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rwguinn · 18th June 2011, 10:19 AM

We are all familiar with the "Throw-away" printers, whose cost (including ink) is lower than the cost of replacement ink cartridges--even though those cartridges may contain 3X the ink of the original.
Repair is no longer an option, especially on nearly all consumer electronics--you just replace the whole thing--or possibly, on some things, a circuit board.
My 3 year-old 51" Plasma television went suddenly blank during the middle of a program.. After loading it in the truck and hauling it in to Ft. Worth, then waiting a week, we find that the power supply went South.
The repair shop told me the total cost to repair is $496. Fifty of that is already paid, as a non-refundable deposit. There is also the fact that the PS is not available--on National back-order, and they can't give a delivery date.
Wal-Mart has the newest iteration of that television, with a few extra features, on sale for $498. Two dollars more than the power supply.

My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones. On occasion, Bob would come to the house and disembowel the thing right there, replacing components as necessary (and get knocked halfway across the room by the HV section, likely as not). In '66, we got a color set, with similar life history. Never, IIRC, did repairs amount to more that 30% of the cost of a new machine.

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

uk_dave · 18th June 2011, 10:25 AM

Probably : constant innovation.

It no good making a model which will last for ten years or more because the technology underpinning it may be obsolete in two to three years.

Plasma screen tv? LCD? Backlit? 3D? Surround Sound? etc etc etc

steve s · 18th June 2011, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by rwguinn

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair.

They don't need to end up in landfills. Look in the yellow pages under recycling and you'll find places that specialize in electronics. I take a lot of stuff to a local e-cycling center. They'll take just about anything even if it's not electronic, as long as it fits into their giant shredder and the metal doesn't exceed a certain thickness.

But overall I agree with you. It's frustrating when things that are labeled "durable goods" aren't very durable.

Steve S

WildCat · 18th June 2011, 10:49 AM

Last year I went to Home Depot to buy new batteries for my DeWalt cordless drill, only to find the new model was on sale for $60 - more than $40 cheaper than the 2-pack of new batteries. Granted, the batteries in the new one weren't the extra-capacity ones, but still... I bought the new one.

carlitos · 18th June 2011, 11:03 AM

I have this feeling about entire neighborhoods. If houses, streets and infrastructure become disposable, I think that we might be doing it wrong.

Skeptic Ginger · 18th June 2011, 11:33 AM

Built in obsolescence is a marketing ploy. It's partly the speed of innovation and it's partly planned obsolescence. I don't know the % contribution of each part. Probably it depends on the device. With computers, it's more innovation, with printers, perhaps more planned obsolescence.

theprestige · 18th June 2011, 02:25 PM

Meh. All it means is that in another few hundred years our more advanced descendants will be mining our landfills the way we mine copper and coal.

commandlinegamer · 18th June 2011, 02:35 PM

With the price of copper at the moment, you'd be crazy to dump any electronics in landfill. In any case, recycling is pretty much mandatory now given the recent European regulations.

Furcifer · 18th June 2011, 02:48 PM

This netbook I'm typing on right now set me back about $200. It does everything I need it to do, internet, email, word processing and even some photo editing. That $200 was last year and I've seen newer models at Staples for as little as $100 out the door. For all intents and purposes this is disposable, if anything goes wrong with it it's going to cost about $100 to fix, the hard drive or the monitor, maybe more if the motherboard were to go.
The same thing goes for laptops, you can get a basic 15 inch laptop for about $300. If it dies in the 1 year warranty period you get a replacement and if it dies after that any repair is going to set you back about 1/3 the cost of a newer and better model. Essentially disposable.
I saw an Indian company is aiming at a sub $100 tablet computer due to come out next year. Just the basics, but basically all you need to run most programs and do what most people do every day on their personal computer. Now that's a truly disposable computer.
All of your personal electronics are basically disposable. It's pretty amazing how in about a 20 year period we went from only maybe the top 10% of households having personal computers to disposable ones.

lionking · 18th June 2011, 03:18 PM

We replaced all the old TVs with flat screens over the past couple of years (with all our kids, there's six or seven). The TVs we replaced were all working and quite new, but we couldn't even give them away to charity op shops. Into landfill they went.

kedo1981 · 18th June 2011, 03:28 PM

The whole throwaway printer thing is border line evil.
The ink replacement doesn’t have to cost that much.
Pushing people to buy new, just generates waste.
There are entire towns in Asia that are stacked with western junk.
Old TVs will be one of the biggest piles of junk, way to go US government.

rwguinn · 18th June 2011, 05:08 PM

Originally Posted by kedo1981

The whole throwaway printer thing is border line evil.
The ink replacement doesn’t have to cost that much.
Pushing people to buy new, just generates waste.
There are entire towns in Asia that are stacked with western junk.
Old TVs will be one of the biggest piles of junk, way to go US government.

That one stacks up to me as the non sequitur of the century...

OnlyTellsTruths · 18th June 2011, 05:17 PM

Originally Posted by lionking

We replaced all the old TVs with flat screens over the past couple of years (with all our kids, there's six or seven). The TVs we replaced were all working and quite new, but we couldn't even give them away to charity op shops. Into landfill they went.

