lolz I love a good conspiracy theory………. you know my toaster stopped working a few weeks back, I recon it deliberately & maliciously self destructed to make me go to work hungry and force me to buy a new one

Seriously though, yes planned obsolescence is real, almost everything has a designed lifespan, and techy items are often sold when their replacement or upgraded new versions have already been designed & are ready for production………… we do live in a consumer society and tis the nature of the beast

BUT

Kill chips………… not sure I believe anyone has gone that far, for a start it would be illegal in many countries to include and not disclose in the product description, but also if caught and exposed using such a devise even the biggest brand name would be destroyed overnight ( remember Ratners )

@DaftFader 512630 wrote:

I already was suspicious about there being timer chips in things that make them break, but these guys actually find them in some printers and make some software to reset it that makes the printer work again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A1UeV5mC_w

@Mezz 512637 wrote:

Kill chips………… not sure I believe anyone has gone that far, for a start it would be illegal in many countries to include and not disclose in the product description, but also if caught and exposed using such a devise even the biggest brand name would be destroyed overnight ( remember Ratners )

A device put in to deliberately make something stop working simply to reduce its service life (and for no other reason) is indeed illegal even in the USA. An big American company was busted in the 1950s or 1960s for making television sets that failed in this manner.

However the printer companies “justify” their actions by claiming that not doing this would cause the printer to fill up with surplus ink at the bottom, this ink would spill everywhere and it contains some bad chemicals, so they can turn the EU and other nations product safety laws back on themselves. Unfortunately they have lawyers which actively work out how to do this to maximise the companies profit and think “its all permissible in a free market as folk can buy printers from a competitor if you don’t like it”, and the cost of the gadgets themselves has plummeted.

Also, though it is horribly resource intensive, and bad for the environment especially in foreign countries where they get the bits, the “free market” has created a situation where it is increasingly hard to repair electronics unless you live in China, Malaysia or similar countries where it is all made.

I wonder how many of you heard about Philips, Samsung and LG getting busted for fixing the price of CRT monitors? They got fined millions of Euros – but these companies doubtless folk what work or worked there (they had at least one factory in East Anglia and another outside London) will say it was preserving jobs and growth. They do all work together on product development and share ideas.

A few months ago I gutted a flaky Samsung CRT monitor as the cost of the kit needed to repair it without risking electrocuting myself was more than a new one (29 000V inside it!) and I already have 2 CRT monitors kept for standby use. And this is what I found inside it..

You know what they say abut the conspiracy theorists that stay up all night watching conspiracy videos. They are all disinformation agents put in place by the government.

Daftfader is a spy!!!

To be fair in spite of its controversial title is a documentary on a well researched actual event.

The wider issue is not even so much that things break down, but you cannot fix them easily when they do. Even when I was a teenager and young adult, most consumer electronic gadgets could be repaired and you could buy the parts to do so at Farnell or Radiospares. in professional environments having a repair/maintenance department was the accepted practice.

now the trend is to replace entire modules rather than components or even the entire device, and thats even in pro audio….