The scam we should not fall for

a reply to: TerryDon79

I get what you're saying, but the premise of the OP was Windows 8 and how electronics aren't held to a standard of other goods.

Close enough.

Certain computer manufaucturers place itty bitty stickers on internal components and if those stickers are broken then the warranty is null and void...unless you consult a certified microsoft technician and the fees are exorbitant. I don't tamper with the hardware for that reason- I give a defrag, a registry check and disable all unnecessary boot programs. However that will not stop a computers components from failing.

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
a reply to: TerryDon79

I get what you're saying, but the premise of the OP was Windows 8 and how electronics aren't held to a standard of other goods.

Close enough.

Certain computer manufaucturers place itty bitty stickers on internal components and if those stickers are broken then the warranty is null and void...unless you consult a certified microsoft technician and the fees are exorbitant. I don't tamper with the hardware for that reason- I give a defrag, a registry check and disable all unnecessary boot programs. However that will not stop a computers components from failing.

If it's under warranty or extended warranty the fix price is normally free.

If it's out of warranty then you have to pay, but no one says you have to use a Microsoft certified engineer. The best techs I know aren't certified and do it out of a small shop and charge considerably less than a "mainstream" tech.

This misinformation has been going on since the very advent of the PC. There is , by law, a figure that has to be published for components of computer systems . It is called MBTF , Mean Time Between Failures. This is the average lifespan of that component under normal use. Know why most warranties on PCs used to be 3 years ? That was the average lifespan(or MBTF) of the most simplest component. The little CMOS battery in that computer.

A lot of unlearned people took the MBTF as meaning there was a kill switch built into it that ended the life of that component at that time.I still have a working Commodore 64 , from around 1980....

Thats how all this "conspiracy" got started
Peace

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

Yeah...but that's just the start. What about the hardware? Delicate components are placed near heat sources so eventually that device becomes beyond repair and therefore a new device is required

Protected by heatsinks or heat transfer devices....and as technology progresses and the amount of power needed decreases , there is even less need for those. They do not generate NEAR as much heat as they once did.
A 3.5ghz processor OC'ed to 4+ ghz now only runs a little over room temp.

a reply to: intrptr

and our organic brains with High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Hey are you a communist? Whats wrong with poisoning our bodies so Doctors and Big Pharma make money. Capitalism at its finest.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

If its broken they can charge to fix it.

a reply to: Gothmog

I'll say it again...i'm not talking about self Assembled PC's, I'm talking about your stock standard laptops and smartphones.

originally posted by: KawRider9
a reply to: Thecakeisalie

The service industry has been gone for a long time. We live in a "throw away" world.

It's cheaper to buy new than to fix the old. While we do still build products that last, most people prefer to buy the cheaper product that's replaceable.

It's sad that the majority has that mindset. I'm in the service industry and it pisses me off. Can't change people's desires for cheap crap though. Walmart loves that simplistic mindset of the sheep!

Repair costs often cost the same as just replacing. Most of our goods are electronic in nature and its get cheaper and cheaper to manufacture so that replacing often gets you a better model as the same costs of repairing the old one.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

I agree with you except for the first paragraph, unless this doesn't apply to desktop PCs. Mine is 5 years old, running Windows 7, outperforms just about any pre-built machine in the market today, and has plenty of highly-usable life left.

I do believe phones and laptops are built horribly and not intended to last beyond 12 months, so I'm with you on that point. I do wonder, however, if a company made a phone built to last, on average 5 years, and it cost twice as much, would anyone actually be willing to buy it? Even if the processor and memory could be easily and inexpensively upgraded as appropriate, I don't think they would. People want the bi-annual upgrades like "elimination of audio jack" - oooh, ahhh

I could be wrong, as I'm a bit out of the loop. I use a $100 Android phone and my unlimited service costs $12/month. Maybe the people who spend $1800/year on a piece of junk brand-new iPhone + service are willing to spend even more for quality, but I doubt even their free-spending urges tend toward spending on quality.

It's unfortunate that most people aren't willing to pay for quality anymore (for anything, from phones to furniture.) If people were more interested in quality rather than price, there would likely be more manufacturing jobs in the US (and similarly in Europe.) Quality goods would also cost less than they do today, because they could be made in greater quantities. I would rather pay $3000 for a couch that will not only be much more comfortable than a cheaper one, but also wear well and last 25 years, than to buy an uncomfortable $700 couch that looks like crap and needs to be replaced every 2-3 years. Too bad more people don't see the value or aren't interested in saving and waiting for quality. I think it is (mostly) the fault of consumers, who have voted in cheap, throw-away junk with their money in a landslide.

