Documentary on Planned Obsolescence

[turar]

Just watched this documentary on "Planned Obsolescence", and thought it was pretty interesting, still trying to reconcile this from an investor's side of things.

 

The episode with printer was fascinating. A person's printer malfunctioned, he researched pretty deeply into the issue and discovered there was a "count-down" chip as part of the printer, that would count down and essentially stop the printer from working after a certain time. He then discovered a Russian website that provides a freeware that effectively resets the counter and the printer magically works again. Very disturbing.

 

It goes wider and deeper into history and various other issues, which are all interesting.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HnW6Mm5sUI

[beerbaron]

Watched it 2 weeks ago. Interesting how it was really planned to make object consumables.

 

I have to say tough that the video was biased. That light bulb in the fire department produces 1% of the light of todays equivalent wattage light bulb. The lifetime of a light bulb is inversely proportional to it's light output.

 

Also, I don't think Apple, planned to use a battery that was designed to fail after less then a year. The battery they used needed a high capacity/low volume. Again, the durability of a lithium battery is inversely proportional to it's capacity. Apple should have mad the battery replaceable tough.

 

BeerBaron

[matjone]

I think if you get into trying to repair your own appliances, cars or whatever you'll see that a lot of things are built to break.  I was helping my brother in law replace a piece that held the strut on my sister's car last year, and it looked like it was made out of some material that was slightly stronger than paper mache.  Where's the incentive to make something that lasts 100 years if you are trying to make money selling it?

[turar]

I agree that it was slightly biased, but if some of the objective facts they present are indeed true, which they seem to be, it's a lot to think about.

[Crip1]

My father worked most of his professional life for a major truck manufacturer (name withheld, but at least everyone in the US has heard of them). They operated in four segmen ts...Truck, Engine, Finance, and Parts. Parts was responsible, by far, for more profits than the other segments. During his tenure, several times, parts was the ONLY profitable segment.

 

Selling a truck is damned near a loss-leader. I am quite sure that this firm is not the only one operating in such a fashion.

 

-Crip