What really gets to your nerves-pisspoor design!

[echen1024]

I've thought a lot about product quality lately. I bought some LCD monitors back when they were expensive and built to last, and recently decided it was time to upgrade to something wide, larger, and with better color.  In terms of build quality though, it's shocking how crap they are now.  And unfortunate that you have an assortment to choose from at >20" and <$200, then a gaping hole until you're willing to spend nearly (or over!) $1000.

That's when I noticed that the "middle class" of products seems to be disappearing in general.  It's a shame, since I'm usually willing to spend a bit more to get something that isn't cheap, but I also don't want to throw down many times the price of the low-end offering.  (At some point it becomes more economical to treat them as disposable, although that's not a very sustainable mentality.)

As prolific as electronics are now, you can't expect everything to be grossly over-engineered anymore.  The cost of doing so is high -- both in actual price of materials, and in the availability of those materials when they are so liberally used.  Still, "disposable" and "reliable" shouldn't be separated by a mote.

(Side note:  I just bought a truck last weekend.  Second choice would've been a Frontier, and after reading some of the comments here, I'm kinda glad I got my first pick.)

Check Newegg frequently. I purchased a professional level, Asus PA246Q refurbished for like $220-240.

[grumpydoc]

That's when I noticed that the "middle class" of products seems to be disappearing in general.

This is true in other areas as well - there's no longer much middle ground in furniture since Ikea came on the scene for instance.

The basic problem is that the quality of goods at the low end of the market has actually increased quite a lot, whereas the price has fallen - especially in real terms. Thus the mid-price mid-quality manufacturers find themselves with much less differentiation in terms of quality but totally unable to compete on price so they go to the wall.

Modern consumer electronic goods are actually much more reliable than stuff in, say, the 70's most of which, frankly, was crap.

[SirNick]

That's true, but it was a different kind of crap.  Specs were horrible, but it would work the same when new as it would ten years later.  Today, by my LCD monitor example, I bought a set of 24" panels for very little cash.  The resolution and clarity is amazing, but I suspect they will fail well before the old Sony panel I replaced would have, all because someone saved $1 off the BOM cost on the PSU or the driver ICs or whatever.

[grumpydoc]

Specs were horrible, but it would work the same when new as it would ten years later.

Which I recall being "not very well".

I remember our first colour TV, bought from Comet, maybe around 1973. My father wanted a "good" brand so we ended up with a Grundig. It must have been an up-market model as it had a remote control. A rather chunky thing which "relied" on an ultrasonic transducer - it wasn't that reliable, actually. I recall the TV  being back at the repair shop almost as much as we watched it. I think in the end we bought a 2nd set (a Sony IIRC) and put it in another room so we had a fighting chance of watching TV.

To be fair the Sony was perfectly OK reliability-wise although we had a 2nd house at the time and that had an ITT set - quite possibly this one - that was probably worse than the Grundig.

Of course despite there being only 3 channels, not 300 there seemed to be much more on that was worth watching back then 

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

[SirNick]

No experience with Grundig, but my parents owned their Sony 13" TV for most of my life.  It was retired a few years back in favor of an LCD.  Last I saw, the (IR) remote still worked!  The TV was paired with a Fisher VHS top-loader that had a wired remote with one button -- pause.  You had to hold it down to keep it paused, which looking back, kind of defeats the point.  That old thing was replaced with a new 4-head stereo deck in the mid 90s, even though the old one also still worked.

OTOH, many of the buttons on my (6-year-old) AVR remote don't work unless you press really hard, and keep holding them for a while.  My 3-year-old projector remote is starting to show signs of the same trouble.  Neither have been subjected to siblings fighting over what to watch, although my cat sometimes falls asleep on top of them. 

[Phaedrus]

If you're looking at monitors, I recommend the Korean 27" IPS monitors, from brands like Qnix. They're A- grade panels from LG, the same ones used in top-end Dell and Apple monitors, but the color accuracy wasn't *quite* good enough to meet the big boys' specs.

They stick them in a cheap housing with minimal electronics and sell them for $300-$450.

Are they fancy? No. Are they the best build quality? God no. But it's a 27" 2560x1440 IPS panel with good color accuracy for <$500. I've popped one open, and it's competently designed. You'll probably have to recap the PSU in about 5 years, but aside from that you should be set. Less electronics in the housing, less to go wrong!

Additionally, due to the lack of additional image processing on-board, these are often overclockable. If your video card supports if you can often get these to run at 80-96Hz, rather than 60. Some people have gotten as high as 120Hz out of them. Crazy!

[VK3DRB]

Blaupunkt TV sets.

These German TVs were advertised as "Cherman Excellence" colour TVs by slick advertisers, but were a massive pile of crap. Many components were running near their power and temperature ratings. They violated safe design practices by having a live chassis design - no isolation transformer. There was even an entire book printed about faults in Blaupunkt TV sets. In general European TVs were dangerous, overpriced and unreliable.

[VK3DRB]

What on my nerves in PCB design:

 - Not back annotating a complex PCB layout is the mark of an ignoramus who have never had to debug boards. 
 - Lazy designs with top overlay inconsistencies, spelling mistakes and ambiguous component designators. 
 - No provision for an oscilloscope ground lead on a PCB should be made a offence punishable with 240V mains placed across their testicles so they cannot breed. 
 - Lack of important test points when there is plenty of space to put them.
 - Not having PCB design standards and having ad-hoc component libraries.

I am intolerant of crappy circuit boards by myself or any of my team. We always review each other's schematics and PCB layouts, referencing our bible - the PCB Design Standards. We record all issues found during reviews and track the fixes - before the boards are made. It takes longer, but we generally get it right the first time and avoid stupid mistakes. Saves us money by avoiding PCB re-spins, and we get happier technicians and PCA manufacturers. Everyone wins.

[Rerouter]

Never checking the wattage on components in a design, or running passives at 90% of there wattage rating, and thinking its going to last a decade,

The amount of automotive stuff i have fixed because the manufacturer opted to use a lower wattage part.. there are some examples where there is even the correct wattage printed on the PCB silkscreen, but they still used a size smaller to compact there BOM.... 

I will admit to failing at this on a past design, where i simulated it, but failed to take note of what happened when the power supply doesn't magically come into action in 0.1ps, creating pulse wattage's in KW, resulting in some very nice and crispy 1/4W resistors,


The other thing is inherently unsafe feedback loops, e.g. you are using a potentiometer to control an output, its common for a pot to fail open circuit, so why not make it so it gets tugged into a safe or shutdown stat as opposed to running balls out, (e.g. a weak potential divider to tug it to a set point) or in the case of a current limiting circuit, loosing the sense connection engages the limiter to maximum effect rather than disabling itself, (Kelvin Connection sense resistor developed a dry joint on one of the sense legs from heat cycling)

[dfmischler]

Are you afraid looking at a pink trace might suddenly turn you gay? 

Do you mean that pink is a special color that everybody should like?

I think "genital pink" has been my favorite color ever since my first experience with it.

This really isn't a problem where I live. Flats are very rare. Occasional slow punctures maybe but undrivable flats... Never had one, touch wood.

I once hit a tubular piece of steel about 8 inches (20 cm) long that fell off a vehicle in front of me.  Not only did it It puncture the tire but it punched right through the hub of the alloy wheel.  Good thing I had a spare.