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EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

eubusiness.com

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Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#221

Post by nradov »

freehunter wrote: post #165
ptaipale wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you get with your wages has changed. Real estate is more expensive; you get less of that with your wages. Mass-produced electronics and other consumer goods is much, much cheaper; you get more of that with your wages.

But in the 50s you weren't buying a new iPhone every few years, or a desktop/laptop computer or a tablet, or multiple TVs, or a cell phone contract, or an Internet contract, or cable TV, or Netflix. As our purchasing power has decreased and inflation has increased, we've also invented a lot more expensive stuff to spend our fewer and fewer dollars on.

In the 1950s you were buying a new car every few years because they fell to pieces.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#222

Post by simion314 »

guimarin wrote: post #220
simion314 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not impressed by the "expensive" products, as an example I own a Nexus 7 tablet, touch input stopped working reliably, I searched and found many similar issue, the solution is to open it and plug back a connector that got lose and maybe add some paper to have the thing pressed on it's place, so this is not a cheap, no name product, the problem could have been avoided maybe with a few more cents investment per pr…

for the most part, I don't consider commodity equipment to be 'expensive' even if the price point is expensive. I've observed that there are usually two classes of products in any market, the commodity bottom 80% and then the premium top 20%. My comment is about products that inhabit this 20%. To date, and from my point of view, there is no product running android which falls in this premium category. With the Nexus…

But most of the premium of iPad is branding, the extra money you pay is not in the hardware, and Apple products also break so you pay a ton of money(you would need to be rich or really a big fanboy to justify buying an Apple product in countries with a lower economy like Romania where you also have taxes and pay a lot more then someone in USA would pay). My point is you buy a super expensive Apple product but you don't get 5 years warranty even if you spent 2-4 medium incomes on it.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#223

Post by peoplewindow »

gpderetta wrote: post #83
yorwba wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You might wish it were different but the EU Parliament doesn't have any real power. The EP can't initiate new law, but they can still vote on law proposed by the Commission, which does give them a certain amount of power. Your second link mentions MEPs doing back-room deals with the Commission and European diplomats, which they certainly couldn't do if they were entirely powerless. I'm also skeptical on your claim…

They can also extensively amend laws and have the right to ask the commission to submit a proposal, and as far as I understand, the commission routinely obliges. So, while it might not have the jure initiative power, it does de facto.

The Commission frequently obliges because the EP is stuffed full of wildly unrepresentative EU fans whose proposals are usually of the form, "Please Commission, award yourself more power". This article being a good case in point - they're asking the EU Commission to regulate more at the EU level.

If the EP had made any serious attempt to prevent Brexit, for example by proposing to the Commission to let member states have more control over immigration, they'd simply have been ignored and thus they never both making proposals that they know would get rejected.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#224

Post by boobsbr »

perfectstorm wrote: post #148

I agree. We need something like this in the US. By law, electronic products sold in EU carries 2yrs warranty and I always wondered why U.S has only 1yr warranty. I can think of an incident where my laptop crapped out right after a year of purchase but the manufacturer was nice enough to repair it for free. With phones running $800+ nowadays, i would expect it to last longer (3yrs min.) like a laptop.

My HTC One M7 is 4 years old now, and still works perfectly.

Battery life is not awesome but still lasts a full day with light 4G usage. I don't get software updates anymore, but that isn't an issue for me.

I know that when the battery dies for good, or if the display shatters, I probably won't have a way to repair it, and that is bad because I really don't need a new phone.

