Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

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Products do last, yes we can all cite examples of products that have failed earlier than we want but for the most part products today do very well considering that many never see any service before before being replaced for newer product and if they do get a service call its because they did finally break. Yes, some require none or there are no user serviceable parts

Now, I say this, owning and still using a Toastmaster Toaster which is older than myself; all my dinnerware and glassware is older than most people along with desk lamps now using LEDs but were produced in the 30s; but the point is people don't put any effort into taking care of items because for many they have reached the point of disposable.

Then when it comes to tech its not reliability but marketing has become so good people are quite willing to toss perfectly working items for the latest and greatest. Hell people do this with cars and anecdotally from a coworkers spouse who works in a home renovation company they toss perfectly good large appliances too.

> they toss perfectly good large appliances too.

Oh they do, they really do. I worked at a recycling factory in the UK, the amount of household appliances, TVs, computers and computer parts, laptops, phones that people toss away is staggering.

Many are in absolutely perfect working condition! Like, a 48" Samsung TV and a 52 inch 4K Sony TV would come in, we'd test them, nothing wrong with them. I can only assume someone moved house and just left everything, or they upgraded to bigger TVs.

Not even going to mention the washers, dryers, dishwashers, fridges, about a quarter of them would be in good working condition. Who throws away a perfectly fine washer? Why? A new model has nothing new inside technology-wise, I can promise you that.

It was against company policy, but employees would take them home, either for a low price (got myself a nice Neff microwave oven and a Bosch vacuum for £10 each... retail price in the hundreds) or just by being friends with a supervisor...

I'm actually glad about that, because otherwise they'd be loaded into containers and sent to Asia or Africa somewhere. Absolutely ridiculous.

> Who throws away a perfectly fine washer? Why? A new model has nothing new inside technology-wise, I can promise you that.

When I first moved in my house I didn't have a job, so I bought a lot of cheap appliances. Most of them still work, and I expect them to keep on working with almost no maintenance for years to come. However, they have some serious downsides: they are energy inefficient, they make a lot of noise, and they do not necessarily fit my future needs.

For example, now that I have a partner, my fridge is a bit small. And instead of running the washer once every two weeks, we're running it two or more times a week. Every time I run the washer, the floor the washer is on becomes basically unlivable for about half an hour or so due to loud noise of the centrifuge.

I do not want to buy new stuff, particularly because the old stuff "still works". And getting rid of my old stuff in a nice way is not easy either: Because they have wear and tear, goodwill and second-hand shops are not overly enthusiastic about taking them from me. Unless I can find someone to take something over (for free!), I am left with moving it to the recycling place because I do not have any storage space in my house.

I should've mentioned these were (and are) mostly midrange to high end stuff.

The cheaper models are the ones that go straight to scrap, because they're unfixable - poor electronics with no water protection, low quality bearings and drum spiders that fail catastrophically (and the drums are welded instead of using bolts = unfixable) and counterweights that simply crumble.

I get it when they break and there's no other choice but to chuck them. But throwing away good appliances is just unthinkable for me. I use them all until they fail, fix them and use them some more, until they're unfixable :D

Worst case, I'd try to sell them for cheap or give them to someone who needs them, there's plenty of people in every country.

The efficiency of washers and dishwashers has been the same for about two decades now. There's simply nothing that can be improved inside.

Dryers have had a decent improvement with heat pumps, other than that, it's the same design that's been around for decades.

It’s less important with desk lamps, but I occasionally wonder how green old appliances really are. Sure, they last a long time, which reduces the emissions from production and transit. But on average they also consume a boat load of energy compared to their energy star equivalents, and they do it for decades.

The reason it matters lies with a desk lamp is because you probably aren’t still running incandescent bulbs in it.

Yup.

I grew up in Africa, and was exposed to people without a pot to piss in, making things last waaaaaayyyy beyond their "sell by" date.

If I remember, Apple recently took a hit on their iPhone bottom line, because people are no longer getting a new phone every year.

I used to work for a corporation that made photographic equipment. Expensive photographic equipment.

They would regularly "crush" out-of-date equipment (like stuff that had passed its market prime, so the sales and marketing folks no longer needed it). By "crush," it meant taking the equipment to an old quarry, and smashing it with a sledgehammer.

Apparently, this was necessary for a tax write-off.

It was painful as hell, as most of the equipment was perfectly fine. It included things like bodies and lenses, still worth thousands.

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