Has the Quality of Consumer Electronics Declined? 890
NewtonsLaw asks: "With Christmas coming up I dare say that lots of people are going to spend big bucks on consumer electronics in the next few weeks. This column asks an interesting question -- are consumer electronics manufacturers sacrificing quality and reliability for an endless list of features? If you're like me, you've probably got a TV, VCR or other appliance you bought over 5 years ago which is still going strong -- but much of the stuff you've bought in the past 2-3 years is already giving trouble. What's more, it seems to be the big-name manufacturers such as Sony who are most affected by this decline in standards. I'd love to hear the experiences of other Slashdot readers in an effort to get as many data-points as possible. Are you better off buying a $49 DVD player on the expectation that it will only last a year or so -- or do lay out two or three times that amount something made by a big-name manufacturer in the (possibly vain) hope it will provide superior performance and last longer?"
Economy Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be a disturbing and all to common trend, but hopefully they (manufacturers) will get bit in the ass by customer support and replacement costs, causing them to rethink their strategy!
Re:Economy Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I think that the problem is caused by the popularisation of the consumer electronics market. The average joe can't discern quality in electronics. He will look to see if a DVD has the basic features he wants and then check the price. If there's another with the same features but a lower price, he will get the cheaper one. The more expensive, quality unit will not sell and the company making it may go out of business.
It is in this way that 'natural selection' in the marketplace drives away quality products. It's the same thing for hard drives -- one of the main reasons that prices and quality get lower and lower is because aside from speed and capacity, the average person has no reason to buy the more expensive product.
Quality products are being eliminated from the marketplace because average people can't recognise quality.
Re:Economy Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people can full well recognise quality. However, I think the average consumer is too stingy to pay for quality.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Economy Issues (Score:5, Interesting)
There have always been stupid people though. And there *is* a market for high-end audio today, perhaps even more so than in "the 70's", which I remember very clearly; I was a record collector in those days!
The thing is, the consumer does make a fairly safe bet -- at a certain price level, the difference usually IS features. We have all these little cheesy digital playback devices, nothing in the consumer arena that records worth a damn (maybe some of the video stuff can record decent audio? nah.) We reached an equilibrium for the consumer's ear as 16 bit audio became the norm. Hell, remember when talking toys had little phonographs in them? Now those things have a 16 bit DAC.
Consumers didn't care back then either. They wanted whatever was cheaper. Remeber credenza stereos? People selected those for their wood grains, not their quality. (Some of those things were kickass though).
Re:Economy Issues (Score:4, Interesting)
Example: Less than 3 feet (1 metre) from me is a good-working GE table radio - built in 1960. Across from it is a fully calibrated oscilloscope and a signal generator - both built in the early 1950's, and working perfectly. (A 30-mHz range is plenty for audio and some radio work). My theory is that while individual component quality has gone up (resistors, capacitors, etc.) the overall ruggedness of design and construction has declined.
I used to do hi-fi repair for local shops; nowdays I prefer to deal in computers.
I fully agree that the technical literacy rate sucks; I have a manager who once told me that he wants a new computer with a 2 gigabyte chip...
and I kept a straight face.
I guess anything with scientific prefixes or suffixes attatched to its name triggers an odd sort of mental avoidance mechanism, similar to spastics. It's frustrating; the technical language and terminology is *not* that hard to figure out, if only people could pull themselves away from their cheap TV's for a few minutes with a dictionary.
Re:Economy Issues (Score:3, Informative)
Nowadays we shouldn't have to depend on salespeople to know every detail about every product. They have hundreds/thousands of products in their stores-- even a Slashdot geek would have problems keeping current on the detailed specs on all those items.
Consumers have a huge advantage over salespeople. We can actually research the items we want in depth since we have the advantage of focussing on at most a handful of items. Thanks to how easy it is these days to exchange information it's trivial to get in-depth specifications on whatever we want.
Remember the Bad Old Days before most major vendors had their product info online? People were lucky to find any information anywhere. Brand, faith, and luck were pretty much all we had.
Now, however we can pop right on over to the various manufacturers' websites and get all the information we could want about the product. No info available? Hmmm, maybe that product drops off the list right there.
As if that wasn't enought, we can go to Consumer Reports' website [consumerreports.org] and see what they think of a product. We can go to Epinions [epinions.com] and see if a bunch of people we don't know are griping about it. We can check Reseller Ratings [resellerratings.com] to see if an online store is screwing people over, or really trying to do business.
This kind of information flow has the potential to really improve quality and reward quality as word of crappy products/merchants gets out. In addition, we get a better statistical sampling since we have more people commenting than just the one or two we might know who bought the same thing.
Unfortunately, the bitter portion of me has to concede that most people just don't have the motivation to do any research. To them, I say you deserve what you get.
Re:Economy Issues (Score:4, Interesting)
Nowadays we shouldn't have to depend on salespeople to know every detail about every product I agree that they shouldn't, but a consumer should have access to a stats sheet on the quality of the product.
That having, been said, that was when you were paying $200-400 (1980 dollars) for a cheap component amp. If you go into a store where they charge you $400-$800 for a component amp (plus another $200-300 for the tuner), then I'd expect that they'd be happy to give you a full stats sheet.
Back when you were paying $700 for a CD player, they were happy to make them bullet proof, because they knew that, if they broke, you would bring them back for warranty repair and complain to everybody on the net (all 7000 of them) that the company was making garbage.
For my part, I still have my 14" Sony Color TV that I bought in 1986 as a computer monitor (for a Dragon 65 (COCO clone)). I paid $120 in 1999 to get the tuner fixed and it's still working just fine, thank you. The VCR got stolen in '93. Dunno what the lifespan for today's TVs are.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Economy Issues (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree 100%.
I remember seeing a $50,000 Meridian CD player that had specs nowhere near as good as a $150 Marantz.
But, people usually falling into the catagory of IGNORANT and often arrogant, buy products that are complete crap and then think they got a good deal.
I find often that if a company is selling a particular item and they suck in a particular spec or are otherwise uncompetitive in that area, they just won't advertise that spec.
The popularisation of consumer electronics has lead to lower quality in order to appease consumers who purchase receivers based on watts-per-dollar.
I've got four letters, that I'm sure you'll enjoy... P M P O. ; )
They kind of sum the situation up nicely, don't you think!
People are, essentially, stupid. Even many of the high IQ types. Because the low IQ types are stupid for obvious reasons, and the high IQ types tend to be arrogant and not fully use their IQ and are thus the worst kind of stupid. Manufacturers don't give a crap about delivering quality to consumers because consumers have a. money and b. no vision of true quality.
192kHz sounds so much better than 44.1kHz hey!?
I can understand the usage of bit depths beyond 16bit and sampling rates beyond 44.1kHz being used in digital mixing decks, where the avoidance of compounded lower significance bit errors can become apparent in the end product without those higher rates and depths, but bringing 24bit 192kHz to the typical end user is nothing more than a marketing gimick.
The situation sucks. I want a return to the days where HP made ultra high quality technical instruments, computing devices and awesome printers.
To sum up a sad situation, my recently purchased HP 48GX... was made in Indonesia.
Re:Economy Issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Economy Issues (Score:5, Informative)
I'll try to sum up the major factors without going into extreme detailed explanations:
THD (Total Harmonic Distortion): How much the equipment distorts the signal, usually as a percentage. Naturally, lower is better here. A high end amplifier might be around 0.0001%.
SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio): The difference between signal amplitude and the noise floor (the hiss sometimes heard between songs, which is there during the songs, just hard to notice then). Usually measured in dB, you want this to be high. CD had a theoretical limit of 96dB, which was a limit etched in the hard stone of mathematics and physics of traditional design. However, smoothing done whilst still in the digital domain can break this limit. Having said that, 96dB is a fantastic figure, be happy with it if you find it, but don't settle for anything less these days. Any decent power amp should be able to have an SNR higher than 96dB, really high end amps go above 120dB.
Sometimes these two are refered together as distortion+noise.
Channel Separation: How well the equipment can prevent the signal from one channel (left and right) from imposing itself into the other channel, which reduces the stereo effect and is generally undesired.
Wow and Flutter: are measurements that show how much the speed of playback changes, and thus the pitch and resulting sound. These apply to older analog equipment like record players and tape decks. CD players use a digital FIFO (first in first out) buffer that is run at a precise speed with accurate quartz timing. However, it can be written to at alternate speeds, so as the buffer becomes too full, the CD is slowed down and as it becomes too empty the CD is sped up, assuring the listener that there are no interuptions. Because the buffer is read at quartz accurate intervals, any wow and flutter is so riduculously small, that they are almost unmeasurably irrelevant. Which is why CD player (and other digital equipment) specs either don't specify wow and flutter at all or try to make the equipment look great by stating that it is unmeasurably low (true of any digital equipment from the cheapest peice of garbage to the sound systems in your local Imax cinema).
Dynamic Range: is the difference between the softest sounds and the loudest sounds. Also measured in dB's, we also want this to be high. It means that listening to classical music for an example, you could just hear the faint noise of orchestra members flipping pages of music notation one second and then be physically assaulted the next with loud music. However, this is one thing that can be over done, with the effect of music being too loud for your enjoyment in some parts and too soft to hear in others.
The most important thing, I rarely see mentioned, is that the transducers (speakers) are by far the weakest link in an audio system. You could buy a $50 CD player with a THD of 0.001% and $100,000 speakers with a THD of 0.1%. So whether you buy a $50 CD player at 0.001% THD or a $500 CD player at 0.0001% THD, at the speakers you are still basically going to hear a THD of around 0.1%.
So the moral here is, spend about 70% of your budget on the speakers, 20% on the power amp and the remainder on everything else!
The Worlds best amplifier, coupled with the Worlds best CD player, are going to sound like crap with anything less that good speakers.
But on the other hand, the Worlds best speakers, coupled with ordinary, low end consumer level CD player and amp from Target, is going to sound MUCH MUCH better and probably not be noticed as "worse" than the "best system" by one of these "audiophile" morons in the HiFi magazines.
The second most important thing is... HEADPHONES!
Headphones are:
* Much cheaper than speakers that give the same quality. Try hundreds to thousands of TIMES cheaper.
* Require much less power, thus much less amplification and thus much less THD.
* Filter out ambient noise as a matter of simple design, allowing greater enjoyment of dynamic range.
* Allow far greater channel separation than speakers and thus much greater stereo effect.
* Allow you to turn your music up to where you enjoy it most, without the cops knocking on your door at 11pm.
Anyone who really enjoys their recorded music and knows how to enjoy it, enjoys it with headphones.
Have I forgotten any major points?
PS, when I'm talking about high end power amplifiers, I'm talking about the likes of the Pioneer M-91. Absolute legends. If you're offended because your NAD doesn't stack up, oh well.
Re: DVD players are a poor example (Score:4, Interesting)
They're in a rather unique position - because the more technical buyers want a product that allows playing infringing works (EG. downloaded VCD and SVCD movies burnt to CDR disc). The major U.S. manufacturers are generally fearful of offering players with said capabilities, since Hollywood can crack down on them hard.
This leaves the cheap imported Chinese players to fill the gap. Therefore, you have the rather unnatural situation where the "good stuff" is also the "cheaply made stuff".
Re:Economy Issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Made in America = cheap as crap (Score:2)
Build in expiration so we can rely on future purchaces.
It should be build it solid to last and make money off of acessories etc.
Re:Made in America = cheap as crap (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Made in America = cheap as crap (Score:2, Funny)
Um... (Score:5, Funny)
Madonna's signature on an iPod.
Discuss.
Q. Has the quality declined? (Score:2, Funny)
A2. D'uh.
I reject the premise.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the point is "do I spend extra for a name brand over a cheap brand" the answer is the same now as it was 5 years ago - are you willing to pay for the extra features and name brand?
Re:I reject the premise.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a crappy Mintek DVD player, but with replacement firmware (installed from CD) I can turn off Macrovision and change the region code. Plus it plays CD, MP3 CD, SVCD, VCD, DVD, JPG CD and will attempt to read anything you put in and let you navigate through directories, and attempt to play any file you tell it to. And it will do it all off CDR, CDRW or DVD+/-RW
Is this a question? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a house fan made in the early 80s. It has been running continuously for about 10 years, and is still quiet and perfectly functional. I have a fan bought in the late 90s. It is loud, obnoxious, and requires CONSTANT attention.
A decision was made in the early 90s that consumers would rather replace items than pay a little more for soemthing that is better made. Welcome to the consumer culture.
All I want is another fan that'll last 15 years without a hitch.
-rt
Re:Is this a question? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a small typo in this sentance. I'm sure you meant "A decision was made in the early 90s that MANUFACTURERS would rather sell replacement items than provide something that is better made."
Re:Is this a question? (Score:3, Insightful)
When there are two fans on the shelf at Wal-Mart, one is 12.95 and one is 18.95 but better made. Which one do you think sells better? Then the makers of the 18.95 fan sit down and say "How can we make this product cost less and be more competetive?".
Now repeat this cycle several times. You end up with the cheapest, flimsiest possible product.
-B
Re:Is this a question? (Score:3, Insightful)
Saving money by buying a crappy product is a mistake people tend only to make once---for that type of product. But if all you have is $25, you're either getting the $25 fan or no fan at all. You gotta bear that in mind, folks. If all a given economic class can afford is junk, there's gotta be junk for them to buy.
Re:Is this a question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its like people saying that houses built 30-50-100 years ago are better than ones built today. They'll point out some poorly constructed house built a couple of years ago that has a leaky roof and doors that get stuck in the jambs. Then they point to some 100 year old beauty of a house that still stands and looks great. Well lots of houses were built really poorly a long ago, but you don't see them cause they're torn down already.
And even a really good house built long ago isn't that great. I'm currently renovating my victorian built in 1892 and trust me, the construction techniques used don't hold a candle to modern techniques.
Anyway, same thing holds with electronics. Think about what kind of CD boombox $200 bought 10 years ago. Now purchase a $200 boombox today with the same features. Assuming you find such a thing, the quality would be much much higher.
Brave New World (Score:3, Insightful)
Your regular safety razor is an example of the same problem. Steel can be manufactured to be much more durable than it is in today's razors, but when one manufacturer tried that, and made their razors last 10 times longer than the other brand, the accountants quickly set them straight.
Electronics manufacturers are figuring out that they can increase sales by decreasing quality - because you only need so many CD players, but when one breaks, the next one isn't so expensive.
