Howard Passman wrote: > I can't say I agree with what you're saying, although I understand your > train of thought. In my reality this is an audio component and should > last 10 years easily. If the audio industry is headed the same > direction as the PC industry, it's a real shame. My CD player is now 22 > years old and still works like a champ. Parts may be scarce, but it is > 22 years old not 1.
Well, nearly all audio gear is a computer these days. Ten years ago, a good professional PC was an Intel P-3 750mHz. I still have a couple of them in my basement pile of dead computers. They are not literally dead, they will boot and work. But you can't run any modern software on them, they are too slow and have too little RAM. And when I tried to buy more RAM for one of them, it was so expensive that I bought a new complete computer instead. > A PC could and should last 10 years as long as the software demands > don't exceed the units capabilities. That shouldn't be a problem with > the TP. Right, but you were asking about repair and repair cost. My ancient PCs can "run" in some context. But for a specific example, I was using one as my mail server, and it could not keep up with the current rate of SPAM, so it was working in one sense, but not in another. And it was not economic to fix or upgrade it. The only reason for the past 10 years that I've had to upgrade > I've had my TP about a year now and I guess what I'm trying to say is > the darn thing should work for a long time and parts should be available > for a good while. If Michael is already indicating a shortage of parts, > I'm peeved. That is not what Michael said. What he said was that the displays are EOL. So soon, no one will be able to order new ones. If your display doesn't break, you have no problems. And since its unlikely that there are millions of Transporters out there, a few spares should last a long time. But at some time, there will be no more displays. If you really worry about this, you could order your own spare from digikey > If their idea of planned obsolesence is so short > that I'll need to be replacing all of these units within 2-3 years of > purchasing them, well count me out as a future customer. You are a bit over heated here. My SB-1 can not be fixed. Its maybe six years old. Its lived a good life, and I don't rely upon it anymore. Even the Classic, which is just a SB-2 in another package, is ancient for a piece of computer gear. > With this type of attitude we might have to replace every single > electronic device in our homes every three years. Toasters, > refrigerators, phones (oh wait we already do) radio alarm clocks, > etc... Yep, and automobiles are not that far behind. I had a car that was totalled because the headlights burned out. The replacement HID units were $1000 each, two were the list price of a Transporter. Since the car was seven year old, as much as I loved it, it was not cost effective to fix the headlights. -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
