But sarcasm and irony are so much fun :) I'm also very annoyed by products that don't work as they should and/or or difficult/impossible to repair. It makes you wonder why anyone ever bothered to make them in the first place.
Ann, sorry about that. I don't do much sarcasm, nor irony. Quite possibly I am way to serious about things.
I am quite critical of both laziness and stupidity, though. I do catch grief for that on occasions.
Really though, there are a whole lot of companies that appear to be successful that have products that are very challenging to even diagnose, let alone to service. Some of them get into the "made by monkeys" section of this fine publication, some don't.
Ann, there are a whole lot of products that are simply not worth repairing. Others aren definitely worth repairing and happen to be conveniently repairable. THAT did not just happen: designing for repairability is cloesly linked to designed for assembly. Only just a bit more effort.
But it also has an extra benefit, which is a design using components available from multiple sources. So that when I can't get parts frpom one maker, I can use parts from another maker. That is quite handy.
William, I agree. But apparently the math needed to figure that out is too complicated for some companies, or they are too short-sighted. In this case, one hardly needs 20/20 hindsight to come to your conclusion.
What I find is that to provide the quality in my product that justifies the price I need to use a power supply that is quite a bit more expensive than the cheapest one that would work. But the adequate margins abd better construction have meant that no failure have occured in ten years. That has been quite good for the products reputation. It IS INDEED cheaper to do things right the first time.
Ann, Yes that example story is one of many challenges working with an OEM who's life line was soley dependent on outsourcing to Chinese Manufacturers to save a buck.
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