Power surges and modern electronics.

I don't know about Dell LCDs, but their computer motherboards of 5-8 years ago that failed at high rates were actually made with very good brands of capacitors, like Rubycon, Nichicon, and Panasonic, not the common crap found on many other motherboards . Unfortunately Nichicon produced bad batches of their HM and HN series caps, marked HM(M) and HN(M), from around 2001-2004.

Just finished working on a Dell Optiplex that has 8 Rubyicon 1800 uf

6,3v caps in a row; all of which were leaking out the top of the caps. The failure rate of Rubycon capacitors was high back when I was repairing televisions, particularly Mitsubishis of the late 90s. Chuck

I think you just demonstrated my point. It's not the brand or even the quality of the caps. It's the voltage rating. In most cases, the capacitors voltage rating is just too close to the operating voltage. Filtering a 5vDC power supply line with 6.3v caps is just asking for the caps to blow up. I've ranted on the subject before but am a bit busy to dig out references right now. Short summary is that electrolytics will derate substantially under high temperatures. The ESR will also climb, causing increased self heating. Drops in capacitance will cause increased ripple, which will produce increased ripple current, which will result in additional heating. Manufacturers can search forever to find a better quality 6.3v capacitor, but what's really needed is to spend a few pennies more and use a 10v capacitor.

Electrolytic life calculators:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

The Pentium4 CPUs in those Dells were such power hogs that even Rubycons would usually wear out in about 5 years.

Why has my 1976 Sanyo TV needed only 2 caps replaced (audio coupling, vertical yoke)? The 2-year-old digital converter box that sits on top of it has needed a lot more caps replaced.

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Engineering precision I assume, once you know exactly how a complex circuit will run (using a computer simulation) you have no need to over design the components (slop factor).

But most of the capacitor failures in those Dells involved incorrectly made Nichicon HNs, and after Dell quit using Nichicons in the CPU voltage regulator and switched over to Rubycons, most of the capacitor failures were still among the remaining Nichicon HNs, despite those capacitors running at lower temperatures and ripple currents (they were in the AGP slot and memory voltage regulators) than the Rubycons and well below their 6.3V rating. So why did the Rubycons hold up better? Could it have been their higher quality? Also among the motherboards I've seen, why have those with the highest proportion of bad caps been those with the highest proportion of 10V caps -- awful

10V G-Luxon brand caps? This is why I blame the garbage, not the voltage ratings.

Sorta. Caps only dissipate power when current runs through them. In the case of filter caps, it's the ripple current that causes internal heating. If you use under-value caps or high ESR caps, you'll have heating. Among other things, heating causes electrolyte loss. See the bottom of:

for the bad news.

Because they didn't have decent computers in the 1970's and therefore could not calculate capacitor values to the bitter edge of near failure. Designers weren't quite sure what they could get away with, so they always left a safety factor.

These days, we have CAD workstations and modeling software that will accurately predict when something will blow. The typical design criteria is the absolute cheapest components which will fail immediately after the warranty expires. Similarly, manufacturers of capacitors didn't have the production controls necessary to accurately rate their components. So a 6.3WV (working voltage) capacitor was often really a 10WV capacitor. These days, if it's 6.3V, you fairly well be certain that it will die a horrible death at a few millivolts over 6.3V. Your two year old converter box was designed to operate only up to its probably 1 year warranty. After that, it's actually desireable for the manufacturer to have it blow up.

There was also an odd preception that electronic devices were suppose to last "a lifetime". It was not unusual to have TV's and consumer electronics last 20-30 years without anything more than mechanical failures. Maybe a dried out electroltyic or blown dial lamps, but not much more. However, that was bad for business as nobody wanted to replace something that was still working. Well, that has obviously changed to the throw-away and eWaste mentality. It sucks, but I have no clue how to change it. Few seem willing to pay for quality, and even fewer know quality when they see it.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com               jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com               AE6KS

Of course they decent computers! Ever seen an HP-35? My aunt gave me one as a pre-graduation present, and I was one of only three people on the U of MD campus (out of 35,000) who owned one. Several of my dorm-mates were science or engineering majors, and we'd sit around of an evening, using the HP-35 to calculate the answers to their homework.

Frankly, even a slide rule is accurate enough.

They still aren't sure. No responsible engineer designs a circuit to the hairy edge of proper operation or reliability. (I know, I know...)

