Last time I saw something readily repairable was a 1990s era Canon film camera. Actually had a mechanical shutter train. (shudder, horrors, etc.) Need I add that my former business has done a belly flop. Same with a side line fixing VCRs and cars.
I am not at all surprised at the complexity since I have been witnessing my son using the Nexus 7 we got him for Christmas this year. It is an amazing tablet and I am in awe at the level of voice recognition it has displayed - I remember using voice recognition software in the past where you had to speak slowly and say the word very clearly. This tablet translates accurately to text a mumbling teenager! He is having a blast with it and so far functionality has been flawless...
The only test question I remember from the Navy was a picture of a nail a screw and a hammer. You had to match two of the three up correctly. I guess I did better than most because they let me work on what we now refer to as "weapons of mass destruction".
I'm sure they could make one that would be repairable. It would weigh about 5 pounds and be the size of a 1" loose leaf binder. They would sell approximately zero of them, even to people who say they want something repairable.
Honestly, I've had pretty good luck repairing stuff like this. All that can go wrong that is repairable is loose connections.
If you want them to stop using massively integrated chips that mean that pretty much every function is on one chip, so that you can replace them as needed, then increase the above estimate to 8 to 10 pounds and it would probably be more the size of a 2" binder, maybe more. And it would probably cost more like $1200.
Personally, I had a 7" tablet last year and it was OK but too heavy and too thick. it's thin and light and low power (therefore long battery life) that makes these worth having, and that's anathema to being highly repairable. Some things just aren't repairable, you need to get over it. You can't fix a CPU by cracking it open and soldering the silicone either, but nobody complains about that.
It seems as though the reason for the FCC delay is the voice search feature rolled out in the Jelly Bean update to 4.1.1 just a couple days ago. Voice search is the patent Apple is defending that had halted the Galaxy Nexus.
Tluxon, I heard that Google is planning for a different business strategy, which is almost similar to Amazon Kindle. In Nexus tablet, they are planning for a wide variety of business through Google Play like amazon.com in Kindle. Without aiming a future profit, they cannot survive in a cost to cost model business.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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