It’s all debatable of course but I would expect a TV or monitor to last much closer to 10 years. The Consumer Org appliance life expectancy website (http://www.consumer.org.nz/reports/appliance-life-expectancy/lifespan-electronics, you may need a subscription tho) doesn’t have a computer monitor section but it says plasma and lcd TVs one should have a life expectancy of 12+ years. And in Leigh’s case his monitor wasn’t a bottom of the range cheap model either.
It’s completely anecdotal but that pretty much matches my experience, over about 20 monitors and TVs none of them have failed in the 15 odd years I’ve been owning things like that. Of course some have degraded, the old Sony 21” CRT monitors were definitely struggling with quality of image when we got rid of them. OTOH the 17” Hitachi CRT that I bought for ridiculous money back in 1995 is still working in our server room (albeit turned off most of the time). I don’t know whether you are correct about it mattering what has gone wrong. Unless it is a part which is expected to have regular replacement intervals (eg tires, fan belts, clutch plates etc on cars) I would think the entire unit should last for as long as your overall lifespan expectancy is. Obviously it is different if the power supply died because of dirty electricity supply but even then I suspect under the Consumer Guarantee Act the onus is on the supplier (eg Dell) to make a good case that this is the probable cause of the failure. Our consumer protection really is world class which is nice – of course I might not feel that way if I was selling stuff to the public! Cheers, David. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jolyon Smith Sent: Thursday, 14 June 2012 9:53 a.m. To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: Re: [DUG] [Off Topic]Warranty expired David, unless I'm mistaken, once you are outside the 12 months standard warranty period it's not a question of taking the product as a whole, but rather considering what in particular has gone wrong. The LCD screen in a monitor might be expected to last well beyond 4 years (though it depends on how often it is used - 10,000 hours I think is the typical rating, which could easily be used up in 4 years, for example - being less than 7 hours a day x 365 per year). But the mains transformer powering that screen is a very different component and it's life might have been adversely affected by a "dirty" power supply, other faulty equipment on the same mains circuit, adverse supply events (power spikes) etc etc that could easily explain a life of only 4 years. Dell might be generous and simply take ownership of the problem, but I think they would be equally entitled to point out these things and say they can't be held responsible (unless you are willing and able to prove that you have had a perfectly clean supply for 4 years and have not suffered spikes or used any other faulty equipment etc etc). I had a Logitech Harmony remote control that started misbehaving. It was 2-3 years old and after a time of being very fussy about where it was placed on the base station in order to re-charge (I had to "jiggle" it to get a positive contact) it eventually stopped charging completely. I tracked the problem down to the springs on the charging contacts - they had weakened such that the contact made with the remote was not very good, which in turn had lead to corrosion of the contacts themselves, ultimately to the point where they were no longer making any useful contact with the remote at all. Clearly this was a design fault with the contacts and/or the springs used which should have lasted far more than 2-3 years of very ordinary use. Logitech accepted this and replaced the remote with a brand new one at no charge. I'm not sure they would have done anything had it merely been a faulty transformer. At the very least I think they would have asked me to pay for a replacement, and that arguably would have been reasonable. But when the fault is a clear design or manufacturing problem, they can't duck their responsibility so easily. +0.02 x 2 :)
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