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I was at Radio shack the other day, and the subject came up . There is a timer circut built into every thing we buy electronic , I have had several items die that frankly didn't get used all that often and died .
the sales man told me one of his customers had to but a security camera every 3-1/2 years exactly, because for no aparent reason they just die . I have long suspected this , and opened up these dead toys to see what failed but nothing out of the ordenary is burnt or poor solderjoints or any thing . I have long suspected that the timer ciricut is deliberately set to fail to force us to buy a new what ever . My Phone died recently ,and I had it just over 3 years I think , I had never dropped it , always charged it with it's own cord , never even down loaded any fancy stuff into it, in fact I hardly made any calls with it , the display just incripted and I lost al memory and it finally just quit .
Therr is no limit to the sabotoge the manufacturers build into all the things we have , Be mindful I guess , you just buying a service , not a product.
If a device that was working fine suddenly stops working, there's always a cause. Nowadays, most components in devices are either microscopic or sealed within a chip, so the cause may not be as apparent as it was when we could see all of the parts of our electronics with the naked eye.
You can thank the misguided attempts of eco-nuts for part of it. The requirement of lead-free solder is a known problem, and it affects smaller circuits more than the old massive electronics we used to have. So instead of having a tiny amount of lead that might somehow escape into the environment, we have lead-free electronics that fail and require constant replacement - which is as damaging to the environment as the lead, if not more so. Short-sighted regulations and de-facto laws like that are one of the primary reasons that I no longer tolerate the insanities of the "Green" evangelists.
My advice is to buy electronics with the understanding that they now have a short lifespan, and that your money will be lost within a few years. I find that I'm no longer interested in buying most of the electronic doo-dads anymore because of the problems.
Harry may be on to something with the lead-free solder. This is part of the RoHS (reduction of hazardous substances) initiative that has caused electronics makers to change/update many of the components on their circuit board designs. Makes the enviro-whackos happy, but I believe quality has been negatively impacted.
That said, as someone who designs high tech electronics for a living, I can assure you that there are absolutely no "timers" or other embedded gizmos that cause the device to die after a preset time period. That's just silly.
p.s. unless you are talking about inkjet cartridges. There's some nefarious stuff going on with some of them.
Motorists "know" that car batteries are absolutely certain to die a few days after the warranty expires. A 30-month battery will last exactly 30 months, period. Neither abuse nor TLC nor climatic conditions will alter that schedule.
Nowadays, most components in devices are either microscopic or sealed within a chip, so the cause may not be as apparent as it was when we could see all of the parts of our electronics with the naked eye.
Yes isnt it sad Bowie?
Stuff is made so cheap these days ITS SAD.... Much better quality was had in the 80s and earlier! (Better parts used,etc)
I don't buy into a conspiracy of every electronic device made, especially one where "a timer circuit" forces the device to malfunction after a certain period of time. Think about it for a minute, a secret like this and not one person over the last few decades worldwide has "blown the whistle"?????????
I would also be very leery about trusting a Radio Shack person as being a reliable source of information...
I once had a video card in my desktop computer that died after almost 3 years of use. I pulled it out and found several burst capacitors. If I had the patience, I might have bought replacement capacitors and soddered them in but since I was already planning to upgrade my video card, I opted out of fixing it.
Automobiles are designed to rust away. Corrosive engineering, I believe is the term.
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That's just silly.
