I just bought a Fairphone 6. Totally repairable. So is my Framework 13 laptop. Batteries and everything else easy to replace.

For example I ordered a USB-C interface for my laptop to replace a USB-A socket now that I have the Fairphone with USB-C. Cheap to buy and took about 30 seconds to swap over. Didn't even need to shut the laptop down.

It's a 32" Samsung, about 17 years old. The screen is still absolutely perfect, it's got digital TV aerial in, 3xHDMI, 2xSCART, video and VGA in. Audio outputs are RCA analogue and optical. And no goddamn Ethernet, WiFi or stupid smart "features". i.e. it does exactly what a TV should do and nothing else.

TVs are currently far, far too cheap. So cheap that it's cheaper to chuck one away and go buy another when it stops working. Because they can in my limited experience be easy to repair, my opinion is that there really ought to be at least a 100% purchase tax on them to make repair cheaper than replacement. Every town used to have a TV repair workshop, providing employment and preventing waste.

My TV simply needed to have the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply replaced. This fault is perfectly obvious when the back is removed. No test equipment required, just a simple visual check that reveals a blown part with a bulging top. A complete set high quality replacement parts only cost me about £10. Easy to fit with a decent soldering station and a solder sucker tool.

The monitor I'm using right now had the same fault, as did another that I bought for my son at about the same time as the TV.

Don't chuck it, take pride in having a little skill and fix it.

I just used it to log in to Slashdot from my passcode manager. I've no idea what any of my passcodes are. Double or triple click in the passcode manager followed by middle click does the job.

The middle click isn't in the least bit confusing, I love it, I sometimes use it maybe 30 times in a day.

Please whoever is listening, don't disable it.

My 17 years old Samsung 36" dumb but great TV, works with all the digital channels, has optical digital audio out, HDMI, antenna, SCART in, stopped working a couple of weeks ago.

Of course I know that not everyone has the skills to repair printed circuits but it was just GBP6.14 for a replacement set of electrolytic capacitors for the power supply and now it's working like new again.

Can the rest of the folks here satisfy my curiosity please? I've also repaired two monitors with the same fault, so, is blown electrolytic capacitors the most usual failure mode in TVs and monitors?

Same here, I have just one security camera to watch over a rare vehicle that I've had unsavoury individuals taking too much of an interest in. I think it also discourages cold callers.

I bought a Reolink POE camera through eBay, fitted it in May 2021. It looks to me to be really well made and is still working perfectly. I paid more money for the POE switch to power it than the camera itself. I use "motion" on my Linux server to monitor the camera and record movement. Only problem experienced, I initially had the night time IR lights on the camera switched on but the problem with this is when a spider puts silk threads across the front of it. Dew drops on the threads keep triggering recording all night long as the breeze makes them tremble. The camera still works at night with the light from a nearby street light but switches to noisy monochrome.

Generally very pleased with my Reolink.

Just have Donald get his marker pen out and enlist a range of "defence industry" personnel from technicians to company executives, to make sure qualified personnel are available to the armed services for the repair of front line equipment. When they find their backsides are plonked onto bench seats in the hold of a C-17 or A400M headed for Donetsk, attitudes will rapidly reverse.

TVs used to be pretty good.

My own Samsung TV was purchased in November 2008. It has inputs for antenna, 2 x SCART, 3 x HDMI, AV, VGA... it has both RCA analogue and digital optical audio outputs, the latter is connected to my new Marantz amplifier. I have Mordaunt-Short speakers and the sound quality is excellent.

The channel selection list is either all digital channels or a user selected subset. The channel selection is generally very responsive and easy to use compared to my GF's almost new Toshiba "smart" TV. I can scroll forward and pre-select programmes more than 24 hours in advance. If I wish to stream TV that also works beautifully using my Chromecast and Framework laptop running Debian Trixie.

In short, it does exactly what a customer needs it to do and nothing else.

Why the hell can't they just build TVs that do what the customer wants for the price they need to ask for profitability without pushing a load of shit into them?

I stopped using gnome years ago when the new version went out with Ubuntu. I was using a little Toshiba netbook and it was a disaster, just wouldn't work. then found Mint/Mate which worked perfectly on that same little computer for the next maybe 13 years. It was a while ago but if I recall correctly I went over to Mint because it was the only distro with Mate. It was a quite a while back so my memory might be incorrect on this point.

Replaced the Toshiba this year with a Framework 13 running latest Mint/Mate and that was not quite a disaster but it just didn't work properly. Two programs in particular just didn't work at all and the laptop locked up several times.

