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O Holy Crap

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Re: O Holy Crap

#41

Post by Jupe »

teekert wrote: post #17

I have Philips vacuum cleaner, I guess it's 30 years old. Some ducttape on the hose but still going strong. I bought a cordless one 2 years ago (also Philips, 8000 series), really love it, but it's starting to fail. I go back to the shop and the thing just works like normal, come back home... brush and leds fails periodically. So annoying. I also own a lot of supossed 25.000 hours-of-life Leds, that failed after 1-2…

LED's will last 25,000 hours. The drivers (the components that convert AC to the required DC, at a constant/steady rate) however, apparently die long before the actual LED does. I've replaced many so far. It's not hard if you can use a soldering iron (and the light in question supports it). If your LEDs are blinking, that's a sure-fire sign that the driver is bad (not the LED).

And, from my experience, it's probably the battery that's failing in your cordless vac.

Re: O Holy Crap

#42

Post by cfeduke »

The thing in this space that has always bothered me was the simple can opener. (For those not in the US, yes, in the US we still need can openers.) The new ones which can be purchased in the grocery store break within a month or two. I don't even want to think about modern electric openers. I found a used vintage can opener from the 1970s on eBay six years ago and use it practically every day; as it was used it cost less than the shiny new ones in the store. Maybe there are modern high quality non-commercial can openers but they aren't at the grocery store or Pampered Chef or any of the other kitchen appliance stores at the local mall.

Re: O Holy Crap

#43

Post by chrisweekly »

Can anyone recommend a large room humidifier that might actually work reliably (assuming proper care and maintenance, no weirdly hard water) for multiple winter seasons? The last FOUR I bought from diff brands failed either DoA or within a couple weeks. Willing to pay for actual basic quality.

Re: O Holy Crap

#44

Post by mbfg »

derbOac wrote: post #27
bambax wrote: post #8

> Many blamed these problems on the government. They believed it had crippled certain products (major home appliances, especially) This is a claim that was already present in Death of a Salesman . Here's the quote: > I am always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it's on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when…

For what it's worth, some things in my lifetime have seemed to get much better, and cars and refrigerators happen to be in that class. Many other things seem to have gotten worse though, like clothes and linens. I suspect there's some pattern to those things that have improved and those that have declined, and everything in between, but I couldn't explain it.

watching many youtube mechanic channels, i get the sense that they seem to think that 2000 era cars were better than today's car. The common missive is that they now have really cheap parts, and the cars are over controlled by computer systems making them brittle and expensive to repair.

Re: O Holy Crap

#45

Post by teekert »

Jupe wrote: post #41
teekert wrote: post #17

I have Philips vacuum cleaner, I guess it's 30 years old. Some ducttape on the hose but still going strong. I bought a cordless one 2 years ago (also Philips, 8000 series), really love it, but it's starting to fail. I go back to the shop and the thing just works like normal, come back home... brush and leds fails periodically. So annoying. I also own a lot of supossed 25.000 hours-of-life Leds, that failed after 1-2…

LED's will last 25,000 hours. The drivers (the components that convert AC to the required DC, at a constant/steady rate) however, apparently die long before the actual LED does. I've replaced many so far. It's not hard if you can use a soldering iron (and the light in question supports it). If your LEDs are blinking, that's a sure-fire sign that the driver is bad (not the LED). And, from my experience, it's probably…

It keeps the vacuum, it's really the brush head with the rotating brush and leds that fails periodically. Feel like as I move some conctact are broken and restored.

Re: O Holy Crap

#46

Post by theK »

vages wrote: post #4

Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing the quality of new and old items. The single juicer that lasts 70 years may be the only one of its kind to last that long, the others from the same production year being left to rot and rust in a landfill. That being said, I definitely believe that planned obsolesence and unintentional bad quality is a plague on modern consumer items. I am lucky enough to ha…

I'm really rooting for getting the onslaught of rubbishware to end but don't see the right to repair laws making a dent there. Those laws are engineered to make it possible to repair complex, expensive things. Dealing with intentionally misengineered things that are trash cheap is a completely different discipline.

Re: O Holy Crap

#47

Post by assafweinberg »

I think the degradation in quality could be a result of advancements in marketing. With such powerful tools, the determining factor for winning products is now marketing not quality. The marketing arms race incentivizes companies to invest more in convincing customers their product is better and invest less in improving their product.

Re: O Holy Crap

#48

Post by TN1ck »

agotterer wrote: post #19

I echo the sentiment of this article. Im nearly 40 and for most of my adult life I’ve found that most things are frustrating to use, have unnecessary tech bolted on (and that’s coming from a technologist), and in many ways barely work. My fancy Bosch dishwasher can’t clean a dish if there’s a tiny bit of food on it. My GE dryer takes two cycles and at least 1.5 hrs to dry some cotton clothes. Don’t get me started on…

Modern dishwashers should be able to clean basically anything, most often when they don’t perform well, something got stuck in the water dispensers and there is just not enough water reaching the dishes (this will rarely create an error code). At least that’s my experience and I abuse those machines quite a bit in terms of what I put in there.

Re: O Holy Crap

#49

Post by BlueTemplar »

derbOac wrote: post #27
bambax wrote: post #8

> Many blamed these problems on the government. They believed it had crippled certain products (major home appliances, especially) This is a claim that was already present in Death of a Salesman . Here's the quote: > I am always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it's on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when…

For what it's worth, some things in my lifetime have seemed to get much better, and cars and refrigerators happen to be in that class. Many other things seem to have gotten worse though, like clothes and linens. I suspect there's some pattern to those things that have improved and those that have declined, and everything in between, but I couldn't explain it.

Regulations. Also probably how cars and refrigerators need energy to work ?

The downside is that cars especially have not gotten cheaper. (This is starting to change, sadly by necessity rather than choice, ~ton personal vehicles will soon be the thing of the past even in rich countries.)

Re: O Holy Crap

#50

Post by lentil_soup »

h2odragon wrote: post #10

Who needs most of this crap? I have a knife. It is a simple piece of metal that peels carrots, apples, and many other things with great reliability. It also performs other functions that a "carrot peeler" could not. It has done so for 20 years and can be expected to remain functional for several more decades. "Coffee grinder"? how many iterations of the idea of the blender does one kitchen need? (I count a half dozen…

well, using a peeler (not just for carrots) is a way faster way to peel things and it's tiny. Mine has lasted years and peeling potatos is just so so fast. I understand what you mean, but in this case I think it is a pretty useful tool
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