easy to replace. Not available...

I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started getting better
flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the options for it - most -
and they will hold up to the years needed. But so many that I could have gotten
won't last. Glad I did the right thing in the first place.

When buying machine tools, I couldn't order the highest quality of machine, but
the tools and cutters... were as good as I could - as they last longer and
might retrofit onto better machine in the future.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/



Rick Brandt wrote:

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."


This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
often is because we don't repair them.

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

 

[Too_Many_Tools]

Out tendancy now is to replace appliances now based on fashion and not
usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
just fine but....they were not the right color.

Time for an education...unless you have a bottomless bank account.

Take a walk through Sears, Home Depot, Lowes...any of the home supply
companies and note how much space is dedicated to "fashion driven" home
upgrades....which offer significant profit margins for those who sell
them.

TMT

BobR wrote:

Out tendancy now is to replace appliances now based on fashion and not
usability. The appliance of a few years ago was harvest gold and
avacado green but those are no longer in fashion so we replace with the
black or stainless steel that is today's fashion. They don't need to
build with planned obselescence any more, we do that for them. I
should know, my wife insisted that we replace all the appliances in the
home we just bought for just that reason. All of the old ones worked
just fine but....they were not the right color.

Rick Brandt wrote:
Too_Many_Tools wrote:
In my opinon...no.

I intentionally try to have older appliances, vehicles, machines to
lower repair costs and keep overall ownership cost to a minimum.

Your thoughts?

TMT

Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2007
Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance
Service shop in Silver Spring.
"You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years
ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and
washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance
business."

This raises an apparent contradiction. Most people believe that appliances were
built much better in the past than they are now and yet in the past a whole
industry survived on doing appliance repairs. Perhaps they only seemed to be
built better in the past because we kept them longer and the only reason we kept
them longer is because we repaired them instead of replacing them. The flipside
of that same coin is that perhaps today's appliances only seem to be inferior
because we replace them more often and the only reason we replace them more
often is because we don't repair them.

 

[Rick Brandt]

Too_Many_Tools wrote:

It is NOT a conspiracy - it is the result of accountants
over-ruling engineers. The demand is to lower costs, at any cost.
The engineers then have to decide where to cut costs.


The engineers are TOLD by the MBA accountants where to cut costs.

You've never worked for a company that manufactures stuff have you?

Marketing (NOT accounting) might provide a price-point that their research
indicates a product needs to be at to be competitive and the
design/engineering/manufacuring departments might be given a mandate to meet
that price point by top level management, but there are no "accountants" telling
anyone where to cut costs.

 

[Ignoramus4939]

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 21:08:57 -0600, Martin H. Eastburn <lionslair@consolidated.net> wrote:

Or the plastic and pot metal unit isn't worth fixing.

I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade.
Those I will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old
and have served me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet.
Easy to replace. Not available...

I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started
getting better flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the
options for it - most - and they will hold up to the years needed.
But so many that I could have gotten won't last. Glad I did the
right thing in the first place.

Have you looked inside that expensive mixer.

The reason why I am asking is that I had one experience with such a
mixer, I found one on the curb (high end kitchenaid), and found cheap
plastic gears stripped inside. Fortunately, replacement parts were
available, and after a simple part swapping the mixer was working
again, and I sold it.

The plus here is that it is a repairable unit, the minus is that the
cheap gears fail by design and are very expensive in relation to their
cost (like $20 for some shit plastic gear).

I hope that you have a better mixer.

i

 

[Andrew VK3BFA]

William Noble wrote:

nonrepairable is not the same as planned obsolescense. A new product may be
impossible to repair because it uses custom electronics and special assembly
techniques but that doesn't mean it's planned to quit working in 3 years.

--

Yes it is - your wrong. Theres actually an engineering discipline
devoted to this subject - its called "Stress Engineering" ie how many
cycles can the door open and close before ir breaks - or, how many
hours will the just adequate component get stinking hot before it
desolders itself from the circuit board.....all things that most
technicians are intimately familiar with - (their called "bread and
butter" faults..).we used to make a living from them....the technically
difficult repairs that took EONS you did for self satisfaction and lost
money on - that was ok when there was enough of the other stuff to make
a living.

The whole societal mindset has changed - most of my customers now are
"mature aged" and have the life long expectation that when thing
breaks, it gets fixed. The younger ones - don't even bother, they
EXPECT it to break soon after the warranty ends (thats BONUS time!) and
will not even think about getting it repaired....

Modern manufacturing methods - them too - snap together plastic
assemblies designed for easy assembly with no thought for subsequent
servicing (hey, nuts and bolts cost MONEY) - done by unskilled, low
wage workers to whom a screwdriver is probably a complex machine tool.
Modern circuit boards - SMD components, machine assembled, wave
soldered - give VERY high reliability due lack of "operator error" but
again, virtually impossible to repair without specialist equipment -
fine if your in aerospace, or medical, or industrial where you have the
margins, but not domestic stuff. (and thats assuming the complex in
house LSI IC is even available - it usually isnt...)

And the manufacturers too - theres no money in servicing, 10,000 TV
sets can be ordered, delivered to the customers distribution centre
straight off the boat all from one person sitting in front of a PC - no
warehouses, spare parts stock, skilled staff to manage the spare parts,
service data to manage, field service staff to control, cost of running
a service centre....