Availability and cost of spare parts, and ease of repair should be major decision factors for people buying electronics. It already is the case for cars.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#226

Post by netcan »

illys wrote: post #11
netcan wrote: post #2

In other news, the parliament took a vote affirming previous decisions that TV shows should be funnier. ..I guess that was trite. The EU parliament is in a constitutional limbo state. It doesn’t have real power or a predefined legislative jurisdiction, so voters don’t take it seriously. They elect quirky, fring-ey members they wouldn’t elect to their own national parties. I’m in favour of durable products, but I don’…

You probably do not live in Europe (or maybe you just like trolling?). First I am a voter and I do take the EU parliament seriously. I also consider what the groups and candidates voted in the past before giving them my vote - especially on topics like world trade giant agreements (TTIP, TATFA, CETA... - yes they also vote on that and it is very meaningful for our future). You may also read some documentation on the…

I live in Ireland, and I didn't intend to troll though I should have probably written that differently. I was reacting mostly to the language of the recommendations. Though, I also think we have a serious polity problem. I think many Europeans people treated recent EU parliamentary elections as an opportunity for protest or half-serious voting. I think this creates a negative feedback between disempowered parliament and an electorate that doesn't take it seriously or want to give it more power.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#227

Post by IshKebab »

mbrock wrote: post #50
IshKebab wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubbish. Planned obsolescence is extremely rare. The low quality of products is because of cost cutting. Manufacturers design for a minimum lifetime as cheaply as possible. "It must last 2 years. How can we save money?" Virtually nobody is going "It must break after 2 years." Except in a very small number of cases that is conspiracy theory nonsense.

But that's effectively the same goal. If you engineer it to work for 2 years as cheaply as possible, you're probably engineering it to break after 2 years. Would we get better results from "it must cost max X, how can we make it last as long as possible and be repairable?" Probably, but the incentives don't reward it.

Yes but the intent is vastly different. It's like the difference between accidentally and deliberately killing someone. Same result but they're not the same are they?

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#228

Post by Latty »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #186
Latty wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, LED bulbs have made traditional ones redundant and have incredibly long lifespans, so this isn't really true any more. The article makes some good points that lifespan was controlled, but not as drastically as you imply. They were talking about losing a third of the lifespan. While yes, they were clearly aiming to reduce the lifespan of bulbs, they did so by making the bulbs better (brighter) in a way that ma…

> If you could do both brighter and longer lifespan, I'm sure someone would have No, they did, that's what is called a halogen lamp, quite a bit more efficient, lasts about twice as long.

And a lot hotter and more expensive - hence why they didn't replace normal bulbs.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#229

Post by marcosdumay »

anigbrowl wrote: post #198
marcosdumay wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To cross subsidize some kind of use, raising the cost for people that won't have the product broken. I'm not saying that it's a net loss, nor that even if a net loss that it isn't worth it. But there is a cost there, and you are shoving it away on your quest to regulation instead of looking at it and deciding its worth.

No, you're assuming the regulation is an end in itself and coming to a tautological. Regulation is essentially saying 'wait, let's factor in these unaccounted-for-but-predictable costs (like repairability)' and you're saying 'but what about the costs of assessing the costs?!'. Yeah, incorporating some product standards is going to raise the cost of all units sold, which represents a loss to the buyer who hoped to get…

> and there's a >50% chance that it will suffer some damage to some major functional component

What if the chance is actually 1%? What if the cost of repairing it is bigger than a new car? What if, as you said, cars got cheaper, but not so cheap to be disposable? What if making if repairable has the side effect of making it less durable?

Just nobody upthread is asking any of those questions. It's not circular, it's a plain old and boring cost vs. benefit assessment to be done over government intervention.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#230

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

Latty wrote: post #228
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you could do both brighter and longer lifespan, I'm sure someone would have No, they did, that's what is called a halogen lamp, quite a bit more efficient, lasts about twice as long.

And a lot hotter and more expensive - hence why they didn't replace normal bulbs.

Well, no. Yes, a bit more expensive to buy, but not more expensive TCO if they were actually on a lot, at least for the low-voltage versions.

And also, obviously not hotter, how could they be more efficient at producing light, and still be hotter? Yes, the filament in halogen lamps is running hotter, that's why they are more efficient (and the halogen process is what keeps the filament intact despite the high temperature), but they're also more compact--the total amount of thermal power produced by a halogen lamp of equal light output as a regular incandescent bulb is lower, and thus, if you put it into the same form factor and under the same cooling conditions, it's actually going to be cooler at the surface.

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