I've been lucky. I have tons of electronic equipment, and most has held up with hardly any breakdowns. This includes recent purchases. * My NAD MR-20 lasted 20 years of heavy use until the focus went out. (If the parts were still available, I would have fixed it. Ditto for my 36" Sony flat-face WEGA, which also gets heavy use, and is nearly 10 years old. I expect it to go at least another 10 years without repair (if I keep it).

The least-reliable products I've ever owned came from one of /the/ leading American manufacturers of high-end audio. /Every/ component broke down repeatedly. When one of the power amps damaged one of my speakers, that was the last straw. The replacement amplification, designed by John Curl and costing much less than The Other Spread, has given no trouble.

The "throw-away mentality" is most-likely due to the rising cost of competent service bumping into the falling cost of electronics. Not to mention that the latter are increasingly difficult to service. The rapid changes in technology also encourage people to throw out broken stuff.

• Of course, I rarely buy cheap products. Purchases are permanent investments that "ought" to last forever. This has mostly been the case.

I collect HP calculators. I think I have 3ea HP35's, not counting the marginal HP35s. I went through college using a slide rule. In my last semester, I lusted after an HP35 but had to settle for a cheaper TI SR-10 clunker. I also built an electronic slide rule using Helipots, analog multiplier modules, and a mirrored expanded scale meter. It all fit into a brief case. With a slide rule, my errors were usually powers of 10 errors. With a calculator, I had those plus sloppy number entry errors. These daze, with computahs, I now can add algorithm errors. The old errors never seem to go away.

I beg to differ. Here's the typical scene. Engineer designs a product to the best of his abilities. Everything sorta works, but he had to stop designing in order to meet an arbitrary deadline so the boss could comfortably fit in his vacation trip. The design review committee decides that it's good enough, but the VP of bean counting announces that the customer has declared that unless we cut out X number of dollars out of the price, they'll go to the evil competition in China. Actually, the customer has said no such thing, but since the VP of bean counting's bonus check is dependent on the product margin, it magically becomes the official target price.

So, our formerly sane and sober engineer is now tasked with butchering his own product. Originally designed with a 10+ year component lifetime and MTBF, he starts by removing almost all his safety factor. Voltage ratings are cut to the bare minimum. Optional manufacturing features (JTAG port, test points, documentation, removable fasteners, etc.) are all removed. Sectional testing is replaced by parametric testing and sample testing.

This is not science fiction. I've been through two consulting exercises where this was almost exactly what happened. Nobody wants to cut corners, but the mechanism for forcing engineers to cut corners is built into the system. Quality is a luxury these days.

My test equipment pile looks like a 1980's period museum.

(A clean shop is a sure sign of a sick mind).

I don't do much audio, so I have no experience. However, I did see something rather typical today. I'm in Kmart in Scotts Valley CA today. 6ea Dell computers (GX620). Only 2 of them work. One of the two that was still working rebooted unexpectedly causing the user to walk away in disgust. I got lucky and picked the last remaining working machine.

Yep. When the iPhone arrived, I couldn't believe how many iPaq and Palm PDA's I saw at the recycler. It's not like the old stuff is no longer functional or usable. It's just not fashionable any more.

I'm a compulsive repairman. Therefore, I rarely buy anything new. I tend to buy used and broken, fix it, and then use it forever. Once I've been inside, I can usually tell if it's going to last. The stuff that isn't, is sold or donated. Looking at the photo of the shop, I don't think there's anything on the shelf that I didn't buy broken and later fix. Unfortunately, the pile of stuff that I couldn't fix (or don't have time to fix) is about 3 times as large.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

My 30+ year *design* experience has been very different.

I see the problem today as one of folks cutting and pasting "app notes" together -- letting the component manufacturers do their engineering for them.

The unfortunate ugly truth is that many of these "typical applications" are *not* designed well. And, the folks who may have done the designs aren't available to answer questions about their designs (and shortcomings thereof).

A "finished" design is usually outsourced to someone/somewhere with the emphasis on low cost. The vendor *always* assures the customer that they will produce a quality product.

But, product lifecycles being as short as they are, design defects never get fed back into the pipeline -- a "new" product has already replaced the old; a new vendor doing the fab, etc.

