Electronics warranty kill switch - How do they know when to die.

Originally posted by ChrisCrikey
reply to post by Iwinder

 

Yeah, started with an "E" but they paid a price and maybe are better about things now but I think they're all crap now though so I just buy cheapos that start with and H and am lucky to get two years out of them. If you search you'll find a large class action suit against the first mentioned about seven years ago but that was just for ink levels and the chips that say they're empty when they are not. I just hate contributing to garbage and landfills and that's why they all make me so angry. Built in obsolescence should be a crime.

Thanks so much for your information and I agree planned obsolescence should be and probably is a crime.
I just have never seen it mentioned on the Major news channels and it does not help us here that we hardly ever watch tv. On the flip side I have seen one thread here talking about just that...."Planned Obsolescence" and it was quite good.
Thanks again for the heads up and have a good one there.
Regards, Iwinder

You know, I distinctly remember an article a few years ago about Microsoft being accused of placing a sort of "internal battery" or something to that effect, that runs dead right around the end of the warrantys on the original Xboxs.
But, other than that one article, I never heard of it again.

Ironically enough, I got myself a brand new iPod Nano 4th gen like a year ago, and about around the time the warranty went out, the click wheel started acting up.
Now, some days, Im lucky if I can even get the thing to play.
Although, I had the original bulky iPod, and that big bastard lasted me like 6 years.

But from what I was reading online, ALOT of people seem to have that problem with newer iPods

Lead free solder is the reason electronics don't last as long now.

The lead free solder grows tin whiskers.
And they will at some point short out the electronics.

www.guardian.co.uk...
www.msnbc.msn.com...

So now here is another thing you can blame on the tree huggers.

A number of Chinese companies went to a low grade lead free solder just because electronics die quickly and only last about a year.

This raises there sales because people have to replace there electronic sooner.

High humidity areas cause these tin whiskers to grow faster.
and for things like cell phones that are carried in pockets the humidity from the acid sweat of your body is even faster.
Get a case that is outside your clothing and don't carry inside your pants pockets.

reply to post by Global consciousness


i believe the term you are looking for is planned obsolescence


the capacitor issue is due to being cheap chinese slave labor, there is a point at which trying to maximize your daily output [in order to earn more] is going to affect the quality of the final product

there was a time when you could buy any appliance..washer, dryer, fridge..anything and know that it would out last you and prob your kids too. yes..we used to make things like that.
not much profit in reliability though..so here we are..buying items that last for a short time throwing them away and buying more. reliability is measured in months now where it used to be measured in years or tens of years..its all about the profit margin now, no one gives a crap about the consumer..just keep consuming.

warrantees are set staticstically based on a what is called a bath tub curve. Google it

Originally posted by ..5..
My laptop worked fine for two years then about a week ago the DVD drive started making noise then yesterday morning the screen was fine that evening dead would not light up.

I called tech service and the warranty expired ten days ago.

This is to coincidental top be anything but a conspiracy. There must be a kill switch that is set to kill the computer, TV DVD player phone etc, hours after the warranty expires.

What bugs me is that I know that if I had extended the warranty the laptop would have never had a problem the kill switch would have been somehow reset to kill the computer at a later date.

Planned obsolescence
en.wikipedia.org...

It is like with the refurbished xbox 360 I bought that died 7 day's after the warranty expired. You just remember who built it and don't do business with them again.

Planned Obsolescence.

Its so consumers keep going back and purchasing items and/or take out extra warranty cover with the company. What good is it if you only had to buy one and it lasted your lifetime? Its all about money, greed.

www.dailymail.co.uk... ---> made way before they realised how much money was to be made by effectively putting in an artificial lifespan of a product, either in the materials major parts are made of, or by a programmable microchip.

Car tyres are a good example, they are designed for the threading on them to ware down after x amount of miles, yet not many know that if they wanted to they would make them last the entire life time of the car, yet where is repeat money to be made in doing that?

Just look at car batteries.

Most last if you are lucky 3 years.

But i have worked with many industrial lead acid batteries that were 20 to 30 years old and still worked fine.