In response to those claiming the OP's post on planned obsolescence is rubbish or BS - The Lightbulb Conspiracy should shed some light for you. Planned obsolescence is very real, it's been happening for quite some time now, and if you think it only applies to Lightbulbs you're dead wrong. Watch the documentary though, it's sort - only about an hour (subtitled, so get ready to read a little bit), and will show you exactly how and why this is happening.

The Light Bulb Conspiracy investigates the history of Planned Obsolescence — the deliberate shortening of product life span to guarantee consumer demand — by charting its beginnings in the 1920s with a cartel set up expressly to limit the life span of light bulbs, right up to present-day products involving cutting edge electronics such as the iPod. The film travels to France, Germany, Spain and the US to find witnesses of a business…

[EDIT: Sorry, the embedded youtube does not seem to be working. YOUTUBE LINK | THE LIGHTBULB CONSPIRACY. The documentary can also be found on THOUGHT MAYBE | THE LIGHTBULB CONSPIRACY]

As a bonus side note, this short documentary helps illustrate just how real "conspiracies" are. We're living in a time where most people scoff at the idea of any conspiracy, but here is real documented evidence of one - and if people were willing to conspire over Lightbulb profits, one can only imagine what other conspiring goes on around the world.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie
You took one line from that entire post. It is ALL electronic components . I used computers as a example as that is where it started ,

I am saying that is a myth that has been going on since at least the 80s . People one time took hard drive manufacturers to court over this. They lost miserably. The MBTF is geared toward businesses. It is also called End Of Life.

originally posted by: Gothmog
a reply to: Thecakeisalie
You took one line from that entire post. It is ALL electronic components . I used computers as a example as that is where it started ,

I am saying that is a myth that has been going on since at least the 80s . People one time took hard drive manufacturers to court over this. They lost miserably. The MBTF is geared toward businesses. It is also called End Of Life.

I have been around long enough to remember $200, 20 MB hard drives, and memory being $100 a meg. I know these things die, also repaired and calibrated electronic equipment in the military. I just plan on buying a new desktop every three years, and donate my old one to someone who needs one.

originally posted by: BubbaJoe

originally posted by: Gothmog
a reply to: Thecakeisalie
You took one line from that entire post. It is ALL electronic components . I used computers as a example as that is where it started ,

I am saying that is a myth that has been going on since at least the 80s . People one time took hard drive manufacturers to court over this. They lost miserably. The MBTF is geared toward businesses. It is also called End Of Life.

I have been around long enough to remember $200, 20 MB hard drives, and memory being $100 a meg. I know these things die, also repaired and calibrated electronic equipment in the military. I just plan on buying a new desktop every three years, and donate my old one to someone who needs one.

Yes , another pro. So , with the plan on buying a PC every 3 years...that is exactly the idea behind my post.Planned obsolescence . It has been around since companies have used computer systems

BTW , I go back to the original mainframes . The only display we had was the holes in a punch card. Hard drives were a thing of the future and we had what was called core ram . A rectangular cube about a foot long that contained 16k of ram.

originally posted by: dogstar23
a reply to: Thecakeisalie

I do believe phones and laptops are built horribly and not intended to last beyond 12 months, so I'm with you on that point. I do wonder, however, if a company made a phone built to last, on average 5 years, and it cost twice as much, would anyone actually be willing to buy it? Even if the processor and memory could be easily and inexpensively upgraded as appropriate, I don't think they would. People want the bi-annual upgrades like "elimination of audio jack" - oooh, ahhh

Not true. I had my last phone for 4.5 years, an iPhone, and other than a smashed screen (something I did myself), I had no problems with the handset at all. I've had my latest phone for a year and it is working as well as the day I bought it. My PC I bought 5 years ago needed a new power supply, but other than that it is also working just fine.

I could be wrong, as I'm a bit out of the loop. I use a $100 Android phone and my unlimited service costs $12/month. Maybe the people who spend $1800/year on a piece of junk brand-new iPhone + service are willing to spend even more for quality, but I doubt even their free-spending urges tend toward spending on quality.

