The Laptop Conspiracy - Are You a victim?

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Your electronics are only as good as the weakest transistor/capacitor/resistor/diode.

Here is what you have to understand...

Every single part of the tends of thousands in your laptops boards and circuitry is rated for a specific amount of time. You can get the electronics catalogs that contain every single part, and they will all have a certain amount of time that they are "rated" to work at maximum efficiency. Once you go over that time period, or exceed that maximum rating, that is essentially when your warranty expires.

The companies that build the electronics parts from distributors know exactly which parts are the cheapest and have the lowest rating, and they will only ever give warranties that are up to the limit of the weakest part.

So when your laptop dies because your motherboard fried, 5 days after the warranty expired, you can bet your replacement money that it's because of a single transistor, capacitor, resistor or diode. And know that they planned it that way knowing you'll just buy another. (planned obsolescence)

~Namaste

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Someone I know of was having enourmous problems with her laptop.

She was sliding various letters and pieces of mail under her laptop.

The fan intake for her laptop was also directly underneath. As I see it, the fan was drawing the paper up to cover the intake hole and the whole thing 'cooked'.

I took the papers out and taped coins to all four of the feet of the laptop (she doesn't ever use it away from her desk) lifting it by a millimeter or two.

The laptop ran cool & fast since. Simple fix.

I agree that the air gap in most designs is intentionally insufficient.

I'll address the fan issue only.
Stick a paperclip between the blades of any fan in a laptop and blow the dust out. Use Compressed air. More PSI the better. Just don't let the fan spin. The plastic fans can break off. The opposite direction of airflow is best but it will take going at it from both directions. Thats all you need unless the fan is bad in the first place.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


This is just how companies make money, what good is bringing out the newest model if everyone already has a working laptop? (usually the new one only has a few minor upgrades, every now and again a major one, like OS, but that is usually a downgrade these days).

I've worked in retail before, Christmas is only a big profit turner if you have a new device and people need that device, this is easier if theirs is broken. Also the amount of people that would come in to get a "cheap" second hand replacement (I worked in GAME by the way, which is a video game store in the UK) baring in mind that we "bought" that second hand replacement for like £80 less than you just paid for it. Without people needing a replacement, GAME would not be a big business and there would still be plenty of other smaller businesses to compete.

There are electronics from the 60's that still work today, but somewhere in that time someone realised that they didn't have to make products that last, and now I give most electronics three years, maximum, unless you take REALLY good care of it. Capitalism at it's finest ladies and gents holding back society since 1979!

Deleted by thread creator because well.. it's just not worth getting toaded because people are stupid. ( It was kinda off topic anyway)


IRoyality it had nothing to do with your above post or anyone else's post in this thread. Thought i'd make that clear cus you posted just before i did.

tothetenthpower
reply to post by minusinfinity

 

And manufacturer's know that you don't have the money to purchase high quality devices, so they make low cost, low quality devices.

It's just the way the market is. That and greed.

An Iphone 5S costs 250$ to manufacture, the retail sales cost is 900$. What's the extra for?

Branding.

~Tenth

The reason why companies make low cost and low quality devices is because of planned obsolescence. They only want their products to last to just beyond the warranty that comes with that product. This way they are guaranteed you will either need a new product or you will have to get it repaired. Companies don't make as much money on a product that lasts for years.

I have an ASUS laptop, the only ventilation is on the back-end. It can blow out a hell of a lot of heat at times but the underside is tolerable (except right where the RAM sits, bit hot). Seems like a much better design than laptops with vents underneath - how do they expect those to breathe? Especially since it's a LAPtop and will often be set on a lap...no matter then if you have 2 inch lifters or not.

On the light bulb thing, with the older incandescent light bulbs, I'm sure the early ones were probably designed to last a long time. At the time, he wasn't building them to sell them. He was trying to prove a point.

At any rate, the incandescent bulbs we use (or did before the CFLs started taking over) were probably not made as well but they were much brighter, they're cheap (so if they burn out it doesn't cost much to replace one) and the way we use them is hard on them. Turning them on and off all the time might save electricity but it's hard on the filament. It's the way they work. They are constantly degrading but a bulb that has a lot of age on it is much more likely to die when you first turn it on. That's when it has the highest stress on it. A bulb that stays on constantly will probably last much longer. Maybe not as long as the Edison bulb but it will almost certainly outlive one that's turned on and off all the time.

The laptop? They're just not designed to last. You notice because they're expensive. If you could replace it for a few dollars, who would care? Engineers don't care about durability. They don't have to pay for a new one when it dies. And further, their job security depends on keeping people buying a new one every couple of years.

I never bought a laptop in my life because I don't need one. I hardly ever go anywhere. If you just sit in one place all the time, a laptop is a piece of junk compared to a desktop. Plus, with a desktop, you can build your own. You can build it to last ten years if you really want to. The laptop is a specialized product. You have to buy one that's already been designed a certain way and made the way they want to make it. You can't overbuild your laptop. You might be able to take it apart and install a beefier cooling solution if you're brave and good at that kind of thing but they generally don't make them easy to work on.

If you look at Youtube vids where people take them apart, you can see just how chintzy the fans are in most of them. It's a wonder they work as long as they do. Size constraints are an issue but they could probably do better if they wanted to. People who rely on laptops tend to be the kind of people who will just go buy a new one when it starts to sound like a helicopter. As usual, the market is driven by necessity. If the manufacturer doesn't have to build a laptop that'll last 5 years or more, why would they?