I'm friends with a person suffering from the consumer attitude - let's call him "Bob." Bob likes new things. A new laptop is great. A new house is great. A new (or at least newer than the one he already has) car is great. New, new, new. Sometimes the newer things are better than the older things. The newer DVD player can play DVD-R discs whereas the old one can't. (To say nothing of the quality of reproduction from either device.)
I'm reminded of Aldus Huxley's Brave New World [amazon.com].
Re:Is this a question? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Internet is an awesomely powerful tool for this. Use it! Seriously, before the web got huge, consumers didn't have much to go on besides word of mouth or Consumer Reports magazine. Now, you've got all sorts of resources online, ranging from Usenet searches to epinions.com.
I'd rather educate myself on a purchase before running out and buying the cheapest thing I can get my hands on. After you do the reading, you might well discover that the cheapest model turns out to be a good value. But more often, you'll find out why it isn't, and you'll also find out which moderately-priced alternative(s) are the smartest buys for your purposes.
When it comes to features, it's also worth considering that sometimes, you just don't know what you're missing until you try it. Cheap, stripped-down equipment never lets you try out these enhanced features. (EG. I never owned a car with an automatic trunk release. It just seemed silly. "Who needs another motorized thing that can break, just to pop open a trunk lid?" But after I finally got a car with that feature, I saw the value. No more struggling with keys while holding a large item, trying to get the thing open (especially in the snow or rain). Just press the button on the keyfob and voila! Until I used it though, I would never have thought it was worth paying more for.)
Annoying (Score:5, Insightful)
"A friend of a friend of mine said his Western Digital Harddrive died out of the box".
Before you make claims like this think about %s of total owners who have had failed devices not just you. This doesn't mean the MTBR either.
Sort of... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, as more and more people become "Tech Savvy" there are more manufacturers willing to produce the high quality, awesome electronics that modern geeks will shell out the cash to buy.
So has overall quality declined, maybe...but the good stuff is still there to be had. Just don't go cheap on everything you buy.
Re:Sort of... (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on how you view things. In almost any market, and for almost any good, the amount of the price is not equal to difference in quality.
I go and buy a cheap pair of speakers for $100. I can also go and buy another pair for $500. Are the $500 speakers "5 times better"? No, but they are better.
Is an $80,000 Mercedes 4 times better than $20,000 KIA. No, but it is better.
The key is determine whether the difference is quality is worth the difference in price. A completely subjective judgement.
Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
Ciryon
My Sony Experience (Score:5, Informative)
Executive Summary: I don't buy Sony anymore.
For a while Sony was my first choice. I bought a Sony SDR 2010 receiver in 1990, that lasted close to ten years. Two channel stereo, 165 watts per channel, digital inputs, Dolby surround. In the end the unit started acting erratically, sound levels varying randomly, the display exhibiting interesting if unintelligible optical effects. (Since replaced by a Denon 3801). I was very pleased with this unit and thus with Sony.
I then bought a Sony TC-WR565 cassette deck, which still provides good, if infrequent, service.
I also have a Sony answering machine which works fine.
But ...
I have a Sony CDP-C265 five disk CD player. It is the third unit because I had to return the first two. Both DOA. Even the third unit didn't always recognize all five CDs in the tray. And the shuffle feature would only work with four CDs, ignoring the fifth after playing one song. After a few years the audio out started to go with one or both channels dropping out. (Since replaced with a formerly beige now black PowerMac G3 as a dedicated MP3 player.)
Next I bought a Sony DVP-S550D DVD player. I wasn't sure about going with Sony, but the unit was getting very good reviews. This too had to be returned twice because of audio problems. Once for DVD playback and once for CD playback. My original unit was replaced with a refurbished one when the orginal was lost by either Sony or FedEx. Since getting the second unit I've had no problems.
I have a Sony cordless phone. After about a year the buttons started failing intermittently.
I'm on my second Sony portable CD player. The first just stopped recognizing CDs. (Since replaced by an iPod.)
I also have a pair of Sony noice cancelling head phones, purchased because they were $100+ cheaper than the overpriced Bose set. Most of the time they work fine but on some flights there is a continuous clicking that renders them unusable.
The only Sony product I've purchased in the past three years was an open box STR-DE525 receiver for less than $50. So they may have gotten their quality control problems fixed. But I doubt it.
Steve M
Re:Sony (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sony (Score:3, Insightful)
Then so have I, and pretty much everyone I know. The only Sony product I have ever owned that quit working was a pair of headphones when I was in high school, and that's because I slammed their cable in a car door.
OTOH, I've had an Onkyo tapedeck and CD player go bad, a Panasonic TV burn up while I was watching a video, and a JVC VCR (high-end consumer, at the time) that needed to be repaired every six months so it could play back tapes instead of just recording them.
Sony vs. The World (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sony vs. The World (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, neither has my Sony reciever, Discman, or CD changer.
YMMV, but I have found Samsung products to be of excellent quality and durability.
Please do provide some evidence before bad-mouthing a manufacturer. At least say what products you have and what has happened to them - one vague reference to a DVD player is not exactly evidence (BTW: Samsung didn't even program your DVD player; )
Re:Sony vs. The World (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who takes their warranty service that seriously has to make a decent product, or their RMA department would drive them bankrupt.
I've bought 3 monitors since then for other systems, and they were all Samsung. They've bought a loyal customer.
Sony now sells conumer junk as well as quality (Score:3, Interesting)
All in all I'd say predictability of quality has disappeared. It used to be that you bought certain brands for the quality, now you have no idea from model to model whether it's going to perform very well or for very long.
Buy a top-end Sony monitor (G520), XBR TV, DVD player, etc. from their ES line, and you get decent quality and reliability. Why? Because those units require and receive a bit of testing and tweaking before shipping.
Buy their "consumer" level products, and you get untested slide-line manufactured junk, the same as everyone else in the cheap-as-possible-with-lots-of-buttons market.
I and my sisters gave the folks a 20" Sony TV for their anniversary over ten years ago, and it works fine. My 32" Trinitron (8 years old) still works fine. My first DVD player was a Sony, which lasted through almost six years of heavy use, and AFAIK is still working for the guy who bought it from me (I replaced it with a new Sony in the same price range that does SACD and progressive scan, which is working fine, but only six months old.) My ES20 CD player is still solid after six years, but no longer gets used because the DACs aren't upgradeable. An ancient Sony 17se still functions, though it can no longer do more than 72Hz without generating a squeal (it used to do 75-85.)
On the flip side, I've had to replace my portable Sony CD player about once a year. Failed motors. Failed CD clamps. Failed audio jack. Failed buttons/wiring. Yet the only moving these units have done is from desk drawer to desk top and back each day at work.
I never have and never would buy one of Sony's amps, because they have no current. Watts don't drive good sound, clean current does. A 75 watt high current amplifier from the audiophile manufacturers runs rings around a "250 watt" Sony.
The bigger problem I've had is companies like JVC, Viewsonic, and HP, who don't have the high build quality lines. They use the same parts throughout their manufacturing line, and it shows. I killed two HP DVD burners with less than 1500 hours of burning each. My JVC VCR has been flaky since day one, despite being their "top of the line" model. A 19" Viewsonic monitor died in less than two years, despite being their "professional" series.
Two examples (Score:3, Interesting)
Example two [microsoft.com] Useless, gimmicky 'features' that are software defined. Not very durable. No clicky feel, due to cheapness of rubber dome caps. Will most likely last until you spill Coke all over it.
