Life expectancy of modern electronic goods?

[spilldig]

It's not just electrical stuff that gets less reliable as time goes by. I think a lot of things have built in obsolescense but probably electrical gear more than others. One thing everyone can notice is the way that small power supplies and chargers have the leads come out of the top or the sides rather than, as used to be, at the bottom, so when you plug them in, it puts mechanical stress on the wire, which breaks it, and then you can't repair it because the case is sealed rather than screwed together, also things like power supplies tend to use components that are very close to rated power, so they burn out, whereas in older circuits some of the components had as much as twice rated power values.

[Jim117]

It's not just electrical stuff that gets less reliable as time goes by. I think a lot of things have built in obsolescense but probably electrical gear more than others. One thing everyone can notice is the way that small power supplies and chargers have the leads come out of the top or the sides rather than, as used to be, at the bottom, so when you plug them in, it puts mechanical stress on the wire, which breaks it, and then you can't repair it because the case is sealed rather than screwed together, also things like power supplies tend to use components that are very close to rated power, so they burn out, whereas in older circuits some of the components had as much as twice rated power values.

 

Re built in obsolescense. We had a washer that packed in after 18 months, comfortably out of the warranty period. The motor brushes were shot so I fitted an aftermarket set which lasted twice as long as the OE parts! When they were knackered I did the same again and ran the washer till the drum bearings died. Good fix for £7.50 I thought. That said, our new washer is quicker, quieter and probably cheaper to run.

[goldenfleece]

Is this the set you had?

 

http://i665.photobucket.com/albums/vv12/carosio/sobell.jpg

 

no mine is a DST 1000 model..this looks a slightly later version

 

---------- Post added 10-03-2015 at 11:44 ----------

 

How does your Sorbell cope with HD and Dolby (or whatever) sound?

 

I use a standard PAL RF converter than takes any signal and scales it down to 4:3 ratio standard 625 line TV resolution of old....it looks good as well...any audio is converted to one channel mono

Edited March 10, 2015 by goldenfleece

[spilldig]

Re built in obsolescense. We had a washer that packed in after 18 months, comfortably out of the warranty period. The motor brushes were shot so I fitted an aftermarket set which lasted twice as long as the OE parts! When they were knackered I did the same again and ran the washer till the drum bearings died. Good fix for £7.50 I thought. That said, our new washer is quicker, quieter and probably cheaper to run.

 

Motor brushes are a good example. Brushes in some of the old upright vacume cleaners lasted 30 years or more.

[The Joker]

I have a . . . HP Laserjet 4L printer from 1994.

 

I have a LaserJet 5M printer from not long after that.

 

Noisy, clunky, slow, costs a fortune in toners and it can't handle modern document formats very well.

[L00b]

How does your Sorbell cope with HD and Dolby (or whatever) sound?

In fairness, no CRT nor any LCD TV actually 'does' 5.1 (or more), you always needed extra speakers for that and still do.

 

And sound is one thing which modern flat panels still don't do well at all, often as not necessitating extra kit (e.g. a sound bar or sound plinth) if you like semi-decent audio.

 

It's an elementary acoustics problem: the casing of flat TVs isn't voluminous enough (and getting ever smaller and thinner, e.g. current 'borderless' panels) to amplify low and medium range sound waves like the 'big back' of CRT TVs of old did.