The end user is the root of the problem, IMO. They neither demand quality nor are willing to pay for that quality. With many devices, they often don't even know how their device is *supposed* to operate so don't feel emboldened to complain when it *doesn't* work.

Or, they are all too willing to use the product's failure as an EXCUSE to buy something new -- "reward" themself. I've seen this "rationale" all too often.

New products often introduce new features. Why settle for last year's model when *this* year's model has ?

"Service" is usually not available, locally (for the majority of clueless consumers). So, now they have to deal with packaging the device up for shipment ("Gee, I sure wish I had the forethought to save the original packing materials!"), paying for shipping (with "tracking"), living without the device (or its replacement) for the duration of the repair, an unknown repair time *and* cost.

Most "repairs" are board level swaps. And the prices of those boards are ridiculous.

[E.g. we have avoided purchasing an on-demand hot water heater out of the *realization* that any failures will be "repaired" by a PLUMBER. Makes about as much sense as having a carpenter do your dental work!]

Exactly. The same is true with most consumer kit. Businesses are even worse -- replacing their IT kit every 2-3 years *just* so they can buy the latest buggy version of windows... (does that secretary REALLY need a dual quad core 3GHz machine to type up business correspondence??)

----^^^^^^^^^^ is the operative word, here. Our society has signalled that an "investment" is "a year or two" (look at wall street and the tax code). Even wanting to make smart "long term" decisions is fraught with unexpected risk -- who will stock the replacement parts for these devices 5 years hence? (sure, you *might* be able to buy electronic components... but, what about plastic parts, etc.?)

One of my servers has triple redundant power supplies. I pulled two sets-of-three power supplies from similar servers that were headed to the scrap pile. If I had to buy one today, I suspect it would be hundreds of dollars -- *if* I could find one!

Ditto. Though only where practical. E.g., I often treat color printers as disposable -- when my supply of toner/ink runs out, the printer makes a graceful exit (I refuse to spend $200-300 for a set of cartridges!)

Get rid of it. If I haven't had a pressing enough need to fix something that is broken, it goes out. Life's too short! :>

To be fair, I haven't designed anything really complicated for many years. Between about 1973 and 1983, I played RF designer for various companies. After that, a mixture of repair, speculation, and consulting. Most of my horror stories and abominations are from "rent a project engineer" style short term consulting in the last 10 years or so.

Yep. I just love "reference design" clones that don't work any better than what the applications engineer threw together. Some of them look like test fixtures or evaluation boards, not finished products. With RF, layout is actually more important than component selection. However, we're not talking about RF here. It's ordinary mundane capacitors that are the current problem.

Much to my amazement, I opened a 2 year old Lenovo desktop and found polymer capacitors around the CPU. Nice. That desktop is going to last a long time.

The whole mess would go away if manufactories would begin using polymer caps instead of electrolytics in temperature critical locations. Too bad they cost a few pennies more, some values are not available, and availability tricky.

Ok... confession time. When I was doing RF, I would steal as much as possible. Motorola had a nifty line of RF application notes, with designs by Helge Granberg. Most were close, but it still took a while to shake out the problems. If I had sufficient experience with the components and applications, I probably could have done better starting from scratch. However, everyone was pioneering back then. Any manner of head start was beneficial. Incidentally, I didn't do any better copying designs from competitors radios. Most of those barely worked.

Reverse example. Just before I was hired, the company had a problem. The standard IF frequency of 10.7MHz was too low to be usable for the rather wide marine band (156 to 163MHz). 21.4MHz was the next available frequency, but none of the commodity integrated IF chips would work reliably at 21.4 at the time. Something in between was needed. After many meetings, the high command got tired of the technical discussion and conjured a frequency out of thin air. It as

16.9MHz which was his daughters birthday. Orders for crystal filters and offset oscillators were duly ordered. They worked, but the choice of frequency was horrible, resulting in major birdies (spurious junk) on top of common channels. Some tweaking helped, but it never really went away.

Meanwhile, the filter sales droid leaked our choice of IF frequency to all his other customers, also known as the competition. Since everyone else had the same problem, they presumed we knew what we were doing and immediately adopted 16.9Mhz as their new IF frequency. I'm sure they weren't amused with the results.

The vendor always lies. Most of the data sheets are science fiction. Production parts never resemble the engineering samples. Welcome to life in hell.

