Disposable consumer electronics
March 12th, 2007 by Benjamin KuoThis is completely off topic from Southern California high tech companies, but I thought I’d post this anyway. I spent the last week without a printer, which suddenly failed on me last week. As usual, the unit was out of warranty and more expensive to fix than to replace.
So far in the last year or so, I’ve gone through:
- Two hard drives (1 Maxtor - complete failure, 1 Seagate - under warranty)
- Three printers (1 HP, 1 Epson, 1 Canon)
- Two telephones
- Two DVD players
- One in-car stereo
- One iPod shuffle
- One iRobot Roomba (within a couple of weeks of buying it - within warranty)
Unfortunately, it seems like there’s no durability in consumer electronics nowadays (or any compelling reason for consumer electronics firms to care that their products last beyond the warranty period), and you’ve just got to assume you’ll be replacing whatever electronic item you’re buying today in 6-9 months. I just wish I wasn’t filling a landfill with all the stuff I have to continually replace!
March 12th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
This is exactly why I’m moving to a web-centric working model; I’ve given up building a complex pc configuration which has to be re-generated every few months. Data is easy to backup; it’s the apps/updates which take time! Also, I moved to a GSM phone (Cingular), so that as my phones die suddenly, I simply move the chip to the next phone….