Not to change the subject at hand too much, but people quit posting anyway.
On another thread we were talking about electronic controls on appliances. I know they are convenient, but they aren't durable.
You might get 5-7 years out of them if that. The older style with the analog twist knobs lasted 20+ years. There are some still going from the 1940s.
I think high tech has taken a step backwards as far as quality and longetivity is concerned. Everything is just disposable at some point.
As a person who has designed electronics for a living, I can tell you that if designed correctly, they're typically the most reliable part of something. Designed correctly means protecting from surges/spikes (if applicable), as well as using the proper parts for the environment. I learned for example when designing LED drivers for an automotive environment that most electrolytic capacitors can't handle the heat. There was also the issue of ESR. Too high an ESR can cause a cap to heat up and fail. So I went with solid polymer caps. Anyway, bottom line is I have electronic things I slapped together well over a decade ago running continuously and still working fine. That includes an LED driver which has been driving an old school Luxeon LED since 2004. The LED is still putting out light by the way. I'd say it's maybe at 50% to 60% of its initial brightness after ~150,000 hours. I have a vacuum fluorescent display alarm clock/radio I've had on continuously since 1978. Still working fine, and the display is still plenty bright. That's roughly 375,000 hours. Bottom line is properly designed electronics last decades, possibly even centuries. Granted, the more complex an electronic device is, the more potential points of failure. However, consider how enormously complex modern PCs are, and how infrequently they fail despite that. And when they do fail, it's not the complex electronics usually. It's something having to do with power. Two weeks ago when I was watching the Tour de France my cable box stopped. I looked inside through the vents, noticed a slightly bulging capacitor on what appeared to be the power supply. I opened it up, replaced the cap with a better one rated at twice the voltage. Crossed my fingers, reconnected it. Bingo. Works fine. And this cable box is basically a computer system in its own right. It's entirely possible someone intentionally used a cap in the power supply with they knew had a certain probability of failure after a certain number of hours. Usually the goal would be to have 99% of the devices last past the warranty period, but have 0% make it to maybe twice the warranty period. Planned obsolescence. The good thing though is with environmentalism taking hold this sort of thing may be coming to an end. That and "right to repair" legislation, which makes it easier to fix things instead of throwing them away. In my case a bad cable box wouldn't have cost me anything since I'm renting it from the cable company. It would have required the hassle of arranging a service call, and having a stranger enter the house in the middle of a pandemic (something I'd be very hesitant to do as I'm still on "covid lockdown").
Analog things break, believe me. I'm still using a 1973 washing machine. It's been reliable, but we have replaced the timer twice I think. The lid switch stopped working ages ago but it failed in a permanently closed position. I can open the lid and the machine keeps going.