The "pawn shops" and "flea markets" around here still buy and sell old TVs (CRTs). You would have gotten anywhere from $10 to $40 each.

ponderingturtle · 19th June 2011, 03:27 AM

Originally Posted by rwguinn

We are all familiar with the "Throw-away" printers, whose cost (including ink) is lower than the cost of replacement ink cartridges--even though those cartridges may contain 3X the ink of the original.
Repair is no longer an option, especially on nearly all consumer electronics--you just replace the whole thing--or possibly, on some things, a circuit board.
My 3 year-old 51" Plasma television went suddenly blank during the middle of a program.. After loading it in the truck and hauling it in to Ft. Worth, then waiting a week, we find that the power supply went South.
The repair shop told me the total cost to repair is $496. Fifty of that is already paid, as a non-refundable deposit. There is also the fact that the PS is not available--on National back-order, and they can't give a delivery date.
Wal-Mart has the newest iteration of that television, with a few extra features, on sale for $498. Two dollars more than the power supply.

My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones. On occasion, Bob would come to the house and disembowel the thing right there, replacing components as necessary (and get knocked halfway across the room by the HV section, likely as not). In '66, we got a color set, with similar life history. Never, IIRC, did repairs amount to more that 30% of the cost of a new machine.

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

So you would feel better if the TV cost 5,000? Then repairing it would be easy. The cost would only be 10% of the purchase price.

The problem is that people do not want to pay more for a repairable item.

Rasmus · 19th June 2011, 05:01 AM

Originally Posted by rwguinn

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

They are not throw-away in the sense that we use them once and then dump then like razor blades, bottle caps or lunch bags.

And it is not like we simply switched from repairing $500 items to throwing away the exact same items now when they break. The items are vastly different and what we now get for $500 would be vastly more expensive if it was constructed in a way that'd make it economically sound to repair them.

I am considering getting a new TV soon. For just a few hundred bucks I can get a huge wide screen set - something that plain didn't exist a few years ago. My current TV is probably around 10 years old - why would I ever want to spend money on repairing a 25" tube with just one scart port, no usb , no hdmi, no nothing?

The thing did last all these years, too. And it's not the only TV that old I know off. Why should you waste resources and money on items that are easier to repair if they don't tend to break much at all? Once the thing breaks chances are the owner will just accept that he paid 15 or 20$ per year of usage and move on.

I wouldn't spend 30% of the replacement price on fixing it. I wouldn't spend 20% and I'd think about just ditching it at 10%, too.

Incidentally, when my mother was shopping around for an mp3 player (or possibly mobile phone) her question as to the battery life was met with a puzzled sales person in the store: How long did my mother plan on using the device that battery life would ever be an issue?

lionking · 19th June 2011, 05:07 AM

Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths

The "pawn shops" and "flea markets" around here still buy and sell old TVs (CRTs). You would have gotten anywhere from $10 to $40 each.

Not here unfortunately. We had a baltic pine TV cabinet which cost about $400. I tried to give it to the Salvation Army op shop. They said they couldn't sell it. I chopped it up for firewood.

Architect · 19th June 2011, 05:18 AM

This morning I dropped off our old 26" Panasonic CRT TV at the local ~~cowp~~ recycling centre¹ because we'd replaced it with new digital flatscreen 32" units. It was 15 years old - wedding present - and worked a treat, but was (a) analogue and (b) quite bulky.

Anyway, at the cowp I was directed to a black shipping container full of old CRT tellys. Terrible waste. But not half as much as the pile of discarded bikes opposite. I asked the Council chap guiding traffic and he said "aye, it would scare you whit fowk throw awa' an' nowt wrang wi' them...but if we lift 'em, we get done fur theft. It's a funny old game, eh?".

Yes, we seem to have gone a long way down the ol' disposable culture. And many new buildings are designed the same way.

^{1. My fellow Scots will understand.}

bjornart · 19th June 2011, 06:09 AM

The biggest "problem" is the differences in labor costs in fabrication and maintenance. The production of raw materials, components and eventual assembly of our goods has a low cost due to a either or a combination of automation and cheap third world labor.

Fixing things can rarely be automated and is not economical to off-shore.

If each man hour that goes into the vast economy that makes our consumer electronics possible cost something close to what we pay, the goods would cost a lot more and it might be economic to produce spare parts and replace the bits that die. It's possible though that the difference between automated production and manual repair would still make it uneconomic.

ponderingturtle · 19th June 2011, 06:21 AM

Originally Posted by bjornart

The biggest "problem" is the differences in labor costs in fabrication and maintenance. The production of raw materials, components and eventual assembly of our goods has a low cost due to a either or a combination of automation and cheap third world labor.

Fixing things can rarely be automated and is not economical to off-shore.

If each man hour that goes into the vast economy that makes our consumer electronics possible cost something close to what we pay, the goods would cost a lot more and it might be economic to produce spare parts and replace the bits that die. It's possible though that the difference between automated production and manual repair would still make it uneconomic.

This is not all of it though. You also have the issue that to make production easier it can make repair harder. And production is lower skill that repair because there is no need to determine what the issue is.

Nosi · 19th June 2011, 06:32 AM

I took a color 15 inch 1980's analog mono not-ready-for-cable TV to the Salvation Army and they fell on it like starving dogs. The charity shops here will grab anything.