Same for service data - costs too much. Its easier to replace something
under warranty irrespective of the fault, crush it, and claim it as a
tax loss than maintain a service centre with skilled techs,,,,

Sooo - this leaves people like us - slightly demented, do it
yourselfers, who machine bits out of aluminum to replace a broken
plastic bracket (thats why I got into this bizarre metalworking world)
- people who will spend DAYS chasing a generic replacement, who, when
they see something of a similar model in the dumpster, will rescue it
to take home for spares.....

Do I complain - yeh, fer sure. Would I do anything else - no way, I
enjoy the challenge. Learning new skills, being rat cunning and
devious, figuring out how to beat the obsolescence game....its fun
(mostly) Pity it barely pays the bills - fortunately the house is paid
for, the kids are off our hands (mostly) and I dont lust after a turbo
Porsche...(now, more tools - thats different...) And when my generation
goes - thats it, cant see anyone choosing to do this to make a living.
Sitting at a service station console taking money for gasoline pays
better.

The only industries where you CAN make good money servicing are:-

1.Where the machine itself costs LOTS of money, so the repair is a
small part of the cost
2.Where people are standing idle because the machine is down
3 There is some sort of "voodoo mystique" about it (medical is a good
example)

Ah, that feels SO much better ..........

Andrew VK3BFA.

 

[Rod Speed]

Carl McIver <cmciver@mindspring.com> wrote:

"Rick Brandt" <rickbrandt2@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:UGwqh.1264$O02.862@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Yes, my mother used her first clothes dryer for over 30 years. We
replaced the belt three times. A new dryer might last five years,
total.

On what do you base this statement? To claim that (on average) a new
dryer will only last five years is absurd. What, you once knew "a
guy" who replaced a five year old dryer? The dryer has to be one of
the simplest and most reliable things in the home. There just isn't
that much to go wrong.


When you don't compare appliances to the rest of the
machinery/equipment/vehicles that an average household owns nowadays,
it's easy to think that appliances aren't meant to be repaired
anymore. Compared to everything else in your life, reliability and
repairability is pretty much the same, because the consumer has
raised their expectations, so the market adjusted.
I used to get into the points/electronic ignition argument all the
time. The opposing thinking was that points could be adjusted, and
that you knew when it was time to replace them, and mine was that you
never had to do either, and the reliability of electronic ignition
was so much higher than points that you had enough time worrying
about other things that you could afford to think that, instead of
spending all your time maintaining things. Model T's used to come
with tools and a manual that guided you through a complete engine
overhaul, because every few thousand miles they knew you were gonna
have to!
Yup, electronic circuit boards aren't as structurally durable as
the spaghetti mess behind most older machines, but I can pretty much
assure you that you won't be messing with it near as often. If you
have to repair a particular brand machine, you will think less of
that brand. When there was only five or so brands, that were all
made in the US, the makers didn't mind trapping the consumer, but now
that machines are built all over the world, competition says that the
customer is now highly concerned about reliability, and won't even
bother try to find the most reliable one out of a selection of crap,
but will buy what they don't have to hassle with. Which one would you
pick?

I'm not sold completely on that commentary as it relates to _all_
machinery, however. I won't buy a Toyota Corolla or Honda Accord, or
any of the million clones, simply because everyone else has one, and
I can't find mine in a parking lot.

I fixed that by getting a bright yellow mass
market car with the best warranty around.

If you dont like that approach it would cost peanuts to
have a remotely controllable flashing light mounted on it.

I'm confident that I've acquired a less reliable automobile that reflects my personal taste in
transportation, and when the mass produced muck has passed on its appeal to much newer cars I'll
still be driving my own car, which retains its own appeal and uniqueness much longer.

You can have both, with decent reliability as well.

My previous car lasted 35 years with very little maintenance
at all, and only got binned because I was stupid enough to not
fix the leaking windscreen because it was only a trivial nuisance.

It wasn't uncommon to get comments like: "Cool car, what is it?" on my much older rides, from
folks of all ages.

I never got any of those, but thats likely because I only ever washed it
before the rego check because it was more likely to pass without quibble.

 

[ATP*]

"Martin H. Eastburn" <lionslair@consolidated.net> wrote in message
news:1168830613_6961@sp6iad.superfeed.net...

Or the plastic and pot metal unit isn't worth fixing.

I have some had electric tools that are of professional grade. Those I
will fix my self as long as I can. Most are 25 years old and have served
me for that long. One needs a thin shim sheet. Easy to replace. Not
available...

I paid high dollars for my wife to have a quality mixer. We started
getting better
flavor and mixed foods / cakes / whatnot. I got the options for it -
most -
and they will hold up to the years needed. But so many that I could have
gotten
won't last. Glad I did the right thing in the first place.

Was it a Total Blender?

http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe

 

[Edwin Pawlowski]

<Alan Moorman@visi.com> wrote in message

I think the main problem with today's appliances is that
they are NOT made so that they can be repaired.

I have an old toaster from the '40s or '50s. It is a
mechanical thing, not electronic, and is made of individual
parts that can be cleaned, oiled, and if you could get them,
replaced as needed. When something like this stops working,
less than an hour's work will set it up to run for another
25 years!

That old toaster probably cost about 3+ hours pay for a worker back then.
Today, I can buy one for 15 minutes pay. Really, Wal Mart has them for $8.
They can't make them that cheap and have them easily repairable too. I
doubt you can buy any war parts in there for that price anyway. Aside from
landfill problems, the new toaster is a pretty good deal.