Well, as an unashamedly woke green hippy snowflake I did a similar calculation when I bought my 1.8 DIESEL (shock horror) Civic, which is now 11 years old. Because even pre-covid I didn't drive a huge number of miles and they were mostly dual carriageway / motorway, because I hardly ever do urban driving (diesels in urban areas are not nice), and because I buy 3-5 year old cars and run them into the ground over 15-20 years, then with the technology at the time this seemed to be a pretty efficient solution on all counts compared to, particularly, the battery life in electrics and hybrids. However, the technology's changing all the time, so would the audit on that still work today? To be honest I don't know, probably not, hopefully it will be several years yet before I'll have to do it!


On the more general question, I'm not actually convinced that domestic equipment is more unreliable if compared price-for-price with yesteryear. When we had small children and no money and bought white goods for £100 a time and small appliances for £10s of pounds a time yes the life expectancy was pretty bad. Now, as an example, this site https://www.retrowow.co.uk/social_history/70s/cost_1973.php reckons a twin tub (our first second-hand washing machine) cost £73.36 in 1973 prices, equivalent to £630.00 today. Even now, I wouldn't spend £630 for a washing machine, but by paying something more in the order of that sort of price the white goods we have now have kept going for at least the 10 year mark (i.e. still going today, I'll have to post here again in another 10 years), and spare parts have been available on the rare occasion they have failed. So are appliances really less reliable (and less supported), or is it that it is now possible to produce low cost low reliability appliances for those that want them? 


Even more so with cars, I had my first car in 1978 which was made in 1968, it rusted away a year later. I would say that if anything the life expectancy of cars I've owned has lengthened over those 42 years (remembering as above I've never sold a car as a going concern!). The difference is that I used to have to spend every weekend fixing the blessed things once they were over about 5 years old, now I'm staggered if one fails an MOT on a minor point. What maybe makes the obsolescence proofing of cars look bad is that now when a 15-20 year old car is scrapped (say because the ECU has failed) it looks almost like new, whereas it was always a joke that you could judge the age of, say, a Ford Cortina by how many of the doors were the same colour as the rest of the car. (Yes you could replace the doors from a scrapyard, the problem was that you had to!) 


Of course as you can imagine I don't like the low cost low reliability throw away culture, but then equally I'm very aware that I'm lucky to be able to make the choice...do we want to say that appliances will last twice as long, but most people won't be able to afford them? (Remembering again I grew up in the 1960s/70s, my parents grew up in the 1920s/30s.) There is no simple answer to that question (particularly again for a wghs as stated in the opening sentence!).


BUT I do agree that the obsolescence of serviceable phones and computers due to the expansion of software is really really annoying. (Can't remember if I've said in this thread before: Millar's law of Software Expansion: for any improvement in hardware, the software will expand until the device runs just slightly irritatingly slow.) However unless someone can stop Moore's law that ain't going to end soon.


Cheers,


Andy


 

Well, as an unashamedly woke green hippy snowflake I did a similar calculation when I bought my 1.8 DIESEL (shock horror) Civic, which is now 11 years old. Because even pre-covid I didn't drive a huge number of miles and they were mostly dual carriageway / motorway, because I hardly ever do urban driving (diesels in urban areas are not nice), and because I buy 3-5 year old cars and run them into the ground over 15-20 years, then with the technology at the time this seemed to be a pretty efficient solution on all counts compared to, particularly, the battery life in electrics and hybrids. However, the technology's changing all the time, so would the audit on that still work today? To be honest I don't know, probably not, hopefully it will be several years yet before I'll have to do it!


On the more general question, I'm not actually convinced that domestic equipment is more unreliable if compared price-for-price with yesteryear. When we had small children and no money and bought white goods for £100 a time and small appliances for £10s of pounds a time yes the life expectancy was pretty bad. Now, as an example, this site https://www.retrowow.co.uk/social_history/70s/cost_1973.php reckons a twin tub (our first second-hand washing machine) cost £73.36 in 1973 prices, equivalent to £630.00 today. Even now, I wouldn't spend £630 for a washing machine, but by paying something more in the order of that sort of price the white goods we have now have kept going for at least the 10 year mark (i.e. still going today, I'll have to post here again in another 10 years), and spare parts have been available on the rare occasion they have failed. So are appliances really less reliable (and less supported), or is it that it is now possible to produce low cost low reliability appliances for those that want them? 


Even more so with cars, I had my first car in 1978 which was made in 1968, it rusted away a year later. I would say that if anything the life expectancy of cars I've owned has lengthened over those 42 years (remembering as above I've never sold a car as a going concern!). The difference is that I used to have to spend every weekend fixing the blessed things once they were over about 5 years old, now I'm staggered if one fails an MOT on a minor point. What maybe makes the obsolescence proofing of cars look bad is that now when a 15-20 year old car is scrapped (say because the ECU has failed) it looks almost like new, whereas it was always a joke that you could judge the age of, say, a Ford Cortina by how many of the doors were the same colour as the rest of the car. (Yes you could replace the doors from a scrapyard, the problem was that you had to!) 


Of course as you can imagine I don't like the low cost low reliability throw away culture, but then equally I'm very aware that I'm lucky to be able to make the choice...do we want to say that appliances will last twice as long, but most people won't be able to afford them? (Remembering again I grew up in the 1960s/70s, my parents grew up in the 1920s/30s.) There is no simple answer to that question (particularly again for a wghs as stated in the opening sentence!).


BUT I do agree that the obsolescence of serviceable phones and computers due to the expansion of software is really really annoying. (Can't remember if I've said in this thread before: Millar's law of Software Expansion: for any improvement in hardware, the software will expand until the device runs just slightly irritatingly slow.) However unless someone can stop Moore's law that ain't going to end soon.


Cheers,


Andy