Long ago, Fairchild Semi did just about everything they could to ruin my project. In retaliation, I systematically designed their parts out of the product line. I kept records and kept the lying sales droid up to date on how much in sales I cost his employer. I don't recall the total, but it was something like $2 million in the first year. One would expect that someone would notice or care, but nothing ever happened except for a visit by a well dressed incompetent that delivered numerous promises and then disappeared.

Yep. That's also a major problem. Nobody wants to fix an obsolete product when its replacement is in the pipeline. In some industries (i.e. hard disk drive), sometime 3 generations of replacement products are in the pipeline at the same time.

Blame the victim? Much as I hate it, I agree with your assessment. I suspect that simple economics is at the root of the problem. If you can buy 4 junk contrivances for the price of one quality product, that becomes a real temptation. With the economy in bad shape, going cheap versus going quality is no longer an option.

History will some day remember Microsoft Windoze as having trained the population to accept mediocrity as normal. There are many things in life where we simply have never seen quality. I never liked wine because I always seem to end up drinking junk. My favored method of cooking salmon produced dry rubbery fish, which I assumed was normal, until I had some that was properly cooked. However, I got my start with various Unix mutations, so I never got suckered into thinking Windoze, MacOS, or OS/X were anything more than a bad imitation. If you could give the GUM (great unwashed masses) a taste of quality, I'm moderately sure they will demand better products.

Yeah, I have the problem myself. I have a 1989 vintage SCO Unix

3.2v4.2 server running in my office that refuses to die. I keep wishing that something would fail, but it just keeps running. I had 9 months of uptime before I had to move things around and start over. I keep wanting to replace it with a shiny new Linux box, but only after it fails. My previous vehicle went for about 290,000 miles.

Yech. Because the new features are often useless or cause side effects, such as speed and uptime problems.

Sure, but some things are getting smaller and companies are becoming more efficient at dealing with failures. Many companies have a flat rate exchange program. That's not going to work for high ticket HDTV monsters, but it does work for smaller devices. For example, HP/Compaq ships out an empty padded shipping container for warranty repairs.

I'm still doing board level repairs, but I lose money on all of them. The time and effort necessary to just get access to the PCB is often a major problem. Products are just not designed to be repairable any more. I just ripped apart a Roland D-5 junk keyboard synthesizer. Wires and cables on all 4 sides of the sole PCB. No slack or service loops anywhere, which means I can't run the board while inside the unit (without building custom extension cables). So how much more would it have cost to add a few inches of cable length? More than Roland was willing to spend.

You would think that high end products would be more repairable, but apparently not. I tore into an Icom IC-7000 radio. Street price $1300. The mounting screws would either bind or strip the threads in the soft aluminum casting. Many of the major components were buried under layers of unrelated parts and pieces that had to tediously removed. The driver hybrid was screwed to the casting with no access holes through the PCB. A large number of leads had to be unsoldered in order to gain access to the mounting screws. Basically, it's a nice radio with absolutely no consideration for service and repair.

Out of curiosity, if not a plumber, whom would expect to hire to repair your on-demand water heater? Some of my friends are getting into solar contracting and are doing everything from wind to solar electric, including some really complicating plumbing for the water heater. It's not really that difficult if one is willing to learn. While I don't do well at plumbing, it's not unusual for me to do a service call to repair a computah, and end up working on the printers, network hardware, cell phones, PDA's, backup drives, UPS, game machines, wireless, and all other manner of marginally related hardware. While the losers specialize, those with a clue are picking up adjacent technologies.

No. But they need it to run MS Office 2010, which requires Windoze 7, which requires major horsepower. To a hardware geek (like me), the whole thing seems backwards, but to the business owner, his requirements are applications driven. He needs to run a short list of major apps, they require a particular OS, and that requires a hardware upgrade.

However, you are correct about one item. One of the major reasons to upgrade is to obtain the latest release of the operating system in the vain hope that it will have less bugs than its predecessor. Miracles and bug free operating systems are possible, but unlikely. Still, hope springs eternal.

I do quite well searching for obsolete components and parts on eBay and various web sites. I don't recall buying much directly from vendors in many years.

Sigh. I buy the refill kits and replacement toner refill protection reset chip on eBay for my various ancient color laser printers (HP

2500 and 2600). I can usually refill a cartridge 3 times before it's no longer with the effort. Looking on eBay, clone cartridges are about $30/ea while toner bottles are about $24/ea. That's quite a bit cheaper than new cartridges.