Of course, I was recycling long before I was aware of "throw away electronic culture". I would buy 'refurb' before new. (That's shop repaired then discounted merchandise.) I 'rebuilt' computers new rather than dump old computers. Instead of buying new printers when their costly ink ran out, I bought 'refurb' ink tanks at online ink-tank stores. The stores give you plastic mailers to kindly send the old empties postage paid. I'd fill 'em myself but meds make me shake.

I'll gladly give a good home to any homeless netbook or laptop.

TragicMonkey · 19th June 2011, 06:55 AM

The problem with TVs is the modern designs. Used to be all TVs had flat tops, which made it quite simple: when your TV busted you put a tablecloth over it and put the new TV on top of it. My grandparents never had a "TV stand" because what the TV was standing on was the previous TV. You can't do that with these newfangled flat things, and even the ones before then (like mine) have angles and slopes at the top. I can barely keep the fake plant and little bronze Buddha atop mine without them sliding off. Bad design.

Future TVs won't have a screen at all, they'll just project a holographic image into thin air. Good luck putting ornaments on top of that. Lousy futurepeople! Have they no knickknacks and bric-a-brac and gewgaws? We must all agree to stop having children, that will put paid to the futurepeople by preventing their existence, see how they like that! Ha!

kedo1981 · 19th June 2011, 07:36 AM

They will have holographic gee-gaws

casebro · 19th June 2011, 07:46 AM

One of my pet philosophical thoughts is that we may have reached the end of how much growth an economy can be based on.

Like the housing market that has lately collapsed, how much can we mortgage our future, with the mortgage to be paid off by the next generations, only because the next generations will have more people, with more spending? Like the Social Security budget, that depends on more workers paying in, in every successive generation? It all has to end some day.

Has that day come?

So, in a contracted economy, won't so few of us be able to afford new items? You'll need cash instead of credit. Won't we have more repairmen to fix more of our gizmos? Companies that will sell more parts, because sales of new items will be flat? More standardization of parts, possible the parts retailing will be on of the few growth industries?

Hey, aren't car manufactures required to make parts for 10 years? I believe the make more $$$ on parts than they do on a car.

WildCat · 19th June 2011, 08:27 AM

Originally Posted by lionking

Not here unfortunately. We had a baltic pine TV cabinet which cost about $400. I tried to give it to the Salvation Army op shop. They said they couldn't sell it. I chopped it up for firewood.

Yeah, you can't even give away old entertainment centers made for 4:3 ratio television screens.

I made a very large built-in entertainment center big enough for a 50"+ widescreen, I hope the ratio doesn't change!

The Central Scrutinizer · 19th June 2011, 08:39 AM

Originally Posted by rwguinn

How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

You're assuming it is a "mess".

TragicMonkey · 19th June 2011, 09:56 AM

Originally Posted by kedo1981

They will have holographic gee-gaws

Hmm. That would be neat as far as being able to change them out often, but they'd lack the important quality of serving as makeshift weaponry. You can hardly lure people into your parlor and then casually hit them over the head with a hologram. But people rarely look at the small cast iron bust of Lincoln sitting on the bookcase and think "he could totally kill me with that, I should make sure he's really just getting a book and not getting revenge". I believe one of the most important elements in home decor is arranging things so you're never more than a foot away from a potential murder weapon.

marplots · 19th June 2011, 10:06 AM

Originally Posted by rwguinn

My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones.

While I agree with the spirit of the OP, I'd like to point out that the bad tubes were thrown away instead of repairing them.

When I repair something cheap (the last example for me was a $10 coffee mill) I do it for pleasure, not to save money. Things don't seem to be designed with repair in mind, that's for sure.

JSFolk · 19th June 2011, 11:01 AM

To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it.

rwguinn · 19th June 2011, 11:19 AM

Originally Posted by JSFolk

To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it.

Since I have replaced it, and now have a spare, that is absolutely what I intend to do. I have some experience in the matter, and I can't screw it up worse than it already is

casebro · 19th June 2011, 03:47 PM

RWG, have you tried a net search for the year make model?

I'm watching a 36" CRT TV that I picked out of a dumpster. 10 hours of net time and taking it apart and putting it back together many times, located a bad solder joint. Repair cost $0.

MichaelN · 19th June 2011, 04:09 PM

Originally Posted by JSFolk

To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it.

Yes, that's a common issue. Also common is the filtering capacitors in the power supply giving way (the electrolyte dries out). For a few dollars you can buy much better capacitors from places like digikey.

Autolite · 19th June 2011, 04:49 PM

Originally Posted by Architect

Anyway, at the cowp I was directed to a black shipping container full of old CRT tellys. Terrible waste. But not half as much as the pile of discarded bikes opposite. I asked the Council chap guiding traffic and he said "aye, it would scare you whit fowk throw awa' an' nowt wrang wi' them...but if we lift 'em, we get done fur theft. It's a funny old game, eh?".

Being a bit of a pack-rat myself, it disgusts me the stuff that people throw away that is perfectly repairable. It's not so much what they throw out as is the fact that one is not permitted to reclaim it to make use of it.

