(no subject)
Advocates of free-trade love to preach about the benefits to the consumer from reducing trade barriers.
The final product is cheaper they say, more affordable. You can have more "stuff" because it costs less. The sad truth is clear to all consumers: you get what you pay for. Products are planned with obsolescence in mind. Lemons are becoming more common as producers do anything possible to reduce costs from using inferior parts to hazardous substances (like lead in toys).
As I stumble upon examples of lemon flavored junk via news-feed, amazon reviews, bulletin boards, etc., I will be posting them to my journal under the tag "lemons."
This is more for my own benefit than anyone else. I want to collect these things in a central place for future reference. Where better than LJ?
Example one: Craptastic Capacitors.
"Just a brief update for those that have been out of the capacitor loop. About the time Apple was building their G5 line of personal computers, several Taiwanese electrolyte manufacturers began using a stolen electrolyte formula that was incomplete, and lacked key ingredients needed to produce a stable capacitor. The missing ingredients caused the electrolyte in the capacitors to break down, evaporate, leak out of the cap casings, caused overheating of the capacitors themselves under normal load conditions, and subsequently caused exploding poppers. Consequently the capacitors started bulging, overheating, and exploding in many of the power supplies and mother boards manufactured by Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and others which has been documented by numerous articles online. In fact, Dell took a "$300 million financial charge on its earnings to cover costs associated with the replacement of motherboards with faulty capacitors in some of its Optiplex workstations" in late 2005 early 2006."
The final product is cheaper they say, more affordable. You can have more "stuff" because it costs less. The sad truth is clear to all consumers: you get what you pay for. Products are planned with obsolescence in mind. Lemons are becoming more common as producers do anything possible to reduce costs from using inferior parts to hazardous substances (like lead in toys).
As I stumble upon examples of lemon flavored junk via news-feed, amazon reviews, bulletin boards, etc., I will be posting them to my journal under the tag "lemons."
This is more for my own benefit than anyone else. I want to collect these things in a central place for future reference. Where better than LJ?
Example one: Craptastic Capacitors.
"Just a brief update for those that have been out of the capacitor loop. About the time Apple was building their G5 line of personal computers, several Taiwanese electrolyte manufacturers began using a stolen electrolyte formula that was incomplete, and lacked key ingredients needed to produce a stable capacitor. The missing ingredients caused the electrolyte in the capacitors to break down, evaporate, leak out of the cap casings, caused overheating of the capacitors themselves under normal load conditions, and subsequently caused exploding poppers. Consequently the capacitors started bulging, overheating, and exploding in many of the power supplies and mother boards manufactured by Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and others which has been documented by numerous articles online. In fact, Dell took a "$300 million financial charge on its earnings to cover costs associated with the replacement of motherboards with faulty capacitors in some of its Optiplex workstations" in late 2005 early 2006."