Now I'm running Debian 13/Mate on it. As I've told Framework support, this, as far as I can tell, is absolutely perfect. Everything "Just Works" and there's been no lockups at all. There used to be an irritation with battery message popups but since the BIOS update this has been fixed. Yet there's no mention at all of Debian on the Framework recommended distributions. Using Ventoy it was the easiest and most explanatory install yet.

Unless of course you have a BT router which takes 12V into a stupidly different barrel connector with a thicker centre pin than anything else. I have a "BT Home Hub 5 Type A" which has been hardware hacked to take a STANDARD 12V barrel plug and firmware hacked with OpenWRT installed so now it actually works properly.

Of course the Xaiomi router which also takes 12V but has a stupidly tiny little barrel connector socket needs an adaptor from eBay to take the same standard power plug as the Linksys router and the modified BT router.

All so that I can use a properly decent quality 12V power supply with an IEC mains inlet for which I paid decent money to Farnell, RS or whoever it was.

This is an unbelievable PITA. Let's have all of these devices powered by USB-C then we won't have to worry at all about finding the correct barrel plug or what voltage the router/switch/laptop/phone wants.

My Framework laptop power supply/charger is a neat little cuboid that has a USB-C outlet socket and a "Mickey Mouse" type standard mains inlet socket. It so far works with ANY device that I've tried that needs charge via a USB-C cable.

Anyone who wants one, as far as I know you can just order one from Framework without buying a laptop although those are also excellent.

Similar history here.

After various distro hops I'd been using mint/mate for years. Installed the latest on my new Framework 13 and it was a disaster. Amongst other problems it kept locking up occasionally needing me to do CTRL-ALT-DEL and going away while it shut down so I could reboot it. I wiped it and installed Debian 13/Mate which has been working absolutely perfectly since it was released.

And the problem as I see it is, the ridiculous price of a rail ticket and the sheer inconvenience of rail travel. I can put petrol in my 35 years old Civic and drive to wherever I want to, possibly with a passenger, at a fraction of the price of a rail ticket. Then, instead of being dropped in the middle of some city and having to get a cab or bus or hire car to complete the journey I can just continue in my car. If I need them my car can easily carry along for me a tent, sleeping bag, stove, cooking fuel, fishing tackle, outdoor clothing and if I need to take more stuff I can just hook up my trailer.

I live near the M4 in England so, just a few hours drive and I'm on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall or the Lake District. A day driving and I can be in the Scottish highlands. Two days driving gets me to Slovenia. Yes, I've done that too. Yes we sometimes have traffic jams and road works but it's generally pretty hassle and stress free and my car leaves from five paces away from my front door. The train station is more like five miles away.

If you live in a city and just want to travel to another city, well fine, a train can do that so long as you can pay the price.

Always assuming that the damned train drivers are not on strike again when they already get paid a similar salary to most surgeons with probably 1% of the training time and no student loan to spend decades paying off.

That is why travellers prefer to use their own private transport.

OK, it was supposed to be about Panasonic but, I have three Samsung products, a TV that I'm watching a movie on, I like that it has a couple of HDMI sockets, SCART, and both RCA and optical audio outputs, and two monitors, the 20 years old one is a lovely 1600x1200 screen, the 17 years old one is the wide screen format.

The TV has never had any attention and is working perfectly, no sound bar, sounds great connected to the optical input of my Marantz amp.

Both monitors failed recently, but they each only needed around £10 worth of new (Panasonic this time!) electrolytic caps to get the power supplies working again and they're both perfect once more.

After all of this time and thousands of hours none of the three screens has any faulty pixels. I'm a happy Samsung customer but my phone is a Moto G8 and my other kitchen appliances are Bosch and Neff.

I've got a domestic Panasonic microwave oven. Bought it because we had a cheaper one with enamel paint that peeled off the plain mild steel that then went rusty where the door closes, not good at all I thought.

Therefore we bought the Panasonic because it's all decent looking stainless steel. It's got to be over 20 years old and still all works perfectly with no corrosion of course. The only problem has been that the adhesive strip that attaches the door bezel gave up with age. It was a bugger of a job getting all of the old adhesive off each surface, then with some new super sticky 3M VHB double sided (get it perfectly placed first time!) it's put back good as new and continues to work perfectly.

So yes, maybe they made their stuff too well for those happy to pay a higher price while the majority buy cheap crap and toss and replace it every three or four years.