From computers to lawn mowers, I rebuild and reuse anything that I can get my hands on. Now that's true recycling, but scavenging such items is prohibited at almost all recycling centres.

Go figure...

elgarak · 19th June 2011, 05:40 PM

Originally Posted by casebro

RWG, have you tried a net search for the year make model?

I'm watching a 36" CRT TV that I picked out of a dumpster. 10 hours of net time and taking it apart and putting it back together many times, located a bad solder joint. Repair cost $0.

But you had to invest 10 hours of time. How much would you charge for that if you would do it professionally?

NewtonTrino · 19th June 2011, 05:51 PM

First off the cost of labor here vs the cost of labor where it was manufactured are different. A skilled repairperson is probably going to charge $60 an hour at least. Most of these devices don't even have $60 in labor into them.

Secondly for a lot of modern electronics it's not really built to be serviceable because they optimize for cost of production, not cost of repair. The more you bundle components together into big globs the cheaper the overall unit is because it's simpler. All of those tubes from the old days have been augmented literally millions of time but shrunk at the same time. You don't repair a chip because it's too small to do anything useful with. Circuit boards are easy to build on assembly lines but a nightmare to debug and repair. Many boards if they fail test in the factory are simpler recycled or discarded because it's cheaper than trying to repair them.

Thirdly ever new model gets more refined and constantly cheaper. So if your set is a couple of years old the newer set is going to have more features, probably use less power and be cheaper.

Combine all of these and quite a few things start falling into the throw-away category pretty quickly.

casebro · 19th June 2011, 06:37 PM

Originally Posted by elgarak

But you had to invest 10 hours of time. How much would you charge for that if you would do it professionally?

A pro would have known where to look for the 'degaussing thermistor'. I spent most of that time trying to find a part that I didn't even know what it looked like. Plus a bit of a shotgun approach of "well, I still can't find it, I'll try something else". I finally found it when I took the board out into the sun to look. I touched it, it fell off the board and rolled across the parking lot.

So a pro, a couple hours at $60, $120 for a hugemoungous CRT TV. That's only 50¢/lb.

WildCat · 19th June 2011, 07:30 PM

Originally Posted by casebro

So a pro, a couple hours at $60, $120 for a hugemoungous CRT TV. That's only 50¢/lb.

But it's standard def and 4:3 screen ratio.

IOW, obsolete.

Andrew Wiggin · 19th June 2011, 09:15 PM

We're already mining landfills for recycled electronics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digger_gold

casebro · 19th June 2011, 09:29 PM

Originally Posted by WildCat

But it's standard def and 4:3 screen ratio.

IOW, obsolete.

It's as up-to-date as my Mark I Mod 0 eyeballs.

WildCat · 19th June 2011, 09:47 PM

Originally Posted by casebro

It's as up-to-date as my Mark I Mod 0 eyeballs.

Well if you're legally blind I guess it won't matter.

But most people like hi-def and the ability to watch a film without cropping things out to make it fit on a 4:3 sceen.

I sold my 32" TV for $135 4 years ago when I bought a 40" LCD for $135, had I waited nother year I don't think I could have sold it at all. Bear in mind I bought it for $800 in 2002. I certainly don't miss that 230 lb. behemoth.

