Planned Obsolescence

"CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist)" (ccpbb) 10/11/2016 at 22:46 • Filed to: None

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What in your life was designed not to be obsolete? For instance, my Sony MDR-7506 headphones are designed to be repaired if something breaks, my HP Elitebook has survived countless drops to concrete (hinge has popped out but it still can play GTA V), and nobody knows the Jansport backpacks high schools buy every year are VERY tough w/lifetime warranty.

Nibby > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/11/2016 at 22:49

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Well, I have a computer from 1998 that is chugging along nicely...

CB > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/11/2016 at 22:53

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I always think of this in terms of fashion. For example, look at coats: a few hundred bucks for a jacket that may be out of style in a year or two. For someone who cares about looking up to date, it can become rather expensive.

Other things, yeah, it’s probably because they’re not built the best. My Sony Vaio died after two years of fairly gentle care. My Ideapad is just crap and I’d love to chuck it off a bridge. My Moto G ran like crap after two years. It’s just how it goes. Personally, I’ve reached a point where I’m willing to pay more for something that I know I’ll use and I know will last.

DipodomysDeserti > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/11/2016 at 22:54

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I have a backpack thats been around the world a few times, boots that are on their third pair of soles, a truck that was built fifty years ago, a motorcycle that was built thirty years ago, a house that was built sixty years ago, and a goddamn cellphone that wont make it two years without becoming a paperweight. Thanks Obama!

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/11/2016 at 22:54

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Mah truck

CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) > CB 10/11/2016 at 22:57

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What disappoints me that Lenovo bought IBM’s Thinkpad division with the best shit known to man. I recall my T60 to have a wonderful touchpad. Touchpads seem to be very easy to fuck up nowadays...

CB > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/11/2016 at 22:59

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The touchpad, the battery life, everything about it is crap. I paid nearly $1k for it with software, got two years out of it, and regret ever buying it.

Urambo Tauro > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/11/2016 at 23:02

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My alarm clock.

After more than 20 years of use, I had to take it (a GE 7-4612) apart to try to figure out why it would no longer sound the alarm on time. I couldn’t find anything wrong with it, but it must have just needed a good dusting ’cause it’s working fine now. Here’s to another 20 years!

DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/11/2016 at 23:03

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Ironically one of the most durable things I own is my Samsung Galaxy (2 or 3) I’ve never had a case on it and I’ve dropped it plenty of times, the back piece has a chunk missing and two large cracks. I’ve gotten oil and brake fluid on it and it survived a deployment to dusty ass Afghanistan. I’d take a picture of it, but it’s the only camera I have lol. I guess it’s technically obsolete because it’s missing some features that newer phones have. The way I see new phones is similar to how I view trucks. Most of the people who have them will probably never use them anywhere near their potential. Except storage, but that’s only because people take pics of every godamn thing lol.

Also you made me think of this song. Plus it has cool mechanic videos, so it’s car related!

BoulderZ > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/11/2016 at 23:06

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Well, our house, first. 1950s poured concrete foundation, deep crawlspace allowing access to all the plumbing and most of the electrical, tall unfinished attic allowing for access to the rest of the electrical. Brick exterior over stick framing and standard sheetrock drywall. Everything can be easily accessed, upgraded, replaced, or repaired. After that, probably our bikes (I dunno, like 15 of them, probably, including some frames), and the cars (‘04 Jetta, ‘89 Toyota truck , ‘78 280Z). Rebuild, go for another couple of decades, pocket the savings, and move up the retirement date for more time for travel, track days, rides, camping, hiking, and general messing about.

Matt Nichelson > CB 10/11/2016 at 23:28

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The jacket thing reminds me of when I was a kid. I remember when Starter jackets (the big poofy ones with whatever popular pro team you wanted on it) first came out. Damn things were over $100 in the early 90's. Those lasted a few years, then seemingly vanished. Fast forward to the early 2000's or so and North Face jackets became all the rage. One could have easily spent close to $200 for those. Though some are still around, interest has waned on those as well. It’s all about the latest and greatest thing on the market. To me, it isn’t so much brand loyalty as it is the human desire to be like the cool kids.

Matt Nichelson > DipodomysDeserti 10/11/2016 at 23:31

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Everybody poked fun at the Nokia phones when they first came out, but damn they were tough and could last forever. Phones these days are like owning a piece of very fragile china. You look at it wrong and it breaks. Sometimes the saying ‘they don’t make them like they used to’ really ia true.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > CB 10/11/2016 at 23:58

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All of my laptops have been given to me working or not working and I have fixed them up (excluding my old MSI Wind U100 netbook, which I bought outright). If I do buy them, I tend to go for cheaper laptops - they seem to fail a lot more readily. Desktops seem to last a lot longer - the hard drive from my original 2004 desktop (an 80GB Western Digital) has literally something like 13 years of powered on time as I never shut that computer off and it still works perfectly!

FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 00:00

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This Fender Telecaster:

This Gibson SG:

This Gerber Gator:

These Victorinox and Seiko watches (the Seiko is currently running way fast, but can be repaired):

This Briggs&Stratton that is still running even after barfing an entire crankcase of oil out of the carb onto the deck one time:

This ancient HP function generator:

I also have a pair of early 2000's Oakley XX sunglasses that have taken an insane amount of abuse and just keep going. More recent Oakleys haven’t held up nearly as well. The style has held up OK enough to still wear them too.

smobgirl > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 00:04

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The furnace in my house is original and was designed to last much longer than any on the market now. But you can’t find parts or a knowledgable repairman (and it’s horribly inefficient at this point). It’s been a good 65+ year run.

bhtooefr > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 00:28

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The Nokia Lumia 920 that I carry for work is a freaking tank . Shame the software support model fell apart completely with the release of Windows 10 Mobile. (That’s actually the problem with a lot of smartphones that aren’t iPhones. The Apple tax is actually good for something... Now if I could just get along with iOS’s restrictions, I wouldn’t be stuck buying (insert new Nexus/Pixel model here) every three years. Then again, given the state of Android performance... I was planning on buying a Pixel XL anyway even if my Nexus 5 weren’t hitting the end of its security lifecycle. However, if Android lifecycles were better, I might have bought a Nexus 6P on sale instead.)

One thing I really like about my Prius is that the head unit is a variant of Toyota’s 200 mm wide variant of double DIN, and while there is some integration with car functionality, it’s all relatively minor stuff that a scantool can do, too. While there’s not a great aftermarket for 200 mm wide double DIN in the US, it means that standard double DIN can go in there as well, easily, when the stock infotainment becomes outdated.

Toyota did this because... their usual standard in Japan is to not include any head unit with their cars, and they’re all dealer-installed options. Or, because Japanese car owners seem to be fine with the terrible UIs prevalent in aftermarket head units, it’s apparently very common to buy a new Toyota, and go aftermarket immediately, to the point that there’s a huge aftermarket specifically for 200 mm wide double DIN head units there.

cuts_off_prius > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 00:38

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We still have a 16 year old 51" Sony projection TV and surround sound system in the family room. The images occasionally go out of alignment when they feel like it. Oh, and perhaps a 23-25 year old HP Laserjet b&w printer that still works.

BvdV - The Dutch Engineer > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 01:41

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Those HP Elitebooks are the sturdiest laptops ever built, though the newer ones seem more stylish and less sturdy. My 8570w is 4 year old now, and while using it daily, the battery still has 2/2,5 hours of life and the casing only has a few scratches and dings. The only real problem mine (and those of some of my class mates who got the same laptop through our university) has is that the videocard gets insanely hot, sometimes resulting in a crash/forced shutdown/blue screen. Though that was somewhat solved by a driver update. Also they are among the most easily repairable laptops, due to their size.

Both my iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 are also still working like a champ, so I’d consider them pretty durable, though I prefer my 6S nowadays. Both are actually quite fixable too.

Tapas > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 02:41

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That and they be stealing all your data, allegedly - with the whole spy ware in the BIOS, spyware reinstalls if you replace hdd, spyware up the wazoo thing....

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 03:27

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- Knives

- Some guns

- Some tools (US and European made, professional and hobby)

- Binder clips

- Socks

Roundbadge > Urambo Tauro 10/12/2016 at 08:12

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I find this funny. I haven’t had a reliable alarm clock ever.

I’ve used whatever phone I’m carrying as my alarm clock since about 2007. It has never failed to go off at the correct time unless I’ve specifically set it wrong. Power outages don’t cause me to oversleep, and I don’t have to worry about whether or not it will go off.

It’s cool that you found one that will last as long as it has, though!

Roundbadge > Matt Nichelson 10/12/2016 at 08:21

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When I was a kid (‘90s), all my friends whose parents were wealthier wore Lands End squall jackets. Those went out of fashion before they ever wore out. My mom decided I needed one too later (because of the quality, not because everyone else had them), and I did wear it for a long time. It never actually wore out...I just outgrew it.

bwp240 > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 10:15

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I was at a GameStop once and a kid came in looking for a Nintendo DS after his broke. I remember him saying, “It lasted 3 years which is a really long time.” I was like boy, I have an NES that is 3x older than you are; it still works and I haven’t even replaced the 72-pin yet. You could drop a TV on it and it wouldn’t bat an eye.

gmctavish needs more space > CCC (formerly CyclistCarCoexist) 10/12/2016 at 11:03

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All my stereo equipment, my Filter Queen vacuum, my old Vita Mix 3600, and apparently my computer mouse which is from 2002 or something, and has outlasted two computers

DynamicWeight > Roundbadge 10/12/2016 at 12:43

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I’m on the phone alarm too and the nice thing my latest android does is tell me “Alarm set for 13 hours 47 minutes from now” so it’s easy to make sure that I didn’t do something dumb like screw up am/pm or set the wrong day. So even that is fixed!

The Compromiser > Urambo Tauro 10/12/2016 at 22:03

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Mine is the older woodgrain model and over 30 years old. Works great to this day.

Urambo Tauro > The Compromiser 10/12/2016 at 22:28

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Nice! I do live in an old dusty farmhouse, so maybe that really is why mine was acting up after all. (You can see some dust balls sitting on the speaker there in the pic.)

I forgot to mention that I did find a capacitor underneath the “wake” button bent down over a resistor, but I didn’t think anything of it since there didn’t appear to be any actual contact. I gently bent it back up out of the way just to be on the safe side. I couldn’t find any weak solder joints or burn marks anywhere on the board.

The Compromiser > Urambo Tauro 10/12/2016 at 23:06

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Well dust can be conductive.

Mine still has a couple of rub on stickers from chip bags when I was a little kid. I hope it outlasts me even. My father was using his really old woodgrain radio until he died. That thing is likely 40 years old at that point. You had to push buttons down in a set pattern to set the alarm. Turning it off was also a treat. Never did figure it out. I don’t know if it was an age thing with me being so young then, or I’m just an idiot. I won’t ask my SO for her opinion. ..