Solid State (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as computer components go, they've been garbage for years. Everything past the old IBM XT's have been plastic disposable junk, btu for good reason. Most people upgrade so quickly, there's no reason to make good, lasting components. As far as computer stuff, I buy the cheapest I can find, and just throw it out every so often.
Re:Solid State (Score:3, Insightful)
Quality! (Score:5, Informative)
Design vs Quality (Score:3, Interesting)
The fundamental problem is actually that it is unprofitable to create high-quality products. That way, you would only sell new hardware when a new standard arises. By creating a lower quality product, they've ensured that some consumers are on their fifth cd player since they bought their first one in the late 80s.
Really. In statistics class, there was a lot of focus on tuning quality so that the products would be _just_ reliable enough. Being pseudo-buddhist, I prefer to think that things come back at you.
Something to remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Something to remember... (Score:5, Informative)
Another example of this: IBM's low-end laptops were (and probably still are) made by Acer. Curiously, laptops sold under the "Acer" brand tended to have exactly the same specs as the low-end IBM laptops, and cost about $500 less.
There are real differences in IBM laptops... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Something to remember... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look what happened to Aiwa. They used to be a great brand in the 80's, then they started making junk electronics that was cheap but invariably broke between 3 and 6 months after purchase. What happened? They're gone.
Computer books used to suck on average. O'Reilly found an opportunity to start a quality, recognizable brand. Now I almost exclusively but O'Reilly's books because I know that almost every one of them is thoughtful, careful, thorough, and well-written. That's the value of branding -- they can charge a little extra, I don't have to worry that the book I need is going to careless and full of mistakes.
The quality of everything now is worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The quality of everything now is worse (Score:5, Funny)
Sjeesh, can you
Re:The quality of everything now is worse (Score:5, Insightful)
"You get what you pay for" is one of those meaningless phrases that people generally agree with just because they've heard it so many times. If you say "the best things in life in free", many of those same people will agree wholeheartedly.
Another examples is these two conflicting adages:
"absense make the heart grow fonder"
"out of sight, out of mind"
They clearly mean opposite things, but people will agree with whichever one they happen to here. Behold, the power of the adage.
Or take the example of 2 people that pay different amounts for the same model new car. How can you resolve common scenario with your adage?
Re:The quality of everything now is worse (Score:3, Insightful)
That one's easy! The value that people put on things tends to equal whatever they paid for it. While there are exceptions ("I got a great deal!" & "I was burnt!") they are based around the value that was expected (and paid for). If it fits reasonably the specs expected, then people tend to value things at what they cost.
Exceptions include, e.g., if something takes a lot of work (e.g., to master), then this counts as a part of the "value". Also things that are intrinsically pleasurable are valued even if they are "free" (e.g., a massage), though one needs to be careful in the use of that term "free". There are often hidden costs (e.g., remembering her birthday, flowers, presents, and time).
This brings up an interesting point in the value of Linux. The value of linux, as it becomes easier to use, approaches closer and closer to the intrinsic value of the things you can do with it. Windows, OTOH, simply by being sold, has a higher perceived intrinsic-to-the-software value. Now I use software sufficiently, that the debits of the software far outweigh the cost, but this may explain why some bosses only value things that they buy. Fortunately, Red Hat is now selling a version of Linux for approx. $2,000
Floppy Disks (Score:5, Insightful)
--
0x00
Consumer "purchase protection plans"... ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think though, in almost all goods, there is the perception that older is more reliable. This isn't anything new, but is it really becoming true right now?
Umbrella repair (Score:5, Insightful)
It's much the same with consumer electronics. For example, VCR/TV repair places in my town are either struggling or have already gone out of business. Things are so cheap these days that you might as well buy a new one when the old one breaks.
So, basically quality has indeed gone down, but prices have dropped accordingly.
We live in a disposable society. Disposable cell phones seem like a huge waste to me, but they're cheap [com.com].
Re:Umbrella repair (Score:4, Insightful)
http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/ce/future.
And this one:t xt [tds.net]
http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/ce/gripes.
under "Most of all, I hate waste"
I think the quote, "Equipment is built with the dumpster in mind, not the repair shop." is particularly telling, especially coming from a tech.
Re:Umbrella repair (Score:3, Funny)
Pfft, yeah, right, umbrella repair, uh-huh. What's next, you're gonna tell me people used to get their shoes repaired, too? Go smoke some more crack, we've got important things to discuss here.
Coincidence? (Score:3, Funny)
Hrm... seems like /. answered its own question.
Quality is less, conolidation of parts is bad (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also no point in fixing any of these items, everything is soldered onto one PCB board. If one trace comes loose... Time for a new unit.
Check out a Technics turntable...
Technics SL-1200 MK2 [panasonic.com]
You'll find a pair of these in pretty much any club in the entire world. The design hasn't changed at all in over 20 years. It's a beautiful piece to behold, it's built like a tank. It weighs 26 pounds. And every single component, motors, tonearm, etc -- can all be replaced. These things are built to last.
This is how things used to be built. I can't think of anything new that I own that has the build quality of my turntables. And that's sad.
We've turned into a disposable society.
The theory of the endless lightbulb (Score:2)
Can this be done? I do not know, but I do know that nobody would make them because of being predisposed to a declining market.
The same is about electronics.
"Cheap" vs. Inexpensive (Score:5, Insightful)
The best example is the stand-alone $49 DVD player. To somebody that is not a total video freak, the $49 does the same job as a $200 unit. My first DVD player cost me $300, a Toshiba that worked for over 2 yrs without any problem. My second DVD player was for my PC and cost me $80. My third one was a stand alone that came as part of a Teac receiver combo and cost $150 with 5.1 speakers plus FM radio (no, they don't sound like Bose, but dammit, that's $150 for a 5.1 home theater). I bought another combo like that one for $130. My wife buys $49 DVD players for my little kid so if they break out of warranty we are out of just $50 (a cheap VCR costs more).
Each and every DVD player I have bought looks exactly the same on my piece of crap TV. Every one. The original Toshiba was the only one with a decent remote, that is the only thing I have to say on its defense. Each of the $49 DVD players we have bought can read VCD and MP3 CDRs and CDRWs. The last one she got is smaller than our digital cable box, and weights maybe 1/3rd of what my xbox does.
Notice I said this only applies if you are not a video freak. To us normal Joes, a DVD plays the same regardless, and the only thing you can do to make it better is to get a better TV.
There are many more examples like this, but to me the most obvious is the cheapo DVD players.
What else is new (Score:2)
Alot of the electronics in a $75 DVD player is just as reliable as the components found in a $250, shiny silver deal with a great big animated LCD on it and a million buttons. The same goes for most electronics, be it the controller for a laser printer or some random PCB in a VCR.
Quality is declining (Score:5, Interesting)
My dad has a Mitsubishi 36 inch TV that he bought close to 14 years ago. It still works like a champ, no problems at all. I've got a 3 year old 36 inch Sony that I'm already seeing problems with.
I can't say exactly why this is happening, but I can venture some guesses. The quick buck is killing our economy. Everyone wants that easy money. No one takes pride in their products and builds them to last.
I recently looked at the feature lists of some home stereo equipment and was shocked. Most of the stuff on your average home stereo will never be used but you can't find simpler equipment. Additionally we are still using some pretty ugly wiring schemes for home audio. The back of my home theatre setup is insane! I have wires everywhere and while I'm usually good at labeling them, it's still a nightmare to work with.
