Shrinking TV electronics

For which we don't have a use. What was the warranty.

Yep, same here. Certainly decades.

Ditto.

I'm similar. My 'music' speakers are from the 1970s, various amps from early

1970s to 2003 (I have music in almost every room). I use IBM-era ThinkPad laptops (main machines this 2007 T60 as desktop replacement and a 2003 X32 as portable). My clothes drier is also from the 1970s, the first ever 'electronic' clothes drier to come onto the NZ market, you can set desired 'dryness' on a rotary dial and turn it on. It works via a thermocouple in the exhaust vent, hotter is drier. Alas, when it's current drive belt wears out I think I'm buggered (they last about a decade, I don't use the drier often).

I only replace things that no longer work. However I deliberately try to buy for longevity and am adept at extending the working lives of most electrical devices - well all devices actually. My car is 30 years old and I do all of the maintenance myself.

I have never been comfortable with this current 'throw away society' and hope that it's a phase in our development and that, in the not too distant future we'll go back to embracing the philosophy of buying quality goods that last. The planet can't sustain the current perverse way of doing things.

--
Shaun. 

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a  
cozy little classification in the DSM." 
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)

Even if one could make an automaton to repair boards, it might still be uneconomic. I can't imagine such an automaton would come cheap, and the capital cost would have to be recouped somehow. I would also suspect that finance to develop such a machine would be hard to come by - who's going to bet against the cost of new boards continuing to drop?

Further, that actual cost of replacement boards has to be a fraction of what is charged for them - the latter being what the market will bear. If an automatic repair machine started undercutting replacement prices, the latter would simply drop accordingly.

Sylvia.

But with what viewing angle? When my last CRT TV finally died a while back, I learnt that there is a significant variability in LCD performance.

Sylvia.

Agreed 100%.

The big iron computer industry had them briefly when they provided service contracts.

Produce, store, ship and install. The techo revelaed a couple of figures when he said it costs $150

Err, obvious, unless someone could pocket the difference.

I'm much the same most of those items, including certain Hoover washing machines, for which I have a lifetime's worth of spare parts :)

I have a few 90's era Hilux 4X4s, a 1979 Suzuki 4X4 and 2001 Subaru, I do all work on all but the Subaru, which I do basic stuff, but I'm NOT changing the clutch (for example) in the damned thing due to the time and labour involved...

Computers are a slight different matter - I'll keep using the same ones until they simply become too slow to handle the OS and/or programmes. That said, I still have some 386 and 486 machines for the sake of nostalgia.

Agreed, and the current attitudes can't be sustained indefinitely.

Heh! Know that feeling - I collect spares for things that I like before they go *too* obsolete.

Yep. I'm also limited by having a *really* crook back - one of the hardest things for me to do in fact is stand straight again after leaning over an engine bay even for as little as 20 seconds. That said part of being an invalid is the (lack of) income so I eat my weeks worth of morphine and get on with it if it needs doing. I'd rather live with extra pain for a week or so than extra debt for months and months.

I run a 1985 Honda City "AA". I understand they were only imported into Aus as vans (I'm in NZ), without the back seat and with a lower state of tune (including no contactless-ignition distributor). I've taken the back seat out of mine anyway to lighten the load. I like that it's got SFA electronics (ironically given the newgroup) so I can draw on the years I spent working on cars as a youth to fix anything that might go wrong. Other than the obvious limitions of having a crook back. That said not much goes wrong with it and it runs in the smell of an oily rag.

Yep. I have a desktop for the odd bit of gaming that I built in 2007ish when I had some extra money from having a boarder. I built it to last, ASUS motherboard with all solid caps, QX9650 CPU, RAM is maxed at 8 GB and I used a few bucks I got for Xmas from family to put a 120 GB SSD in it. I reckon it'll last me another five years at least .

Yeah.

Also it's an economic system that's not set up with people who have marginal incomes in mind that's for sure. If a major appliance or other expensive thing fails for me it can take a couple years to pay it off*. Increasingly I'm finding that a lot of appliances don't last much past their warranties and that's scary.

• Ironically wefare will help me pay off new appliances on HP but if I decide to 'buy wise', save money and get a quality product second-hand instead of a cheap thing new then I'm on my own w/r/t paying for it. What moron came up with that system?

--
Shaun. 

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a  
cozy little classification in the DSM." 
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)

Probably one of the easiest clutch jobs to do on any car.

Agreed.