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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

#31

Post by PragmaticPulp »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #4

I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). It would be good if * We could safely obtain reputable Li-ion batteries from reputable sources. I trust a handful of com…

> I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models).

We went through this exact cycle with laptops and cellular phones. The hardcore internet users were furious when companies dared to remove the option for a user-replaceable battery.

But the market reacted positively. And honestly, it turned out fine. I could get replacement aftermarket batteries for my iPhone and MacBooks for a long time, and now I can even get genuine replacement parts when I need them.

I see a lot of parallels in the flashlight world: The hardcore collectors who value their ability to swap out batteries, experiment with different cells, and carry their batteries from one light to the next are furious. Yet the average buyer probably prefers the features afforded by the custom battery solutions.

The standardized-battery flashlights are still readily available. The market will avoid the proprietary solutions if that's really what the market feels, but I suspect these companies actually have a good idea about what their customers are looking for.

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

#32

Post by userbinator »

_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…

We _could_ build things that lasted hundreds of years, but the cost would be astronomically high and demand would change in that timeline.

...and yet we did, and still use a lot of that construction today.

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

#34

Post by pixl97 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #31
clumsysmurf wrote: post #4

I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). It would be good if * We could safely obtain reputable Li-ion batteries from reputable sources. I trust a handful of com…

> I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). We went through this exact cycle with laptops and cellular phones. The hardcore internet users were furious when compa…

Cellphones are devices that cost hundreds of dollars and gave a store on every other streetcorner that can repair them. Doing this to flashlights is just creating e-waste.

Your average company knows the average buyer is an idiot and will gladly burn the earth selling them junk. We had to heavily regulate the food industry to prevent bad actors from causing negative effects, looks like the same needs to happen with e-goods.

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

#35

Post by userbinator »

fzzt wrote: post #5
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…

Many LED lightbulbs make claims about their expected lifetime. Except these numbers are often a fantasy. The LED itself may last almost forever, but the capacitors commonly go bad in a year or so. I suspect that would be the reality with a lot of the proposed mandatory labeling for electronics, too.

They also severely overdrive the LEDs to get more brightness, at the cost of both reduced efficiency and lifetime.

At least the Phoebus Cartel had an ostensible explanation (efficiency) for what they did. Doing the same with LED lighting is pure corporate greed.

Some of the indicator LEDs on some of my electronics are many decades old, yet they are still functioning like when they were new. Clearly LEDs can last a long time, but there wouldn't be any profit in that.

Here's some interesting discussion about the "Dubai Lamp", an attempt at going the opposite direction and actually making LEDs last significantly longer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793

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

#36

Post by pixl97 »

fzzt wrote: post #5
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…

Many LED lightbulbs make claims about their expected lifetime. Except these numbers are often a fantasy. The LED itself may last almost forever, but the capacitors commonly go bad in a year or so. I suspect that would be the reality with a lot of the proposed mandatory labeling for electronics, too.

Pretty much any number you see on Amazon is a lie except from a very limited number if sellers.

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

#37

Post by tomrod »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #31
clumsysmurf wrote: post #4

I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). It would be good if * We could safely obtain reputable Li-ion batteries from reputable sources. I trust a handful of com…

> I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). We went through this exact cycle with laptops and cellular phones. The hardcore internet users were furious when compa…

Who speaks for "the market?"

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

#38

Post by kibwen »

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,…

What software do you need for you work? Assuming you're a software developer, and unless you're doing something Apple-specific, it's hard to think of software that works on Mac but doesn't work on Linux. As far as options go, I picked up a System76 earlier this year and I've been surprisingly happy with PopOS.

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

#39

Post by Tijdreiziger »

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…

Are you comparing these against Apple’s wired earphones? Because Apple’s cords are almost hilariously bad, and perhaps the best example of a product that’s designed to fail. (In fairness, they’ve improved somewhat over the years, but the bar was on the floor.)

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

#40

Post by zx8080 »

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,…

I was in the similar situation. I've used linux on workstation in 00s, but since around 2012 been using corporate Macbooks mostly.

My recent experiment with moving to the cheapest Thinkpad (E14 Gen 3, the one with AMD) was successful and using it for personal projects makes me very happy. I bought the cheapest configuration and added some RAM and the second (!) NVMe disk to install linux in addition to windows (nice to have, but downgraded it to win10 from 11). Linux is so much stable and overall better than macos and windows.

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