Longevity of electronics and other stuff (support, smart, college, opinion)
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I was so disappointed when my 2002 Bose CD/radio died this past year. It still spun but wouldn't play and the guru gave it the death knell. It was expensive too, like $700.
The DVDs I copied from Netflix back in the day often won't play despite rare usage.
Our smartphones are 2016 and who cares. I only use mine to take photos though DH reads in bed. My biggest fear is my Kindle dying...can't get another one where I live. I rely on it totally.
Our analog gigantic microwave was over 25 years old when we gave it away. Love the analogs.
Washing machine was 30 years old when we moved.
OTOH, a brand new Yamaha blue-tooth speaker failed right out of the box. Replaced it with a Bose that has some issues too, so I agree that trusted brands mean nothing anymore.
-vintage electronics, the stuff we loved in our youth, often need to be "recapped". Recapping is replacing the electrolytic capacitors, usually in the power supply section, with new ones.
Early audio boards (sound and/or synthesized speech) are also affected by dried out caps. They will often still work, but sound will be distorted. Even if they do still function OK, it is often a recommended first step to just go ahead and replace them all.
It has probably been at least ten years since I've seen a mechanical, internal HDD fail. They're fairly reliable, but I wouldn't trust critical data on them after five years or so. Most will have an estimated number of hours of life in their spec sheet. I had an HDD from early 2013 in use in a computer in 2018. By that point, most of the case fans and the power supply had been replaced. I have an SSD from 2012 plugging along in a spare computer at my dad's.
I haven't had the same track record with external drives. I've had multiple external drives fail from different manufacturers. Consumer external drives don't seem to be very reliable. I have one attached to my iMac, and one on my router that's nothing but a backup drive to the iMac and its drive. The odds of both failing at the same time are slim to none.
I've only had one TV I know of die out of the box. All the others I've had that weren't damaged are working. A few months ago, I bought a dinky little Walmart TV for my home office space. I rarely had it on. Now that I'm working here full time and up here 40+ hours a week, I replaced the 720p Walmart one for a 4K HDR unit from Best Buy and set that up today.
A cell phone is likely to run into battery issues or planned obsolescence before anything physically wears out.
The most unreliable consumer electronic that I've used, by far, are standard inkjet printers. The only printer I've ever had that was worth a crap was a $1,000 laser jet I found secondhand.
OP here again - I am reading all comments with interest. I have not even thought about commercial media like pre-recorded cds and dvds... but 90% of those that I have are older than 12 years, and they all play normally. I still have 35 year old cassette tapes that also play, as well as 30+ year old VHS tapes. In fact, I don't think I ever noticed any of the commercial audio-visuals get degraded. I do have thousands of such items, ie, the same one doesn't get played too often.
In terms of players, the only thing I ever had fail was a cassette player with one head that no longer turns (lasted about 14 years prior to thar), and a dvd player that failed after about 5 years, but I think I brought about its demise - I was playing a very gunky DVD on it that would stop playing, and then I would rewind it, and try to get it to play, and I did that about 50 times, after which the player refused to do anything else). Reading some opinions online, it seems that both issues could be maybe addressed by claning these two items (I still have them, but allso have their multiple replacements). Everything else still works as intended, including, as I already mentioned a Walkman casette player bought circa 1985.
In other words, in my experience these things are continuing to work long past their published life expectancy, so I began cautiously hoping they could be eternal after all :-). I have literally thousands of cds and dvds... I am 60 and was planning on perusing my collection for as long as I live (which in case of one of my grandfathers was 99 years) - is that unrealistic, along with the quest for a non-paper medium on which I could store/retrieve copies of documents and photos for the same duration of time?
I still have 35 year old cassette tapes that also play, as well as 30+ year old VHS tapes. In fact, I don't think I ever noticed any of the commercial audio-visuals get degraded. I do have thousands of such items, ie, the same one doesn't get played too often.
I remember from my days at the college radio station - if you want tapes to last a long time, store them "tails out". Play them at normal speed to the end and don't rewind them. The tape will be uniformly wound on the take up reel. Fast Forward and Rewind tend to leave the tape uneven (when viewed from the side) and with varied tension.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elnrgby
In terms of players, the only thing I ever had fail was a cassette player with one head that no longer turns
I assume you mean a VCR player and not an audio cassette player. .
The most unreliable consumer electronic that I've used, by far, are standard inkjet printers. The only printer I've ever had that was worth a crap was a $1,000 laser jet I found secondhand.
I figured out what a scam ink jet printers were some years ago. Must be over ten years ago, I bought a used HP Laserjet 4000 for $35. Old massive office printer. My printing needs are minimal, mostly print out forms and such. I bought a conversion cable to use it via USB since parallel ports are thing of past. And took bit effort to make it work in win10 (not officially supported) though never any problem in linux. Last summer needed new toner cartridge. I found a genuine HP from some salvage place on ebay for $15. Seems old one was generic. This one does well enough that you can print detailed black and white photos. Little interactive display on printer itself has went dark, but printer works fine.