Yeah, I know. I just can't get myself to throw away (recycle) the junk. However, I'm doing it. Most of the antique machines are gone. I'm keeping bits and pieces that might be useful, just in case. The rest is sloooooowly going to the recycler. Sniff.

Whew....

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Although... Jeff threatened to fill a 40' roll off with stuff and deliver it to me.

Fortunately, I'm out of reach now having moved.

Jeff the other other one.

Ouch. That's frightening to hear. I guess companies figure one lawsuit is cheaper than the higher (ie, less-competitive) price of 100,000 units.

I still have my Palm Tungsten T3 and iRiver H120. Not cheap, but they're both "a-workin still" after seven years. (Not even a battery replacement.)

I thought that was what the overhead storage at your shop was for? ;-)

--
For the last time:  I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off
scientist!!!

I need a rant today (instead of doing my billing).

I don't know about the success rate of litigation for quality issues. If someone was injured as a result of an inferior product, I could see some litigatory relief being necessary. However, if the product was basically junk, it would take a class action lawsuit to make legal action worthwhile. The only people that benefit from those are the attorneys, who actively search for potentially defective products. Even so, the only companies that seem to get stuck with class action suits are those with product liability insurance, which insures that the attorneys will get paid. I've been involved in a few class action suits and have yet to see anything resembling a full reimbursement. Usually, it's a coupon that entitles me to buy another piece of junk from the company at a miserable discount if I supply them with all my personal information.

The problem from the company perspective was formerly that of diminishing returns. How much additional cost will be necessary to insure an acceptable rate for return. Some laptop manufacturers are more than happy to ship laptops with failing BGA solder connections. My guess is about 5% of these laptops fail within the warranty period and perhaps 15% during the extended warranty period. To perhaps cut this failure rate in half, would probably add $5 in cost for slower cool down after freon reflow soldering and maybe some vibration testing. Over the huge number of laptops sold, that's a fairly big price hit when multiplied by the retail markup. So, it's cheaper to replace the failing laptops, than it is to fix the damn problem. It also keeps the repair people (like me) in business. The laptops that survived the warranty period are almost certain to fail later. My guess is about 30% failure in the 3 years following warranty expiration. That should normally give a bad name to the company product, but doesn't because users simply assume that a laptop is only suppose to last a short while. Or, maybe they thought they abused it by using it normally. I had one person drag in a known problem laptop (HP dv9000 series). Even after I explained the cause of the failure, his first inclination was to drive to immediately Costco and buy another HP.

So, where are we headed? My guess is better warranties, better contracts, fabulous extended service plans, and instant overnight exchanges, while the quality of the product deteriorates to the point of minimum acceptability. Actually, it will drop to the point where the company support phone line starts ringing constantly. That's how companies know that there's a real problem. If the phone doesn't ring, then there's nothing wrong and it's safe to continue shipping junk.

I'm always amused when companies and products are highly rated as a result of providing superior service and support. If the product was any good, it wouldn't need service and support. I'm very suspicious of any company that does these well as they're probably trying to cover up a marginal product.

Merry Christmas and Happy Extended Warranty Service.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com               jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com               AE6KS

But if you don't have *hard* data (specs) for the components you're designing around, how can you accurately predict what the "support circuitry" will be tasked with?

Look at a datasheet today. Any numbers that are present are in the "typ" column. "Um, how does that figure vary with temperature? Process? Supply voltage? Windspeed? etc."

Many devices have 1,000+ (I put the comma in there so you wouldn't think I meant "100") page datasheets. How am I -- as a designer possibly using this device *once* -- supposed to sort out all the little details to come up with a robust design? Instead, folks fall back on the "typical application" cited in the datasheet and cut and paste these together to come up with their "system"/product.

I keep thinking about a "typical application" diagram for a CCD camera some years ago. If you looked hard, you realized they weren't using half of the camera's capability (i.e., throwing away half the picture). What sort of a clown came up with *that* as a way of SHOWCASING their company's product???

Often, the folks creating these documents are "new hires" -- so, you're seeing all their mistakes. BUT THEY NEVER GO BACK AND FIX THE DOCUMENTATION!

Years ago, there was a magical concept called "second source". Nowadays, you have *one* source for many of the key components in a design. If they don't work (or, don't work AS ADVERTISED), your sole remedy is to scrap your design and start over.

