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Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

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Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#21

Post by bigDinosaur »

_adamb wrote: post #11

Pretty much anything engineered (buildings, bridges, electronics, houses, ...) have a death date. Any civil engineering projects I've been a part of have always had a quantified project lifetime. We _could_ build things that lasted hundreds of years, but the cost would be astronomically high and demand would change in that timeline. Opinion: People seem outraged at this with electronics but not the other products. Th…

I'd be pretty unhappy if an engineer built a bridge that could have lasted 100 years if they hadn't cheaped out and saved $10 by using plastic instead of metal for some component, halving its life expectancy. Or if they put components next to each other which really shouldn't be, unnecessarily increasing failure rates. Or if they built a bridge where you couldn't replace any component without blowing part of it up.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#22

Post by brudgers »

So a couple of months ago I bought a Yamaha Rex 50 digital effects unit from the 1980’s.

I opened it up for cleaning, to check the electrolytic capacitors (some need replacement) and to swap out lithium coin cell battery that backs up the user’s saved settings.

Since the battery was working, I assumed it had been replaced.

Nope, the working lithium coin battery has a date of November 1987 which is very early so far as I understand.

So it’s still there because if it’s still working after thirty five years, it will probably be working for the two or three years I can expect from a new battery.

It was refreshing to experience an engineering design driven by long reliability in a piece of digital electronics.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#23

Post by gibolt »

samatman wrote: post #9

I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had. It's the cord. For me, a max of six months of fiddling with the damn thing and it breaks. I've had real headphones last quite a bit longer— but I buy the ones with replaceable cords. The pair I still have is on its fourth cord and second pair of muffs. I don't view it as any sort of economic, human, or environmental catastrophe, that they sto…

I use similar measurements to value/compare purchases and their impact.

- Value per use - Weight (analog for materials used) - Likely lifetime

Bonus for wireless headphones specifically is you can buy replacement cases, or single buds if any go bad.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#24

Post by MerelyMortal »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #18
psi75 wrote: post #12

At this point, I only buy Apple products because of inertia. Give me an out-of-the-box Linux laptop that's as easy to use and that supports the software I need for my work, and give me a way to port over all of my cloud stuff, and I'm done with Apple forever. They're trading on the reputation they earned decades ago. This said, the problem isn't limited to one company. It's how capitalism works. In order to succeed,…

>Give me an out-of-the-box Linux laptop that's as easy to use and that supports the software I need for my work, and give me a way to port over all of my cloud stuff, and I'm done with Apple forever. They're trading on the reputation they earned decades ago Buy a Dell XPS.

It seems to be a lottery with the earlier XPS laptops (hardware-wise), but I have a 2020 model and it's been very good. I'm definitely interested in my next laptop being an XPS. I bought one that came with Windows and installed Ubuntu on it and it's great. The only thing I haven't tried is the fingerprint reader.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#25

Post by rowanG077 »

samatman wrote: post #9

I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had. It's the cord. For me, a max of six months of fiddling with the damn thing and it breaks. I've had real headphones last quite a bit longer— but I buy the ones with replaceable cords. The pair I still have is on its fourth cord and second pair of muffs. I don't view it as any sort of economic, human, or environmental catastrophe, that they sto…

That's a pretty funny statement considering detachable cords exist. A cord is basically some copper and plastic sheet. Easily recyclable.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#26

Post by nautilius »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #21
_adamb wrote: post #11

Pretty much anything engineered (buildings, bridges, electronics, houses, ...) have a death date. Any civil engineering projects I've been a part of have always had a quantified project lifetime. We _could_ build things that lasted hundreds of years, but the cost would be astronomically high and demand would change in that timeline. Opinion: People seem outraged at this with electronics but not the other products. Th…

I'd be pretty unhappy if an engineer built a bridge that could have lasted 100 years if they hadn't cheaped out and saved $10 by using plastic instead of metal for some component, halving its life expectancy. Or if they put components next to each other which really shouldn't be, unnecessarily increasing failure rates. Or if they built a bridge where you couldn't replace any component without blowing part of it up.

It's rarely the engineer deciding this.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#27

Post by ramraj07 »

samatman wrote: post #9

I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had. It's the cord. For me, a max of six months of fiddling with the damn thing and it breaks. I've had real headphones last quite a bit longer— but I buy the ones with replaceable cords. The pair I still have is on its fourth cord and second pair of muffs. I don't view it as any sort of economic, human, or environmental catastrophe, that they sto…

Yeah I don’t get the environmental angle as well. It’s 10g, I’m sure there’s more lithium in a single AAA cell than 50 AirPods. Imagine how much more polluting a single dude in Texas rolling coal would do compared to everyone in Texas using AirPods.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#28

Post by Mikealcl »

rowanG077 wrote: post #25
samatman wrote: post #9

I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had. It's the cord. For me, a max of six months of fiddling with the damn thing and it breaks. I've had real headphones last quite a bit longer— but I buy the ones with replaceable cords. The pair I still have is on its fourth cord and second pair of muffs. I don't view it as any sort of economic, human, or environmental catastrophe, that they sto…

That's a pretty funny statement considering detachable cords exist. A cord is basically some copper and plastic sheet. Easily recyclable.

And some of us repair them ourselves, but most vendors don’t offer detachable cables.

Would be nice.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#29

Post by coryrc »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #6
beecafe wrote: post #3

It would be great if consumer electronics products had expected lifetime ratings on the front. People would naturally take issue with products with significantly below median lifetime, and also if their own products didn't live up to the lifetime. It would also make sense to phrase other quantities on product packaging in the way they're experienced by the consumer: instead of emphasising the wattage of a bulb, if yo…

> instead of emphasising the wattage of a bulb, if you showed the lumens/$, more efficient bulbs would naturally win out. Instead, LED bulbs have fake wattage numbers to show the equivalent wattage incandescent lighting that would be needed to match the LED. I don't understand what the problem is supposed to be. The system we currently have is that all bulbs are labeled with their brightness ("equivalent wattage"), w…

I think GP meant per $ of running cost. I have seen LEDs that are only 2/3 as efficient: "60W equivalent" using 11W at a reduced lumen level, instead of 8W at, iirc, 800 lumen.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#30

Post by Gualdrapo »

My first smartphone was the Motorola Atrix 4G, which I bought around may 2012. Removable battery, first fingerprint scanner, great pixel density for that era. It was cool and I took care of it as much as I could.

But the 365th day after I bought it, WiFi and Bluetooth stopped working. All of a sudden. WiFi chip was built with a death date.

On the other hand, the next phone I bought lasted with me for more than 7 years - until I accidentally dropped it and crashed with an acute metal surface. Only the screen died but I used it as an excuse to got a new phone, but now I fear phones now aren't designed nor built to last that much.

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