No one is making these things better. They are making them cheaper and more complex. This goes against what people actually want. Features are nice, yes, but not at the expense of quality and ease of use.
Business Deals and Manufacturing (Score:3, Informative)
Quality Declined? err.. (Score:2)
You all remember that voice activated R2D2 toy that Slashdot reported a month or two ago? I bought one of those. I have to say, I'm rather impressed with what it can do. It's voice recognition is pretty good, and it's a fun little toy to play with. Is it going to survive a drop off the bed? Probably not. I'm not terribly concerned with that, though. Thing is, I like when products are released that do stranger and stranger things. It seems to me that if they were to ruggedize Mr. D2, it'd cost me some of the things I really like about it.
Sometimes you get what you pay for, but consider that we live in a digital world. You'd be hard pressed to buy a gadget that doesn't have a microchip in it. As long as that keeps happening, products will advance every year to the point that you develop interest in replacing it. I am wiling to bet that in a year or two, they'll release a new R2D2 toy with a USB 2.0 port and flash memory. Chances are good that I'd buy one too because it's a significant upgrade over the original which has no upgradability options.
These products don't need to survive very long because the companies pushing them are going to find new ingenius ways for you to buy the latest one. And you wanna know what? That's good for the economy. Nobody's interested in building a fridge that'll last 25 years anymore. Your business dries up real fast.
Re: Has the Quality ... Declined? (Score:2)
You can add Mistsubishi to the list (IMHO) (Score:5, Interesting)
Last January I purchased a Mitsubishi Platinum HDTV unit from a big-name electronics store. Just a few weeks ago (less than 11 months after purchase) the TV went out. Ugh, what a bummer!
The television repair person came out to diagnose the problem but couldn't figure it out - of course. So he took the guts out of the TV for diagnosing back at the shop. On his way out he mentioned that Mitisubishi has been having problems recently with the reliablilty of their picutre tubes so he thought that may be the problem. (hint #1 that these can be unreliable)
Come to find out that it was not the picture tube but the power supply of all things - my goodness, how hard is it to put a good quality power supply into a piece of electronic equipment that cost over $3k. (hint #2 that these can be unreliable)
Well at least I will be getting my TV put back together tomorrow and all it really cost me was time away from the big screen and my Tivo - which isn't really a bad thing. Luckily the extended service warranty paid off for once, didn't pay a cent.
Just as an aside I don't usually buy those extended warranties but it was less than %10 of the cost of the item and I don't consider this type of item a throw-away item - the author of the article considers his DVD player tossable after a year - this TV is a little different I think.
Just my $.02 - I had heard that Mitsubishi was pretty good in the realiability department on their TVs but personal experience has proven otherwise for me. We'll see how long until the next issue arises - hopefully long into the future.
obligatory homer simpson quote: (Score:2, Funny)
Non advertised features (Score:2)
I wouldn't knock the cheap equitpment. Personally, I think that $69 is a really good deal for [walmart.com]
this, especially when combined with this feature [nerd-out.com].
Lets see a $500 dollar Sony player do that!
One possible explanation... (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically the premise is larger coporations eating smaller corporations, drive for profit leading to lack of quality standards and appreciation, more features to keep selling (who can survive if your product is only bought every 10-20 years)... There's more, but that's what the book is for, including giving a possible explanation as to why this came about in the first place, and why we let it continue to get worse.
FYI: Marvin Harris is not only probably one of the most influential Anthropologists of our time, but also writes many books (including this one) in a very easy to follow and understandable way.
Ex-Computer Salesman (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to sell computers at Future Shop (a shitty Canadian retailer ala Best Buy in the US) and we would get shipments where head office would tell us to expect 1 in 10 to 1 in 6 be be defective right out of the box. At least twice, we got shipments where every other machine was defective. I started tracking returns and warrantee issues that would come back to the store and I would honestly estimate that some manufacturers (who rhyme with Bompaq and Baych-pee and eBachines) would hit over 25% defective units in the first year on some models.
Manufactures need to cut costs everywhere they can and quality just doesn't seem to matter. When I would get a serious geek (who was some how clueless enough to be in a Future Shop) I would quietly refer them to a local clone dealer with a rep for quality work and using good components
Best Kept Secret in CE (Score:3, Informative)
here come the hordes to say I'm just lucky....
Everything's crap now... (Score:4, Interesting)
Trouble is, you can't really replace something like that anymore. Most VCRs are made in China, Malaysia, Indonesia or Korea, and are trash quality. I didn't have the heart to buy a piece of crap VCR and possibly risk the demise of more irreplaceable tapes.
I'm waiting for reasonable DVD recorders. Then I will get on the stick and dub all my tapes to DVD-R. (or +R if that shakes out as being the winner) Right now they are way too expensive.
BTW you can't guarantee getting something good if you buy Sony. Sony gets things made for them in China like everyone else does. And worst of all: they belong to the RIAA and MPAA.
I still can control quality on my computers by home-building, but I wonder how long that will last. Everything else...you roll the dice, you take the chance.
Re:Everything's crap now... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course you can, you think they don't make professional quality VHS and S-VHS untis anymore? They aren't hard to find, I mean you won't see then in Wal-Mart or something but if you are looking, you can find one. For example JVC makes a couple of pro lines of VCRs starting with the prefix of SR (for the more basic) and BR (for the best). They are excellent quality and built to take the rigors of professional use. One little problem though: price. You can expect to pay around $300 for the most basic SR-V10U which is basically just a high quality VHS/SVHS unit with some simple eiditng controls all the way up to over $5500 for the awesome BR-S822DXU which is suitable for master tape production and is a full out editing unit.
The thing is that cheap consumer electronics today are, well, CHEAP. They don't cost much. Fine, great, but wheny ou have a low cost unit, it isn't going to be all that well built, goes with the territory. If you want something that is better quality, you can be accomadated, but you need to be ready to pay for it.
It used to be that the technology to build some of these things was so much and they were produced in such small numbers that they are inherantly expensive. Well, when the unit is going to be super expensive anyhow, it is worth it (and required if you want it to sell) to make it high quality as well. If it costs $50 extra to make a high quality unit that will have a base cost of $1000 anyhow, it's worth it. However that same $50 will not be spent on a unit that will have a RETAIL price of less than that.
If you want quality products, break out the pocketbook and buy them.
Prosumer/Early Adopters Vs. Consumer (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the back of most current 25" TVs. Today you are lucky to see even an audio out on them. Of course, they are a fraction of the price at introduction.
Ultimately, the mfg has to optimize (reduce) everything to keep in the market place. That includes the features, mfg fall-out and even quality.
If you want quality, don't expect to get it at bargin basement prices. And don't expect to see a selection of quality at Wackmart. They care about price, not quality.
2 words: (Score:5, Insightful)
They have realized that if people are happy with what they have, they are less inclined to buy the same product every year *just* beacuse its new and shiny..