Big companies are not going to buy big high priced industrial batteries that die in 3 years,

But most car owners don't think twice about car batteries that die in three years or less.

This is the biggest reason i would not buy a electric car.

You never know how long the company that built the batteries plans for them to last.

And since the batteries in many electric cars are build as a unit just a couple cells in the battery going bad will force you to buy a complete new battery unit.

The manufacture then can take the unit apart and replace the bad cells and resell the unit as a remanufactured unit.
They make the money and you get screwed.

This is a very interesting docu about the kill switch .

Most things made have common points of failure; items that are the most likely components to fail given enough time. I can't say whether they are designed to fail or just discovered to be the weak links.

The companies then calculate a mean time before failure (MTBF). The warranty is then set to expire before the item is likely to break.


I don't even know if this is true or not, but it sounds like it is.

Another thing that they have cheapened to the point of throwaway is the keyboards. The old heavy buckling spring keyboards would last forever. not the new soft touch ones by a long shot. 6000 keystroaks or so they they sart to crap out.

This is caused by:

Planned Obsolescence (Thank Henry Ford for that)
Cheaper parts
Shortcuts to lower manufacturing costs
China (unsafe manufacturing conditions, and cheap labor)

There is no kill switch in your laptop. I have supported desktops and laptops at the corporate level for 13 years. I have seen the same year model laptops die over and over, but each in different ways.

I can say some do have mass die offs via defects, 2001-2003 Dell Latitudes had a video board screw that would back out after a year, in the next model year (2004ish) they lock tight the screw, or the famous Lenovo T60/T61 fans that go bad after a year of heavy use.

I still support Dell GX1's from 2000 that are turned off once every 4 years to move and are still running today.

The internal components are getting cheaper and lower quality year by year.

With that said over the years I can confirm one evil warranty trick... Laptop batteries are warrantied for 1 year... and last exactly 1 year and a few weeks with heavy continuous use.


My advice to laptop owners... don't plan on it lasting more than 2-3 years. And if it does, don't plan on the hard drive lasting more than 4 years. Get a desktop if you can.

I forgot all about this thread here...........www.abovetopsecret.com...
I don't mean to derail this thread but I did get some interesting feed back on the cheap crap we are forced to buy now.
It is quite obvious that most of us have noticed a very steep decline in the expected lifetime of everything we buy now.
Regards, Iwinder

Originally posted by ChrisCrikey
Ah, don't even get me started on printers. I had two identical printers that stopped working on exactly the same day and I knew there was absolutely nothing wrong with them and was not a virus - one was hooked up to an online computer while the other was on a computer I never use online...as for printer ink I did manage to get in on a class action suit against one prominent manufacturer but that must have been at least six or seven years ago.

That is why I buy printers used, and for cash. As a bonus, your printout can not be traced back to you if you bought used, and paid cash.

There was a story on one of my Hi-Fi sites about a British audio manufacturer who contracted with a Chinese company to do the assembly. He related in the story that he had to be there all the time during assembly, as the Chinese kept rolling out trays of cheaper parts than he had specified. My audio gear is mostly vintage, mostly bought used, or swapped for other gear. Very little (or none) is Chinese. I have a particular love for vintage British gear (made in Britain).

In some cases, it is actually to purchase a new printer than replace the ink cartridge...just sayin...

reply to post by MemoryShock


Yup...

I was once told,
"Gillette sells razor blades, not razors."

In turn HP/Epson sells ink cartridges, not printers.

Originally posted by MemoryShock
In some cases, it is actually to purchase a new printer than replace the ink cartridge...just sayin...

Designed for the dump, it's a terrible thing, the modern world would still extract oil from the ground that is millions of years in creation, transport it across the globe and cycle through who knows how many processes just to form it into a throw away spork so you and me can eat a spud u like and stir up a mixture of over priced beans and sugared water on our way to the oh so interesting drudgery of the 2nd half of the working day.

reply to post by Cyprex

Indeed...the practice is referred to as a Loss Leader...designed to get the consumer branded to the product and encourage repeat business for continued sales...Kind of clever...