From: bigjim@backpacker.com
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.metalworking misc.consumers.frugal-living sci.electronics.repair alt.home.repair misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: Planned Obselescence....A Good Thing?
Date: 14 Jan 2007 16:51:24 -0800
   posting-account=37psHg0AAACgV8fXfyR0YgioGr4UQ2d5

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