Consumer electronics same. Expectations up. (Score:3, Insightful)
The good, the bad and Sony... (Score:4, Interesting)
epinions. They review a sony video recorder and come up with this list:
Brands are listed starting from the most reliable (best) to least reliable (worst):
1. Panasonic - produced by Matsushita Electric
2. Quasar - also produced by Matsushita Electric
3. Samsung
4. Sanyo
5. Toshiba
6. Sharp
7. ProScan
8. GE
9. Hitachi
10. Philips
11. RCA
12. JVC
13. Symphonic
14. Emerson
15. SONY - isn't it too low for a "leader"?
16. Optimus (Radio Shack)
17. Mitsubishi
18. Zenith
19. Series LXI (Sears)
20. Fisher
Products and Service (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course products aren't built to last. I assume an MTBF of 2 years on all consumer products, and budget for replacement, because repair will be impossible or uneconomic. Yes, they're disposable. There is no money in making things that last.
If things last too long the manufacturers will come up with some new "standard" that renders the present installed base obsolete, thus forcing people to spend money. I have heard suggestions that this was part of the push for both CD audio and DVD video.
I have been pleasantly surprised, but only a few times. One particularly good result was a cheap piece of crap VCR from Zellers that I finally retired, still going strong, when it proved to have 4 Y2K bugs.
...laura, wondering how they would handle VCRs with Y2K bugs in Soviet Russia
When I Knew Things Were Going Downhill... (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems that this is quite common. Open up most any cheap handheld electronic gadget and you're likely to find a weight inside.
I think the title should be... (Score:5, Interesting)
cheap crap has always been available within a few months or at most a year of the wide availability of any new technology (the first year CD players costed an arm and a leg, but they probably are still working fine now, my first generation cheap CD player stopped reading CDs within a year and a half) but I find that some years back, if you bought the top of the line (or close to) model of a decent brand, odds were it would go strong for years and years and years.
Lately it seems, like others have said, that the discriminator between high and low price of a specific product is not reliability anymore, but just features, and the reliability is the same (usually not that great) all across the board.
Things are starting to get to the point that buying an extended 3 yrs 'no questions asked' replacement warranty is not the waste of money that it was some years ago.
In my personal experience good products are still obtainable, but getting fewer and fewer, off the top of my head: high-end HP printers (4xxx series), denon CD players, toshiba DVD players, toyota cars, bosh/whirlpool appliances, philips razors, you get the idea.
I really couldn't pick a TV, though, as I keep hearing horror stories about pretty much every projection TV out there, and direct view plasma HDTVs are way out of the reach of us common mortals pricewise...
As the saying goes (Score:4, Insightful)
'data'
Planned Obsolescence, An Old Practice. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the industries that build these devices have learned that making a device durable and expensive is not only counterproductive, but unprofitable. Why sell a TV that lasts 20 years, and sell it for $300, when you can make a TV that lasts 5 years, sell it for $200 a pop, and make $800 from consumers who consider it a bargain? Same goes for VCRs, which aren't made for durability anymore, in fact, being priced very close to walkmans and portable CD players, they're more geared towards disposability.
Unfortunately though, there's the electronic waste issue again, which I brought up regarding HDTV. Where will all the waste go? Once again, probably to 3rd world countries that consider a fast buck more important than turning it's towns into toxic waste dumps.
We seriously need to review this process, and find ways of cheaply and safely disposing of these materials, or instead, go for equipment that's rated for a lengthy operational period, putting the concept of responsible consumerism to practical use.
From personal experience, the most durable goods I've owned have been made by Sony, Hitachi, Pioneer, JVC and Toshiba. What's needed is a long term write up on equipment, rated by durability. Perhaps when some of these companies find themselves on the list for most durable (or subsequently, those least durable), then they'll focus on either building hardware that lasts longer, or improving their manufacturing techniques to improve on their records.
Unfortunately, Consumer Reports only does this with cars, while electronics recieve a meager 6 month long term rating.
Blame quality-oblivious, penny-wise consumers (Score:5, Interesting)
These mid range units could generally be relied upon to perform well, have extra useful features, and lasted longer. As an example I had a Sony Hi8 camcorder from circa 1990 - a fabulous machine : Great optics, great mechanics, great sound, manual controls for everything, audio overdub functions, nice damped zoom control, it had the works. (It got stolen after 4 years, but by then it still worked as new.)
Sure it cost a bit more than the discount units available at the time, but in use you could certainly feel where those extra dollars went. It was also a lot cheaper than the high end pro video gear. All in all it was a nice compromise.
Nowadays the mid range is mostly gone - how could it be any different? The consumers buy the cheapest shit they can find, with everything automatic. You can't find camcorders with manual controls unless you go to the 'prosumer level' which is a relatively new high-strata tier with prices ranging close to that of pro gear. (Sony VX2000, Canon GL-1, XL-1, etc.)
It's my impression that the mid range market shrank in America as quality-oblivious people decided the budget units performed 'well enough', and simply picked which-ever nice-looking unit had the lowest price tag with a comparable feature set. The incentive to improve quality became less significant than the incentive to reduce price.
A circuit board in a black box is not just a circuit board in a black box, but who's to know if the thing works okay for a couple of months before it starts to die little by little?
There have been digital radio tuners for almost twenty years. Why do you think they still sell clock radios and boomboxes with mechanical turn-knob tuners?
The Japanese in particular, but also Europeans have been more quality conscious than Americans, and the mid-range segment still exists there. For example, the Europeans have for many years had an affordable mid-range 16:9 widescreen TV option with digital framedobler and picture stabilization, which is available to Americans only if they go all the way and buy the high-priced High Def sets.
For twenty years(!) Europeans have had digital ceefax teletype color text overlays on their TVs which lets users lookup program listings, news and weather information and much more from their remote controls. It's virtually indispensable even if it's low tech and looks like early 80s console game graphics, but Americans have never had anything as functional or useful of the kind until the advent of the digital cable box, Tivo, etc.
Europeans have NICAM digital near-CD-quality stereo audio to go with the PAL (*) TV picture, which by the way has higher resolution and much better colors than the Japanese/American NTSC format. Most American mom&pop&joe sixpack consumers get their stereo audio in crap quality from an analog audio carrier in the NTSC format. The new digital cable boxes improve the situation; but many many households still use 1980s or even 1970s technology, upon which they base their quality and performance expectations.
European electronics consumers have preferred direct two-way audio/video cables (SCART) to connect their VCRs and TVs in order to obtain the better picture afforded by not having the picture components squished together and lose quality by being re-modulated and de-modulated for the aerial connection: In the six years I stayed in the U.S., in the many different homes I visited, I saw most American home consumers connect their VCRs and even DVD players to the TV through aerial jacks.
Where I lived (Fairfax, VA) I had a nice home entertainment system setup. 120 channels of crap on TV to choose from, but the cable system employed analog UHF multiplexing technology from the 1970s (two stiff coaxials snaking from the wall to a decoder box with, I shit you not, fake wooden sides!) - The picture always had ghosts and noise and looked awful. The colors were washed out and the effective horizontal picture resolution was maybe 200 pixels. One day the picture looked so bad that I called in a cable guy to fix it. He probably thought I was some kind of euronazi crank because he said it looked just like everyone else's signal and nobody's complaining. With performance expectations as low as these, it's no wonder American consumer electronics are all basically worth exactly what you pay for.
Americans: If you want good stuff, smuggle some stuff home from Japan. Suffer the premium rates. They use mostly the same standards as you do, but their shit is -much- better, has more features, lasts longer.