Actually, I do think the iPhone is of reasonable quality. People don't just buy electronic items because they are cheap. I am a musician, and no current Android phone can provide low latency Midi apps. This seems to be built into the hardware. Android phones work with approximately 500ms midi latency, whereas Apple phones are about 5-10ms, 10-20 ms over an ad-hoc wifi network. Apple have always catered to musicians as part of their key market

It's unfortunate that most people aren't willing to pay for quality anymore (for anything, from phones to furniture.) If people were more interested in quality rather than price, there would likely be more manufacturing jobs in the US (and similarly in Europe.) Quality goods would also cost less than they do today, because they could be made in greater quantities. I would rather pay $3000 for a couch that will not only be much more comfortable than a cheaper one, but also wear well and last 25 years, than to buy an uncomfortable $700 couch that looks like crap and needs to be replaced every 2-3 years. Too bad more people don't see the value or aren't interested in saving and waiting for quality. I think it is (mostly) the fault of consumers, who have voted in cheap, throw-away junk with their money in a landslide.

This is subjective. As a musician I do pay for quality, and I generally pay more for this. There is a market for cheap and nasty equipment, and there is a market for higher quality stuff. Just because you deem an iPhone to be junk, doesn't make it so. I am no Apple fanboy either. I built my own PC because I prefer to use a PC. I use an iPhone and an iPad because they are reasonable quality tools that can more than adequately fulfil a musical function.

a reply to: cuckooold

Apple does have an inbuilt crash time bomb

My mac laptop was in perfect condition after 7-8 years from day to day it just crushed .. Main thing was the ENTER button
Without wifi mouse I am unable to use it

Same with iPhones
They have even shorter lifespan they suddenly over heat or will crush on the deadline when you upload your upgrade

(You can't exceed 4 upgrades : I bet my something on this)

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

Apple really?

I'm using a 6 year old Macbook Pro. It works the same as the day I bought it. It it was planned to be "obsolete" they did a bad job.

I have an even older, white Macbook that's probably 8 years old. It still works fine too. So does my iPhone 4s. I've never had an Apple product not work the way it was designed.

Also, I'm never "forced" to upgrade because the programs I use won't work on my older Apple products.

I think you are confusing consumerism with planned obsolescence. Apple markets their products well, and creates consumer mania over the newest product, which isn't needed or really that much of an improvement over the last product. Do any of those people waiting in line for an iPhone NEED a new one? No, their current iPhones still work flawlessly. They only think they need them.

That's their fault for thinking that, and signs that Apple has good marketing.

Now Microsoft? Bloated code, leaky memory, defragging hard drives, bios updates, continual firmware updates (because all the components are built by random companies and fingers cross they all work well together) ect, ect.

Yeah, no thanks. I'll wait longer, save a bit more money and just get a product that works when I need it 100% of the time. My time is valuable, and I'm not going to waste it doing upkeep and maintenance on my devices so they work right.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

I wonder if we can ever effectively deal with the problem because its so ubiquitus, the entire worlds economy is doing it so we are unlikly to ever be able to do much about it.

We all this occures across the whole world.

The thing we have to be guard against is that phrase 'the throwaway society" will come out of the cupboard again soon and we are going to be blamed for all the crap that ends up in rubbish dumps, not the manufacturers who deliberately manufacture deliberately poor quality products, where the blame rightly belongs.

"just don't by the crap' will ring hollow because 99.9% of the time we do not have a choice to buy deliberately made rubbish products we are away from with work commitments for 10-12 hours a day.

The message that we must get out is that poor quality products are environmentally unsustainable as agenda 21 is fond of saying.

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
I am going to warn and inform you-whatever device you are using to read this will either cease to work or will be needed to be upgraded before 2017.

Any electronics component will eventually fail, but the above statement is absolutely ludicrous. I have a 13 year old laptop that sits on a shelf in a closet as a server. It runs pretty much nonstop and has never been repaired or upgraded, except to switch operating systems. I have several 10+ year old cellphones that still work fine (getting service for them might be difficult though). One of my desktops is going on 8 years old, and still performs fine.

Planned obsolescence and incremental updates are a smart business model, from the manufacturer's perspective, but to say that things will simply cease to work in less than two years is asinine.

I think the planet itself is being prepared for planned obsolescence.....doooooomed.