Planned obsolescence

One form of planned obsolescence is where the cost of repairs is comparable to the market value of a product. Note the market value and the replacement cost are very different things. When the market value is less than the cost of a single repair many people simply buy a new & improved replacement, whether that is a car, a laptop or a mobile phone.

An example is my spare laptop which could be purchased, in its current crap condition and age, on Ebay for about $100. I just fixed the battery latch issue on this laptop with cable ties whereas Toshiba’s service agent had quoted me $300 for the job.

These battery latches are an example of rubbish engineering; they have been a problem in Toshiba laptops for a long time and there must not be a feedback mechanism to the engineers. I say ‘rubbish’ because the problem can occur in the first week of ownership which is not good for brand reputation.

However, any close observer will know that a heavily used laptop is unlikely to get past 2-3 years before niggling or fatal issues prompt the owner to replace the device. I know, for example, that when a laptop starts displaying certain characteristics (like blue screening, hotspots, excessive fan use, etc) there is little use getting it fixed. Its a goner. This despite the fact that ‘repairing’ usually means replacing whole slabs of it’s guts (like the motherboard).

But to be fair the cost of a new laptop is very low. High production volumes have enabled the investment, by manufacturers, into product development of billions of collective dollars. Unconstrained by product life issues or repair-ability, the focus has been on getting cost out (near to incoming material costs), weight and footprint down, and specs up.

I wonder how much extra people would be prepared to pay to have a device which is infinitely repairable? Given the rate of technology improvements people would also need infinite upgrade-ability of key functional components. But even then they would be the victim of ageing style. You can see the problem.

The only real solution is to put a price on both non-renewable carbon and other diminishing and unrecoverable resource inputs, via a tax, and let the ecosystem figure out the best solution.