One of the promises of the new electronic age was that reliability and product life would be improved. While a transistor can live longer than an electromechanical relay for the purposes of switching or controlling, it may not meet the promise of reliability purported years ago.
The enemies of all electronic devices are heat and uncontrolled currents and voltages. Modern electronics run on five and twelve volts. All devices used in the home and business desktop tend to use this by way of power supplies which convert the power from the outlets in the wall to something usable by the electronics of the device.
Troubleshooting those devices requires a complete set of documents that detail the schematic design as well as the expected outputs from large scale integrated devices used within the device. In some instances test points are available and documented well by the manufacturer so technicians can service the device once it is in use.
Because the actual cost to manufacture these devices is so incredibly cheap compared to the old methods, things like the radio, phone, television, and home appliance are only made today using this new technology.
Unfortunately the economies in manufacture are not always passed along. While it is true that a modern smart phone can run circles around the supercomputers of yore, they burn up on the dash of your car in Arizona and cannot survive a short fall unless somehow “armored” with an accessory surround.
To make matters worse manufacturers and marketeers have prevented the distribution of complete manuals for owners as a nuisance and unnecessary cost for the products. Citing that users are not concerned with such minutia, the obfuscation of operation, care, and maintenance information is lost and or unavailable. The Internet forums are testament to how rampant that is.
What is really unsettling is the engineered death of the device. An example I love to cite is how the microcontroller on your self-cleaning oven, which approaches one thousand degrees Fahrenheit, is located immediately above the oven and in the exhaust stream from the oven. It stands little chance of survival in the long run.
Then there is the abuse of the customer by way of grossly overpricing the replacement parts and service technician costs. Electronic controls on that same oven cost half of the price of a new oven for an electronic controller that was manufactured for a few dollars.
Early unexpected device death is easily taken care of by replacing the device. That is why people buy new products. They want a warranty to cover defects in materials and workmanship. The entire package is replaced. The defective device is then often returned to the manufacturer and shredded for recycling or refurbished for discounted resale.
So what the oven example shows is that twenty dollars of decorated sheet metal with exotic features provided by a microcontroller and a few switches plus a few fans and heating elements will sell new for six hundred to several thousand dollars and become unusable or unreliable within a designed period of time.
To further the need to replace the oven, the cost of problem diagnostics and replacement of the parts becomes prohibitively expensive. A fresh customer is born.
What do you think about the “Kleenex” age of modern technology?