And *hope* the next SOLE SOURCE supplier you embrace is better!

All the while, hoping your boss and the marketing droids don't roast your chestnuts for schedule slippage.

The problem is independant of the state of the economy. I've been bemoaning the fact that you can't *buy* quality, anymore. It used to be true that, for a price, you could get a better quality product. Now, it's a choice between crappy and crappier.

For example, we have been thinking about a new TV for a while. We don't *watch* much broadcast/cable TV (literally, less than an hour a day). OTOH, we *do* tend to watch movies, etc.

But, the mere idea of sorting through the myriad of LCD, plasma, etc. offerings *hoping* to beat the odds on "quality"/reliability is a daunting task. Instead, I'll look into fixing the 46" plasma or the little ~20" LCD set. Meanwhile, living with the

27" CRT.

The same holds true of kitchen appliances. $1-3K for a new refrigerator... AND IT IS EXPECTED TO (only) LAST *7* YEARS??? Are you *insane*???

No thanks, we'll keep the 17 year old icebox and wait for "bisque" to come back into fashion...

I disagree. I think people are single-mindedly focused on price. I don't think people are capable of making "value evaluations" so they resort to a simple one: "cheaper is better (preferable)".

I get nasty looks every time I fix the washer or drier (both approaching 20 years). "Why shoul dwe replace them? New ones will break just as often (oftener?) *and* we'll have to pony up $1K or more for the *privilege* of fixing them, instead!"

I drive a 1985 Monte Carlo and find a note on the windshield every other week as someone is always looking to buy it from me (different contact phone numbers so I am reasonably sure these are different individuals).

I *updated* my Windows workstation to XP this past month.

Etc. I.e., I'm not "missing out" on anything by doing so.

Spend some time repairing laptops if you *really* want to "expand your vocabulary" (unfortunately, none of the words you will learn will have more than four letters).

I have a high-end Sony digital amp that will end up in the scrap heap RSN as disassembling it means unsoldering the power transistors/FETs for all six audio channels from the heatsink in order to work on the PCB.

I would expect most failures to be in the microprocessor control electronics for the water heater -- not the few feet of copper pipe involved! What sort of skillset do you imagine the average plumber has when it comes to troubleshooting electronic systems? Wanna bet that whatever "fails" is a 5c component?

*But*, I'll bet even more that the manufacturer (whomever) won't provide *any* service information to me *or* the plumber (since none of us could *possibly* understand this INCREDIBLY HIGH TECH DEVICE :-/ ). *Sell* me a detailed service manual for $200 (!!!) and I'll consider the purchase. Otherwise, I'll buy a new $300 water heater every 20 years and spend the money I have saved from service calls on the "lower efficiency" (you can buy a lot of natural gas for the price of a service call!)

We've looked into solar hot water. Installed, they talk like $3-5K. "Um, where's the savings, there? You want me to give *you* all the money I am NOT going to have to give to the gas company??? What's in it for *me*? (besides the higher risk of a more complicated system -- electronics -- and more hardware on the roof, etc.)"

His problem is he is chasing something that intentionally will never be attainable (THE final version of the software).

A friend who owns an insurance business was complaining about being *forced* to upgrade OS to support the newer version of the (EXPENSIVE) toolkit the business relies on. This, in turn, required upgrading all of the workstation hardware. Etc. For a small firm, the cost was still the equivalent of two employees (salaries, overhead, benefits).

And, the most amusing aspect is that the "new toolkit" doesn't give them any added capabilities! (i.e., you have spent all this money -- plus training costs, lost performance, etc. -- and not *gained* anything in the process)

I just rescue a printer with enough spare ink/toner. Print until it is empty, then move on to another printer. (I don't print much so I can get a LOT of life out of a printer rescue)

Find someone who can use, fix or just plain *tinker* with the stuff. I work hard at offloading things wherever possible. Especially the *big* things (pinball machines, arcade pieces, larger pieces of test equipment, etc.).

"Simplify" :>

Is there a connection between price and quality -- are more-expensive laptops less-likely to need service?

Yes and no. There is always the "flimsiness factor" to contend with. But, it's hard to make a "robust" laptop, regardless. (though I had a Tadpole that was very durable)

All laptops break. Consider them as "consumables" (disposable).