Also, come visit Europe sometime, check out the cool shit we got you ain't got: 100hz TV picture steady as a rock, broadcast TV over aerial looking close to DVD quality; RDS car radios which continously retunes your receiver to the closest carrier broadcasting the program you're listening to, and your CD player pausing automatically for urgent traffic announcements; Ubiquitous, standardized GSM cellphones with SMS and always-on GPRS data services...
(*) By the way, pay no attention to the French with regards to home electronics. They're weird and speak French and use SECAM which sucks.
Two Words (Score:3, Insightful)
Take audio electronics for instance... I have an awesome radio and tape system made by Technics from a long time ago. Sure, it's big and heavy, but it's made with real nice polished metal that has stood the test of time. It gets the best radio reception out of ANYTHING in my house... better than my car's too. The knobs are big and turn nice (with nice heavy momentum too so it feels like you're actually doing something), the LED's are bright and everything is perfect on it...
Sitting in my basement is a 2Disc CD system with 2 tape decks and a low-lit display. I feel like if i put a glass of water on top of the thing the plastic will give away and ruin it... The nobs are weightless and rough, the reception is like I'm in a cement tomb 500ft in the ground, and the CD/Tape players barely work... They spent so much time designing the thing with beveled edges and color contrasts everywhere that I can't even find any button to press to turn the damn thing on. I could barely see where to eject the CD... or even where the tray was because of the stupid "techno" and "futuristic" bull shit design they have...
Yes, consumer electronics has gone down over the years... mainly the fault of stupid consumers, but also the fault of the greedy corperate SOBs that are runnin the company and make the decisions to sell the crap...
Don't give me a hunk of cheap plastic crap that looks like a 3D ink blob test, just give me a simple, nice looking, reliable product and I'll be a loyal customer for the rest of my life...
Examples (Score:3, Interesting)
On the newer side of things, I've seen televisions, monitors, LCDs, and projection units fail within a year quite a few times in the last 5 years. I'm sure everyone has. I know of people that have 3 or 4 in their house, and one tends to die on them every year.
I still have a Nintendo Gameboy (what might be deemed the Classic now) that runs fine - even after being flung at the wall uncountable times in rage, and even being run over once by a truck by accident once. It's had fluids (not just water) spilled in it, and has been used in nearly every environment. (I'm also led to believe that my situation here isn't exactly rare.)
I've heard several friends' children complain about their GBAs not working, or actually seeing the result of one flying down a staircase onto a hardwood floor myself. (I find it plauseable that someone could take a GBC and use it as a hammer to destroy GBA units to dust.)
To say nothing of the plethora of old PC systems (as old as 10 years) still running strong, whereas there are many, many new systems that have a major problem within a year (mainly memory or hard drive problems, it seems). Or the items that just happen to fail just shortly after going out of warranty.
Solution .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Inside the minds of a comsumer electronics maker (Score:4, Interesting)
First, consumer electronics makers are cheap. They will do ANYTHING to save a buck on the bill of materials. If this means skimping on a power supply, or ommitting some protection circuits, they will do it. Their goals are 1) regulatory compliance (UL in the US) and 2) low RMA's.
Secondly, the consumer cannot distinguish "quality." They things that the consumer can see have no real relation to the quality of the design. How would you know if they power supply is very ripply? How would you know that they left out some filter capacitors. Price or brand is no indicator, that's all driven by marketting. For the consumer to determine the quality, they would have to take apart the device and then analyze it like an engineer. Doesn't happen. Reviews don't help-- the reviewer doesn't know anything either. Think of the quality test most consumers do of a stereo: they go to the store and turn up the volume. What does that tell them?
Also, the electronics that you buy today are considerably more complicated than that of yesteryear. Consider a stereo. Twenty years ago, it was just a collection of transistors and power supplies. Now they have micro controllers, DSP, codec's, etc. There is a lot more to go wrong. Pluse a lot more corner cutting that you can do. Besides, once you throw software into the mix, you get bugs.
Lastly, buy the $49 APEX DVD player. The part that will fail is going to be the DVD mechanism. Do you think there is a big difference between the one APEX buys and the one Sony buys? They're probably both made by TEAC.
Experiences with customers (Score:3, Insightful)
In college I sold bikes. Real bikes. I sold 200-2000 dollar solidly made bikes out of several stores in southern california. Countless people would go into the store, look at the cheapest bikes we had, and would leave to go to target to throw their money away on a $200 full - suspension garbage pile with the front fork on backwards, the brake levers sticking straight up, easily stripped everything, and no clause at all for maintenence. I'd say about %30 of our business was coming from people who had just thrown out a crumbled Costco / Target / KMart bike after 6 months of use. A large part of this problem is that consumers just don't have the attention span anymore. They want it, they want it now, and they don't need to know how it works. They buy from Target because it's easy, cheap, and safe... and nobody tries to explain anything to them. Who wants to know that unused cables have a breaking in period, and so to keep your bike in adjustment you have to bring it back after 3 months of use... or risk damaging it? Who cares that plastic brake handles bend instead transmitting the force of your arm? And we were in the lucky position that we could explain all of these things to the consumer, because it was all visible if you knew what was going on. The only thing you can judge DVD players on is the look of the box it comes in and the reported failure rates... the latter of which is very difficult to come by, even for employees.
Perhaps we should have mandatory lifespan markings like the FDA markings on soup? I could tell a customer (if they asked) that I have VistaLites that are over 15 years old and have been swimming, skiing, have had the case melted, and have been dropped from the third floor and still work, and that CatEyes generally crap out in a very short period of time... but wouldn't it be easier for people if that was just on the box?
If the Cue Cat was linked to epinions, it could have been a very empowering tool. In my case, many people learned their lesson. Sadly, a sucker is always born to replace them. And many people didn't, leading to the treadmil replacement cycle. I was nearly run over last year by someone on a brand new Target bike whose builder hadn't bothered to put the nuts on the front wheel.
This has got to have a cost to society.
-C
Re:That's easy (Score:5, Interesting)
less than a year after manufacture, however there is a slow flow of instruments built 10 years ago that are just now seeing the shop for the first time. Kind of a horrifying thought for you while riding on that airplane
Re:That's easy (Score:4, Informative)
There are a number of avionics companies, two or three of them major leaders. And I did get the impression that quality was declining, although gadgets and prices were going up just fine. For the uninitiated here, these avionics boxes are big bucks (thousands) and aggravating as heck to fix. Plus in-flight failure is annoying, or worse. (Real pilots don't admit that a defective little gadget like an instrument would slow them down. More seriously, there is a certain amount of redundancy so that a point failure, compared to the failure of an engine, is rarely that big a deal. Nor is a failure welcome.)
Re:That's easy (Score:3, Interesting)
Computers, CAD and FEA are part of the problem. (Score:5, Informative)
As an avionics technician I can attest that consumer electronics is not the only field suffering.
I agree. People here wonder why I rant about my great old cars, but it's the same thing with them. Sure, the assembly quality of a Honda Accord is better than my 1970 Dodge Dart, but the Dart is overbuilt and survives the abuse of daily life far better.
Consumer electronics are the same. Back when manufacturing quality of components was poorer, the standard resistor tolerance was +/-20%! If you were designing a circuit which called for a 1k resistor, you'd have to budget on getting anything from 800 ohms to 1.2k hitting the assembly line. As a result, you specified a better rated transistor or other part. It cost a little bit more, but the net effect was that it lasted better. 5V on the supply to the logic? Okay, we'll use 6.3V electrolytic capacitors to bypass the RF! Not to mention the plastic crap everywhere...
