@JG, it's just the notion of this throwaway society we live in. I just have it in the back of my mind that there was a little clock ticking away ready to shut the thing down after 10 years.
My phone does what I want but does suffer from a lack of memory, so needs regular clean outs so that it will function properly. So perhaps a new phone anyway.
I completely agree with you Sutol, the concept of deliberately designing and manufacturing goods to to fail prematurely is counter intuitive to me.
Governments keep harping on about being green, just think how "ungreen" it is that a phone is expected to last just 2 years and then be replaced again and again. Imagine if it's hardware was designed to last 10 years and simple updates allowed it a genuine life of 10 years. That would make it 500% more "green", think of every bit of glass, microchip, plastic etc that did not need to be repeatedly made and the incurred extra transport costs and the extra cost of marketing it and the cost of the staff to support all these tasks 5 times over instead of just once.
The radix of the problem comes from the public's lack of ability to think critically and then decide not to buy "throw away" items, but instead seek out high quality goods that might have a chance of actually lasting. If people did this then the crappy manufacturers would go bankrupt and/or have to change their business model.
Thankfully there are people like Hairy, Sutol and myself who do this, but many people seem happy to repeated buy numerous "throw-away" things like this but don't notice that they are spending 45 of their precious years trudging into work to do so. I for one reject this approach to life and I'm convinced it's a strategy that has improved my quality of life.
I myself have an old TomTom that mysteriously would not boot after about 6 years. I refused to buy a new one, rang up & emailed TomTom, looked on the internet and finally found a way to upload a newer OS onto it, and hey presto it is working again. The fact that I (and my girlfriend) had to go through this palaver irritated me, likely due to deliberately built in obsolescence in my unit. I too will never buy one, in fact I have a large scale road map in my VX220 as a direct result, as it is more fit for purpose in the long run, will outlive any TomTom by 50 years and cost a fraction of buying 5 TomToms over the same time period. Just this single decission of mine will save me something like £150 * 5 = £600 over my lifetime (hopefully!). Multiply that up by the other 1000 things in life that are similar to this and suddenly you can semi/retire at 35 years old - oh I have! QED.
Edited by Nev, 21 April 2018 - 07:39 AM.