Noztradamus · 19th June 2011, 10:08 PM

Originally Posted by casebro

One of my pet philosophical thoughts is that we may have reached the end of how much growth an economy can be based on.
~~~~~~
Hey, aren't car manufactures required to make parts for 10 years? I believe the make more $$$ on parts than they do on a car.

That's old thinking. Cash for clunkers, baby!

18th June 2011, 10:19 AM	#1
rwguinn Philosopher Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: 16 miles from 7 lakes Posts: 8,505	Our "throw-away" world We are all familiar with the "Throw-away" printers, whose cost (including ink) is lower than the cost of replacement ink cartridges--even though those cartridges may contain 3X the ink of the original. Repair is no longer an option, especially on nearly all consumer electronics--you just replace the whole thing--or possibly, on some things, a circuit board. My 3 year-old 51" Plasma television went suddenly blank during the middle of a program.. After loading it in the truck and hauling it in to Ft. Worth, then waiting a week, we find that the power supply went South. The repair shop told me the total cost to repair is $496. Fifty of that is already paid, as a non-refundable deposit. There is also the fact that the PS is not available--on National back-order, and they can't give a delivery date. Wal-Mart has the newest iteration of that television, with a few extra features, on sale for $498. Two dollars more than the power supply. My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones. On occasion, Bob would come to the house and disembowel the thing right there, replacing components as necessary (and get knocked halfway across the room by the HV section, likely as not). In '66, we got a color set, with similar life history. Never, IIRC, did repairs amount to more that 30% of the cost of a new machine. Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?
	__________________ "Political correctness is a doctrine,...,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end." "I pointed out that his argument was wrong in every particular, but he rightfully took me to task for attacking only the weak points." Myriad http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6853275#post6853275

18th June 2011, 10:25 AM	#2
uk_dave Philosopher Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 7,866	Probably : constant innovation. It no good making a model which will last for ten years or more because the technology underpinning it may be obsolete in two to three years. Plasma screen tv? LCD? Backlit? 3D? Surround Sound? etc etc etc
uk_dave Philosopher Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 7,866

18th June 2011, 10:29 AM	#3
steve s Illuminator Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,703	Originally Posted by rwguinn Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. They don't need to end up in landfills. Look in the yellow pages under recycling and you'll find places that specialize in electronics. I take a lot of stuff to a local e-cycling center. They'll take just about anything even if it's not electronic, as long as it fits into their giant shredder and the metal doesn't exceed a certain thickness. But overall I agree with you. It's frustrating when things that are labeled "durable goods" aren't very durable. Steve S
steve s Illuminator Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,703	__________________ "Nature abhors a moron." -- H. L. Mencken

18th June 2011, 11:33 AM	#6
Skeptic Ginger formerly skeptigirl Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Shifting through paradigms Posts: 40,799	Built in obsolescence is a marketing ploy. It's partly the speed of innovation and it's partly planned obsolescence. I don't know the % contribution of each part. Probably it depends on the device. With computers, it's more innovation, with printers, perhaps more planned obsolescence.
	__________________ (Tired of continuing to hear the "Democrat Party" repeatedly I've decided to adopt the name, ~~Pubbie Party, Repubs~~ "Republics" and Republic Party in response.) Last edited by Skeptic Ginger; 18th June 2011 at 11:35 AM.*

18th June 2011, 02:25 PM	#7
theprestige Philosopher Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 8,892	Meh. All it means is that in another few hundred years our more advanced descendants will be mining our landfills the way we mine copper and coal.
theprestige Philosopher Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 8,892

18th June 2011, 10:49 AM	#4
WildCat NWO Master Conspirator Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Albany Park, Chicago Posts: 49,469	Last year I went to Home Depot to buy new batteries for my DeWalt cordless drill, only to find the new model was on sale for $60 - more than $40 cheaper than the 2-pack of new batteries. Granted, the batteries in the new one weren't the extra-capacity ones, but still... I bought the new one.

18th June 2011, 11:03 AM	#5
carlitos "más divertido" Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 11,622	I have this feeling about entire neighborhoods. If houses, streets and infrastructure become disposable, I think that we might be doing it wrong.

18th June 2011, 02:35 PM	#8
commandlinegamer Philosopher Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Mazes of Menace Posts: 5,994	With the price of copper at the moment, you'd be crazy to dump any electronics in landfill. In any case, recycling is pretty much mandatory now given the recent European regulations.
	__________________ He bade me take any rug in the house.

18th June 2011, 02:48 PM	#9
Furcifer miscreant Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: hohm Posts: 13,379	This netbook I'm typing on right now set me back about $200. It does everything I need it to do, internet, email, word processing and even some photo editing. That $200 was last year and I've seen newer models at Staples for as little as $100 out the door. For all intents and purposes this is disposable, if anything goes wrong with it it's going to cost about $100 to fix, the hard drive or the monitor, maybe more if the motherboard were to go. The same thing goes for laptops, you can get a basic 15 inch laptop for about $300. If it dies in the 1 year warranty period you get a replacement and if it dies after that any repair is going to set you back about 1/3 the cost of a newer and better model. Essentially disposable. I saw an Indian company is aiming at a sub $100 tablet computer due to come out next year. Just the basics, but basically all you need to run most programs and do what most people do every day on their personal computer. Now that's a truly disposable computer. All of your personal electronics are basically disposable. It's pretty amazing how in about a 20 year period we went from only maybe the top 10% of households having personal computers to disposable ones.

18th June 2011, 03:18 PM	#10
lionking In the Peanut Gallery Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Melbourne Posts: 29,985	We replaced all the old TVs with flat screens over the past couple of years (with all our kids, there's six or seven). The TVs we replaced were all working and quite new, but we couldn't even give them away to charity op shops. Into landfill they went.
	__________________ A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Sir Winston Churchill

