World: r3wp

I used to have a computer store and I quickly noticed that many products 
just look like the products they're supposed to be, but really aren't

Case in point: it may look like a display, but if it doesn't display 
a picture, it really isn't

The most interesting example were the floppy disks that were sold 
everywhere at the end of the era of floppy disks. People didn't want 
to spend anything on them any more, so you could store files on them 
and quite consistently, a month later they would be gone

It was actually quite hard to find good ones. People get what they 
deserve

I think some of my original Amiga floppies still work, but the last 
PC floppies I bought were utter crap.

Kaj, "People get what they deserve" - that seems a rather odd conclusion 
to me.

.   anton no Syntoma = symptom

tomorow i'mgoing to disassembly the monitor and replace the condensors 
near the transformer

Anton, why odd? If people want the cheapest, they get what looks 
cheapest at that moment. It may just not be cheapest in the long 
run

If you consider quality in the long run, you usually get quality 
in the long run

hum but the problem is productivity and rentability are against quality...

now in day the pity is that they sell you crap for price of gold 
...

if most of the lcd monitors crafters offer a 3 year waranty that's 
because they are aware their monitor will fail from lacks of fiability 
in their components. Doing fast and lot of monney implicates they 
have to cut cost on every thing...

so instead of putting in the lcd monitors chimical  condensors of 
25 V 1000 µF they put 16 V 1000 µF instead of redunding them they 
just put the just the simple amount of condensors. Instead of putting 
quality condensors wich cost 0.60 cts they put low quality condensors 
at 0.20 cts ... then because you have no redundency on the power 
supply  you don't have backup in the main power supply  and if one 
of the condensors is dead you just have to throw it to junk ....

Kaj, I would agree that the tendency to buy the cheaper of otherwise 
identical-looking items is something that tends to drive the market 
quality downwards, but I don't agree that that is what "people" deserve.

I could imagine the situation this way; on introduction to the market, 
floppy disk manufacturers were fewer, and prices were higher, so 
the competition was about quality. Later, more manufacturers entered 
the market and caused a price war. Consumers became confused and 
couldn't distinguish brands by quality, so they chose the cheaper 
"alternatives". I could say, then, that the manufacturers which chose 
to lower the quality of their products in order to undercut their 
competition were slowly degrading the public's idea of the quality 
of a floppy disk. Essentially lying, by taking advantage of trust 
in all the confusion.

[Disclaimer: The above is just an alternative explanation. I haven't 
studied the actual history of floppy disks at all, and I never ran 
a computer store.]

I think many manufacturers choose to lower the quality of their products, 
because they learn how to produce an almost identical product at 
a lower cost. Philips VCRs went from being innovative and high quality 
in the 80s and early 90s and slowly became of poorer and poorer quality 
over the years until they became as unreliable as the cheapest crap 
you could find. But I bet it would cost about 1/10 to produce that 
crap VCR than the old high quality one. Finetuning a production line 
down to the last dime is a science in itself and you can bet they 
take advantage of it.

Maybe you could compare it to floppies. Floppies were a dying technology 
an so the priority for producing good ones was just lowered.

Well, my 2cents, after doing procurement consulting for 9 years now.

Cheaper = worse quality  is an equation that doesn't hold always. 
The main causes for lower prices while keeping the same quality are:

1. productivity gains: You use better machines, less scrap, less 
time -> lower costs per part

2. Learning effects: Suppliers learn how something can be produced 
better, with less effort etc. For example injection molding parts 
are optimized mainly through this.

3. Economy of scale: If I produce a product in 1 shift, but can get 
contracts for a 2nd and 3rd shift I can dramatically lower my costs 
-> lower product price.

Lowering the quality is a very bad option for a supplier. Especially 
you can only do this if you sell directly to the end-market. Otherwise 
your client won't accept lowe quality.

Nevertheless you have scrap out there and the chances are high with 
real no-names. But this comes from a lot of them think, some products 
are easy to manufactor. But this is not the case. Building a real 
good washing machine like a Miele is everything than simple. Even 
if you disassemble the machine you are not able to clone it.

...interesting, why not robert? I never understood
this fact and heard it many times by business owner
when talking about the danger of cloned products.

Robert, I agree that purposely lowering quality of products only 
works with end-users.

TomBon, to clone a Miele, one would need the same materials, production 
processes and suppliers as Miele use. Basically you would need their 
production facilities and engineers. And I know that people's image 
of Miele is of their reliability, not their product design or by 
them having low prices. Reliability is the hardest part to clone, 
so people would naturally be suspicious about a cloned Miele. Cloned, 
cheaper spare parts may be a different matter.

One place where buying a clone might be a serious mistake is the 
case for some Chinese luxury cars. They look like any other luxury 
car, but are built on 30-40 year old chassis frames using substandard 
quality steel and are some of the worst performers in crash tests, 
and many warnings have been issued against buying them. They don't 
yet have the capacity to produce cars that live up to modern safety 
standards. The cars are not directly clones, but it's enough to get 
confused by, if you want a big fancy car.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/01/AR2008090101614.html
New google browser ... goodbye Firefox??

New google browser that uses multiple cores and javascript threads 
with sandboxing between tabs.

is this the end of FF?

And new platform to develop applications I guess.

End of FF? Hardly - FF is an established platform already - some 
40% in Europe already - very nice result, when fighting preinstalled 
IE is a problem. FF itself is an extensible platform. Then there 
is also Opera, with its widgets - can you see revolution happening 
here? Google's power is over-estimated imo. Their Android was supposed 
to be a revolution too, but I am not sure they will win much of mobile 
appliances too ....

I like safari that's amazing stable and fast  ^___^. I have installed 
opera and firefox on my computer I  never use IE.

In some Video on demand sites I see a tendancy to use Windows media 
player plugin forcing you to use PCx86  with IE and nothing else 
...

for my LCD monitor I'm screwed ... LOL and that's literally that. 
Ok so I intented to disamble my LCD monitor but there is no screws 
to open it... I still wonder how to open it ...

there is Win media player for FF too (Windows)

Pekr yes but those site implement a javascript with version checking 
that launch the plugin only if the browser answer the right way

pekr try www.m6replay.fr for example

using firefox -> that's a plain and simple no welcome page you can't 
even acces the website content

M6replay is a VOD website to replay the series or emitions from the 
M6 TV channel wich is supposed to be view by a large number of people

yeeeeeeeeeepiiiiiiiii

I managed to open my lcd monitor ^^

it's  locked only by a cliping system and 6 screw hiden behin the 
pedestal

to know the lcd monitor mark I have to disasembly it fully  that's 
a chunghwha ^^

I identified clearly what condensor is dead  that the only 16V 1000 
µF on the board ....

the design is really cheap no redundance fixing it including the 
cost  of the tolls should cost me 9 euros  ^^

compared to the supply CM design of a LCD monitor from HP mine is 
like 10 times with less components