Compare a modern VCR with a 20-year-old top-loading VHS boat anchor. Mechanically, they have to do exactly the same things to the tape. And yet the old VCR was built with steel or cast components, plastic only where it was essential. Idler pucks were sintered bronze and rubber and could be changed in minutes by a competent technician. Now, idlers are little plastic gears on plastic bearings which get loose quickly. Improved sophistication of the electronics have added features but the mechanisms are utter garbage.
Yes, I would pay more for a VCR that would last longer. Yes, I would pay extra for a motherboard that I knew had 25V capacitors on the 5V rails, or where I knew that ICs weren't pushed to their rated maximums everywhere.
I collect 1950s TV sets. Funny thing about them: steel or copper chassis, and 1/2 watt resistors everywhere, even where I calculate 1/8 watt loads. Capacitors were even more fragile then than they are now, so 450V-rated capacitors being used to filter 170V rectified AC line were commonplace. Stuff was built to last. Interestingly, only one of my antique sets came to me frankly broken; the rest needed adjustments or replacements of old (not failed) components. (I don't think I'll count 50 years of ingress of ambient humidity into a paper capacitor as a design flaw.)
I blame CAD software and automated finite element analysis for starting a trend.
If you build 500,000 units (a fairly small production run) and can cut 1 lb off the weight of a vehicle by using thinner sheetmetal in the floor, you've just saved 500,000lbs of raw steel. That's a few bucks... about $30,000, depending on the alloy and stamping considerations. The owner is not going to go out and measure the thickness of the steel of the car's floor.
To protect it from rust, you use today's improved paints to protect the floor. Of course, the underside of the car gets scratched by stones, and rust sets in. Because of the thinner steel, the floor rusts through faster. Most people scrap the car at this point; a premature end. Fine, the dry-cleaning hooks might be beautifully placed, but it's all the same to the car crusher.
To allow engineers to be able to say, "22 gauge steel will do" when instinct calls for 20-gauge, CAD and finite element analysis provide a rigorous mathematical proof that corners can be cut.
Sliderules calculated to three or four significant figures. As you went from step to step in a design calculation, you'd round things up or down automatically, and the compounded error would be far greater than it is now. But through intelligent rounding (ie. "The driver weighs 184.34lbs - call it 185 lbs..."), the error always worked out on the favor of design strength. Now, you park 12 significant digits in a variable on your calculator as you work the problem.
Note that the final design is more accurate, but the rounded-up design from a sliderule is superior in real-world survivability. Unfortunately, as margins get smaller and smaller, manufacturers are forced to adopt this tactic to save raw material.
In 1970, GM tested the first prototype of the Chevrolet Vega, which was GM's first CAD-designed car. It suffered a structural failure after only 8 miles on the test track. They had to add over 8 pounds of steel structure to reinforce the car. (Read John DeLorean's "On A Clear Day, You Can See General Motors".)
Honda cars are built out of such thin sheetmetal that I can - and have - dented them with my thumb. They derive their strength from the shape of the material, not from the material itself - it's just a four-wheeled soft drink can. This cuts cost and raises gas mileage at the expense of long-term durability. If the passenger places his or her foot hard enough on the floor, relatively modern (~1996) Accords flex enough that the brake lights go on. I wouldn't want to know where a Honda would bend if I went to Home Depot and used the trunk to bring home a couple of bags of topsoil for my flower garden.
It's easy to tell if three fat people have ever gone over a bump in the back seat of a 1981-1989 Dodge Aries or Plymouth Reliant four-door. (During the life of a car, if you think about all the weird people you've had in the car, and all the conditions you can expect.) The design budget is typically 200lb per passenger, which means that the expected rear seat load is about 600 lbs. Let's say three people at 250lbs, the load on the car's structure is 150lbs more than rated. That's effectively another person in the back seat. Go over a bump the wrong way, and bingo! You've got those trademark little cracks on the roof, right where they meet the rear pillar.
Computers in design have allowed us great things - faster design cycles, greater sophistication. But they've also taught manufacturers how to cut corners.
Re:Computers, CAD and FEA are part of the problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's easy (Score:5, Insightful)
True for the current economy (Score:3, Interesting)
We as a species are already getting into trouble because of the (unintentional) consequenses of unfettered growth, such as increasing water scarcity, desertification, and pollution. These suggest there ought to be another way of looking at an economy (maybe redefine it as a "monetary ecology"?)...
After all, in most cases, you don't call unrestricted growth "good," you call it "cancer."
P.O.M. Those 3 words make a difference.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Made In China
Made In Indonesia
Made In Malaysia
Look...I have a Samsung wireless phone. The first three units I got all semi-worked but had some defect. Made In Indonesia is stamped on the back. What should be there? Made In Indonesia By Children As Young As 5 Years Old Living 30 To A Room Smaller Than My Bedroom Making A Combined Daily Salary Less Than The Cost Of A Combo Meal.
Your (insert item here) is a piece of crap? Look at the POM. If it's junk, odds are it comes from one of the three above. But in the age of global parts
This is what you get when you mix poor wages, illiteracy, bad working conditions, and sweat shops.
Welcome to the global marketplace. Corporations will chase cheap labor to make cheap products while exporting the jobs of those who used to make them somewhere else. It's a nice race to the bottom. Forget quality. Forget quality of life. Japan is just doing the same thing we did. Chase cheaper labor and export jobs to where they can get it. Their economy is in the crapper now? Gee, I wonder why!
You see it very dramatically in the guitar market. As soon as a country acquires the skill to finally make a decent product, they move the operation to where people will work for a dollar less. They haven't even hit the bottom of the pool yet. There are still places with cheaper labor, less environmental laws, and lower education
Enter corporate solution
Make you buy it twice.
How we going to pay for that new plant? Got to drive demand somehow. Making it fail is a good way to do that.
This isn't to say that corporations don't love to sell you the same stuff twice. General Electric (one of the most crooked US companies in history) does it all the time with light bulbs. Goddess help those who fly on planes with their engines. They can't even make a good cordless phone or a toaster that wont burn your house down. Of course, even avionics parts are being made in China now. Fasteners that fail and kill several hundred people. Yep. Made in China. Thanks for dying on United.
Just start that mantra...
Business knows best.
Free markets.
Deregulation.
Business knows best.
Free markets.
Deregulation.
Of course, even General Electric isn't as bad as Hewlett Packard. When HP switched from being technology focused to being "consumer focused" that's when we got things like print heads and ink carts that are programmed to fail at a certain date. Still half full of ink? No matter.
Still plenty of geeks here who work with embedded applications. Go look into it. Call it what you will..I call it corporate crime.
It wouldn't suprise me at all to see automobile manufactures start to incorporate this into their cars computers. Encyrpted of course --.
Business Knows Best.
Free Markets.
Deregulation.
Re:P.O.M. Those 3 words make a difference.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, I agree that the reason that Sony products suck is that anything for the U.S. market is Made in Mexico. The Japanese keep the good Japan-made stuff for themselves. Somehow, I just don't think Juanita from the slums is going to do as good a job as Miyoko who lives and breathes her work.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:SHIT YES!!!!!!!!! (Score:2)
They are easier to mold, and less costly to produce, but not always the best materials for construction of consumer goods.