18th June 2011, 03:28 PM	#11
kedo1981 Master Poster Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: ohio Posts: 2,103	The whole throwaway printer thing is border line evil. The ink replacement doesn’t have to cost that much. Pushing people to buy new, just generates waste. There are entire towns in Asia that are stacked with western junk. Old TVs will be one of the biggest piles of junk, way to go US government.
	__________________ "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good" (I Thessalonians 5:21) I readily admit I don’t know enough to say for sure that there is no God. But I do know enough so say that anyone who claims to know the mind and will of a being such as God is a liar. I have no problem with Jesus, but his fan club sucks!

18th June 2011, 05:08 PM	#12
rwguinn Philosopher Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: 16 miles from 7 lakes Posts: 8,505	Originally Posted by kedo1981 The whole throwaway printer thing is border line evil. The ink replacement doesn’t have to cost that much. Pushing people to buy new, just generates waste. There are entire towns in Asia that are stacked with western junk. Old TVs will be one of the biggest piles of junk, way to go US government. That one stacks up to me as the non sequitur of the century...
	__________________ "Political correctness is a doctrine,...,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end." "I pointed out that his argument was wrong in every particular, but he rightfully took me to task for attacking only the weak points." Myriad http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6853275#post6853275

18th June 2011, 05:17 PM	#13
OnlyTellsTruths Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 5,921	Originally Posted by lionking We replaced all the old TVs with flat screens over the past couple of years (with all our kids, there's six or seven). The TVs we replaced were all working and quite new, but we couldn't even give them away to charity op shops. Into landfill they went. The "pawn shops" and "flea markets" around here still buy and sell old TVs (CRTs). You would have gotten anywhere from $10 to $40 each.
OnlyTellsTruths Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 5,921	__________________ ________________________

19th June 2011, 03:27 AM	#14
ponderingturtle Orthogonal Vector Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Tarrytown, NY Posts: 26,557	Originally Posted by rwguinn We are all familiar with the "Throw-away" printers, whose cost (including ink) is lower than the cost of replacement ink cartridges--even though those cartridges may contain 3X the ink of the original. Repair is no longer an option, especially on nearly all consumer electronics--you just replace the whole thing--or possibly, on some things, a circuit board. My 3 year-old 51" Plasma television went suddenly blank during the middle of a program.. After loading it in the truck and hauling it in to Ft. Worth, then waiting a week, we find that the power supply went South. The repair shop told me the total cost to repair is $496. Fifty of that is already paid, as a non-refundable deposit. There is also the fact that the PS is not available--on National back-order, and they can't give a delivery date. Wal-Mart has the newest iteration of that television, with a few extra features, on sale for $498. Two dollars more than the power supply. My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones. On occasion, Bob would come to the house and disembowel the thing right there, replacing components as necessary (and get knocked halfway across the room by the HV section, likely as not). In '66, we got a color set, with similar life history. Never, IIRC, did repairs amount to more that 30% of the cost of a new machine. Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"? So you would feel better if the TV cost 5,000? Then repairing it would be easy. The cost would only be 10% of the purchase price. The problem is that people do not want to pay more for a repairable item.
	__________________ Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no poofing in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin

19th June 2011, 05:01 AM	#15
Rasmus Philosopher Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 6,139	Originally Posted by rwguinn Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"? They are not throw-away in the sense that we use them once and then dump then like razor blades, bottle caps or lunch bags. And it is not like we simply switched from repairing $500 items to throwing away the exact same items now when they break. The items are vastly different and what we now get for $500 would be vastly more expensive if it was constructed in a way that'd make it economically sound to repair them. I am considering getting a new TV soon. For just a few hundred bucks I can get a huge wide screen set - something that plain didn't exist a few years ago. My current TV is probably around 10 years old - why would I ever want to spend money on repairing a 25" tube with just one scart port, no usb , no hdmi, no nothing? The thing did last all these years, too. And it's not the only TV that old I know off. Why should you waste resources and money on items that are easier to repair if they don't tend to break much at all? Once the thing breaks chances are the owner will just accept that he paid 15 or 20$ per year of usage and move on. I wouldn't spend 30% of the replacement price on fixing it. I wouldn't spend 20% and I'd think about just ditching it at 10%, too. Incidentally, when my mother was shopping around for an mp3 player (or possibly mobile phone) her question as to the battery life was met with a puzzled sales person in the store: How long did my mother plan on using the device that battery life would ever be an issue?
Rasmus Philosopher Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 6,139	__________________ "Well, the religious community could not just make it up." - JetLeg

19th June 2011, 05:07 AM	#16
lionking In the Peanut Gallery Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Melbourne Posts: 29,985	Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths The "pawn shops" and "flea markets" around here still buy and sell old TVs (CRTs). You would have gotten anywhere from $10 to $40 each. Not here unfortunately. We had a baltic pine TV cabinet which cost about $400. I tried to give it to the Salvation Army op shop. They said they couldn't sell it. I chopped it up for firewood.
	__________________ A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Sir Winston Churchill

19th June 2011, 05:18 AM	#17
Architect Chief Punkah Wallah Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: UK Posts: 8,487	This morning I dropped off our old 26" Panasonic CRT TV at the local ~~cowp~~ recycling centre¹ because we'd replaced it with new digital flatscreen 32" units. It was 15 years old - wedding present - and worked a treat, but was (a) analogue and (b) quite bulky. Anyway, at the cowp I was directed to a black shipping container full of old CRT tellys. Terrible waste. But not half as much as the pile of discarded bikes opposite. I asked the Council chap guiding traffic and he said "aye, it would scare you whit fowk throw awa' an' nowt wrang wi' them...but if we lift 'em, we get done fur theft. It's a funny old game, eh?". Yes, we seem to have gone a long way down the ol' disposable culture. And many new buildings are designed the same way. ^{1. My fellow Scots will understand.}