CDs/DVDs tend to store well IF you keep them dry and in dark place. I have cabinet full of old magnetic floppy disks. Some still work, most dont. Not that there is much on them of any importance.
As others have said, if you want to backup stuff long term, multiple copies recommended.
Oh I used to go through dvd players every couple years. Until I bought a Sony at Walmart when previous one bit dust. That model Sony has lasted around ten years or so. Still going strong, though unfortunately remote no longer works. I even once bought same model off ebay for $10. Came with remote. New remote by itself was more. It plays dvds fine, and you guessed it, the remote doesnt work... Not sure if its the remotes or the dohicky on player that detects the signal from remote that is bad. I will say its very annoying as there are only like four buttons on the dvd player, meaning you can start dvd playing, pause or stop it, but you cant navigate the menus or skip the garbage. Annoying but can live with it. Probably last dvd player I will own since I now have a working spare. If I really want to navigate menus can play dvd on computer. I have some old PAL dvds that is only choice. My previous dvd player (Magnavox??) had setting to play PAL dvds and dvds from any region. The Sony doesnt but the Sony made to last forever. Its a fair tradeoff.
It has probably been at least ten years since I've seen a mechanical, internal HDD fail. They're fairly reliable, but I wouldn't trust critical data on them after five years or so. Most will have an estimated number of hours of life in their spec sheet. I had an HDD from early 2013 in use in a computer in 2018. By that point, most of the case fans and the power supply had been replaced. I have an SSD from 2012 plugging along in a spare computer at my dad's.
I haven't had the same track record with external drives. I've had multiple external drives fail from different manufacturers. Consumer external drives don't seem to be very reliable. I have one attached to my iMac, and one on my router that's nothing but a backup drive to the iMac and its drive. The odds of both failing at the same time are slim to none.
I've only had one TV I know of die out of the box.
At one point, I had a rash of hard drive failures, all different brands and models. After scratching my head for a while, I finally tracked down the issue- poor quality line current with frequent brown-outs. The power would drop/flicker/etc not quite enough to cause the machines to re-boot, but enough that it would cause the platters in the HDDs to lose enough velocity that the heads would bounce off the platters. Once I put all of the machines on line-interactive UPS supplies, my failure issues cleared up.
I just replaced the HDD in a 10+ year-old laptop, after I started getting warnings of impending failure from the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring system.
The actual drive units in the external packages are the exact same drives as are installed internally, there is no difference in the drives themselves. The difference is in the connectors and power- USB ports are limited in the amount of current/power that they can supply.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elnrgby
In other words, in my experience these things are continuing to work long past their published life expectancy, so I began cautiously hoping they could be eternal after all :-). I have literally thousands of cds and dvds... I am 60 and was planning on perusing my collection for as long as I live (which in case of one of my grandfathers was 99 years) - is that unrealistic, along with the quest for a non-paper medium on which I could store/retrieve copies of documents and photos for the same duration of time?
CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, properly stored, should remain viable until some time after *you* are not...I'm not sure if that's a happy thought or not...I'm in the same boat.
In my decades of experience handling gadgets, tools, and electronic stuff. I've come to realize that some people are friendly with electricity while some people have distortion fields that render any electronic good inoperable.
My wife for example, when her phone or toaster over doesn't work. She calls me, I took a look at it. I said there's nothing wrong with it, then she comes back and said "you fixed it."
I didn't do anything I just look at it and tried to use it and works. My electromagnetic field harmonizes with electronic goods.
You need to divide things into groups.
-mechanical devices, including dvd players, spinning hard drives etc. are subject to mechanical failure. Same with keyboards and connectors.
- magnetic storage can lose magnetism over time. Mag tape degrades as the binder dries out and the coating flakes.
- optical storage media suffer from "bit rot" where the storage medium degrades over time and data is lost. How long varies widely depending on the media and storage conditions.
- solid state media are famous for unreliability.
- modern electronics themselves are pretty robust. PC power supplies tend to be the least reliable, no doubt due to filter capacitor degradation, and see next.
- vintage electronics, the stuff we loved in our youth, often need to be "recapped". Recapping is replacing the electrolytic capacitors, usually in the power supply section, with new ones. Sometimes volume controls become noisy too but they can often be fixed with special sprays.
Archival storage in these digital days is a real problem. I know of no good solution, short of archival printing to paper for images. Online storage is great until the provider goes out of business. Mag, solid state and optical media have their problems.
Good post. Especially about capacitors... Pretty much every single capacitor made back in the 70's, 80's and through the late 90's will fail. Not a question of if, but when. When it happens, the electrolyte can leak out onto a circuit board and fry it. Bad caps have ruined more vintage electronics than most people know, it just stops working so they replace it without knowing what happened to it. Same thing happens in cars, ECUs from automakers suffer from this too.
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