	__________________ When the men elected to make laws are but a small part of a foreign parliament, that is when all healthy national feeling dies. James Keir Hardie (1856 - 1915): Politician, Founder of Scottish Labour Party Last edited by Architect; 19th June 2011 at 05:19 AM.

19th June 2011, 06:09 AM	#18
bjornart Master Poster Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 2,409	The biggest "problem" is the differences in labor costs in fabrication and maintenance. The production of raw materials, components and eventual assembly of our goods has a low cost due to a either or a combination of automation and cheap third world labor. Fixing things can rarely be automated and is not economical to off-shore. If each man hour that goes into the vast economy that makes our consumer electronics possible cost something close to what we pay, the goods would cost a lot more and it might be economic to produce spare parts and replace the bits that die. It's possible though that the difference between automated production and manual repair would still make it uneconomic.
bjornart Master Poster Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 2,409	__________________ Well, I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU LIKE TO BELIEVE, GODDAMMIT! I DEAL IN THE FACTS! -Cecil Adams

19th June 2011, 06:21 AM	#19
ponderingturtle Orthogonal Vector Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Tarrytown, NY Posts: 26,557	Originally Posted by bjornart The biggest "problem" is the differences in labor costs in fabrication and maintenance. The production of raw materials, components and eventual assembly of our goods has a low cost due to a either or a combination of automation and cheap third world labor. Fixing things can rarely be automated and is not economical to off-shore. If each man hour that goes into the vast economy that makes our consumer electronics possible cost something close to what we pay, the goods would cost a lot more and it might be economic to produce spare parts and replace the bits that die. It's possible though that the difference between automated production and manual repair would still make it uneconomic. This is not all of it though. You also have the issue that to make production easier it can make repair harder. And production is lower skill that repair because there is no need to determine what the issue is.
	__________________ Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no poofing in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin

19th June 2011, 06:32 AM	#20
Nosi Master Poster Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 2,732	I took a color 15 inch 1980's analog mono not-ready-for-cable TV to the Salvation Army and they fell on it like starving dogs. The charity shops here will grab anything. Of course, I was recycling long before I was aware of "throw away electronic culture". I would buy 'refurb' before new. (That's shop repaired then discounted merchandise.) I 'rebuilt' computers new rather than dump old computers. Instead of buying new printers when their costly ink ran out, I bought 'refurb' ink tanks at online ink-tank stores. The stores give you plastic mailers to kindly send the old empties postage paid. I'd fill 'em myself but meds make me shake. I'll gladly give a good home to any homeless netbook or laptop.
Nosi Master Poster Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 2,732	__________________ __________ Hiding from the

19th June 2011, 06:55 AM	#21
TragicMonkey Poisoned Waffles Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Monkey Posts: 30,290	The problem with TVs is the modern designs. Used to be all TVs had flat tops, which made it quite simple: when your TV busted you put a tablecloth over it and put the new TV on top of it. My grandparents never had a "TV stand" because what the TV was standing on was the previous TV. You can't do that with these newfangled flat things, and even the ones before then (like mine) have angles and slopes at the top. I can barely keep the fake plant and little bronze Buddha atop mine without them sliding off. Bad design. Future TVs won't have a screen at all, they'll just project a holographic image into thin air. Good luck putting ornaments on top of that. Lousy futurepeople! Have they no knickknacks and bric-a-brac and gewgaws? We must all agree to stop having children, that will put paid to the futurepeople by preventing their existence, see how they like that! Ha!
	__________________ One cannot expect wisdom to flow from a pumpkin.

19th June 2011, 07:36 AM	#22
kedo1981 Master Poster Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: ohio Posts: 2,103	They will have holographic gee-gaws
	__________________ "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good" (I Thessalonians 5:21) I readily admit I don’t know enough to say for sure that there is no God. But I do know enough so say that anyone who claims to know the mind and will of a being such as God is a liar. I have no problem with Jesus, but his fan club sucks!

19th June 2011, 07:46 AM	#23
casebro Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 6,881	One of my pet philosophical thoughts is that we may have reached the end of how much growth an economy can be based on. Like the housing market that has lately collapsed, how much can we mortgage our future, with the mortgage to be paid off by the next generations, only because the next generations will have more people, with more spending? Like the Social Security budget, that depends on more workers paying in, in every successive generation? It all has to end some day. Has that day come? So, in a contracted economy, won't so few of us be able to afford new items? You'll need cash instead of credit. Won't we have more repairmen to fix more of our gizmos? Companies that will sell more parts, because sales of new items will be flat? More standardization of parts, possible the parts retailing will be on of the few growth industries? Hey, aren't car manufactures required to make parts for 10 years? I believe the make more $$$ on parts than they do on a car.
casebro Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 6,881	__________________ Please pardon me for having ideas, not facts. Some have called me cynical, but I don't believe them. It's not how many breaths you take. It's how many times you have been breathless that counts.

19th June 2011, 08:27 AM	#24
WildCat NWO Master Conspirator Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Albany Park, Chicago Posts: 49,469	Originally Posted by lionking Not here unfortunately. We had a baltic pine TV cabinet which cost about $400. I tried to give it to the Salvation Army op shop. They said they couldn't sell it. I chopped it up for firewood. Yeah, you can't even give away old entertainment centers made for 4:3 ratio television screens. I made a very large built-in entertainment center big enough for a 50"+ widescreen, I hope the ratio doesn't change!

19th June 2011, 08:39 AM	#25
The Central Scrutinizer Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: The White Zone Posts: 42,578	Originally Posted by rwguinn How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"? You're assuming it is a "mess".
	__________________ If I see somebody with a gun on a plane? I'll kill him.

19th June 2011, 09:56 AM	#26
TragicMonkey Poisoned Waffles Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Monkey Posts: 30,290	Originally Posted by kedo1981 They will have holographic gee-gaws Hmm. That would be neat as far as being able to change them out often, but they'd lack the important quality of serving as makeshift weaponry. You can hardly lure people into your parlor and then casually hit them over the head with a hologram. But people rarely look at the small cast iron bust of Lincoln sitting on the bookcase and think "he could totally kill me with that, I should make sure he's really just getting a book and not getting revenge". I believe one of the most important elements in home decor is arranging things so you're never more than a foot away from a potential murder weapon.
	__________________ One cannot expect wisdom to flow from a pumpkin.

19th June 2011, 10:06 AM	#27
marplots Philosopher Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 5,643	Originally Posted by rwguinn My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones. While I agree with the spirit of the OP, I'd like to point out that the bad tubes were thrown away instead of repairing them. When I repair something cheap (the last example for me was a $10 coffee mill) I do it for pleasure, not to save money. Things don't seem to be designed with repair in mind, that's for sure.
marplots Philosopher Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 5,643

19th June 2011, 11:01 AM	#28
JSFolk Critical Thinker Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Calgary, AB, GWN Posts: 398	To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it.

19th June 2011, 11:19 AM	#29
rwguinn Philosopher Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: 16 miles from 7 lakes Posts: 8,505	Originally Posted by JSFolk To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it. Since I have replaced it, and now have a spare, that is absolutely what I intend to do. I have some experience in the matter, and I can't screw it up worse than it already is
	__________________ "Political correctness is a doctrine,...,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end." "I pointed out that his argument was wrong in every particular, but he rightfully took me to task for attacking only the weak points." Myriad http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6853275#post6853275

19th June 2011, 03:47 PM	#30
casebro Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 6,881	RWG, have you tried a net search for the year make model? I'm watching a 36" CRT TV that I picked out of a dumpster. 10 hours of net time and taking it apart and putting it back together many times, located a bad solder joint. Repair cost $0.
casebro Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 6,881	__________________ Please pardon me for having ideas, not facts. Some have called me cynical, but I don't believe them. It's not how many breaths you take. It's how many times you have been breathless that counts.

19th June 2011, 04:09 PM	#31
MichaelN New Blood Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 6	Originally Posted by JSFolk To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it. Yes, that's a common issue. Also common is the filtering capacitors in the power supply giving way (the electrolyte dries out). For a few dollars you can buy much better capacitors from places like digikey.
MichaelN New Blood Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 6

19th June 2011, 04:49 PM	#32
Autolite Graduate Poster Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 1,529	Originally Posted by Architect Anyway, at the cowp I was directed to a black shipping container full of old CRT tellys. Terrible waste. But not half as much as the pile of discarded bikes opposite. I asked the Council chap guiding traffic and he said "aye, it would scare you whit fowk throw awa' an' nowt wrang wi' them...but if we lift 'em, we get done fur theft. It's a funny old game, eh?". Being a bit of a pack-rat myself, it disgusts me the stuff that people throw away that is perfectly repairable. It's not so much what they throw out as is the fact that one is not permitted to reclaim it to make use of it. From computers to lawn mowers, I rebuild and reuse anything that I can get my hands on. Now that's true recycling, but scavenging such items is prohibited at almost all recycling centres. Go figure...
	__________________ "When they come around sweet talkin', don't listen" - Willie Stark

19th June 2011, 05:40 PM	#33
elgarak Graduate Poster Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: No matter where I go, there I am Posts: 1,868	Originally Posted by casebro RWG, have you tried a net search for the year make model? I'm watching a 36" CRT TV that I picked out of a dumpster. 10 hours of net time and taking it apart and putting it back together many times, located a bad solder joint. Repair cost $0. But you had to invest 10 hours of time. How much would you charge for that if you would do it professionally?

19th June 2011, 05:51 PM	#34
NewtonTrino Illuminator Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Bothell, WA Posts: 3,803	First off the cost of labor here vs the cost of labor where it was manufactured are different. A skilled repairperson is probably going to charge $60 an hour at least. Most of these devices don't even have $60 in labor into them. Secondly for a lot of modern electronics it's not really built to be serviceable because they optimize for cost of production, not cost of repair. The more you bundle components together into big globs the cheaper the overall unit is because it's simpler. All of those tubes from the old days have been augmented literally millions of time but shrunk at the same time. You don't repair a chip because it's too small to do anything useful with. Circuit boards are easy to build on assembly lines but a nightmare to debug and repair. Many boards if they fail test in the factory are simpler recycled or discarded because it's cheaper than trying to repair them. Thirdly ever new model gets more refined and constantly cheaper. So if your set is a couple of years old the newer set is going to have more features, probably use less power and be cheaper. Combine all of these and quite a few things start falling into the throw-away category pretty quickly.

19th June 2011, 06:37 PM	#35
casebro Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 6,881	Originally Posted by elgarak But you had to invest 10 hours of time. How much would you charge for that if you would do it professionally? A pro would have known where to look for the 'degaussing thermistor'. I spent most of that time trying to find a part that I didn't even know what it looked like. Plus a bit of a shotgun approach of "well, I still can't find it, I'll try something else". I finally found it when I took the board out into the sun to look. I touched it, it fell off the board and rolled across the parking lot. So a pro, a couple hours at $60, $120 for a hugemoungous CRT TV. That's only 50¢/lb.
casebro Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 6,881	__________________ Please pardon me for having ideas, not facts. Some have called me cynical, but I don't believe them. It's not how many breaths you take. It's how many times you have been breathless that counts.