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I strongly prefer to repair devices and am reluctant to throw any broken manufactured good out, even when I have poor prospects of repairing them. Instead, I j

I strongly prefer to repair devices and am reluctant to throw any broken manufactured good out, even when I have poor prospects of repairing them. Instead, I just hold on to them. Phones, stereos, vacuum cleaners, clocks, computers. My shelves are full of broken items, and good intentions, frozen in amber. Why do I think like this? I think it is a psychological condition. It isn't a rational choice. If I apply my educated, articulate self to analysis, I can tell you it's an expression of how I want the world to be, not a realistic evaluation of how modern manufacturing commerce works. A stereo or an espresso machine that is non-serviceable costs 1/10th as much to buy and performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago. The price we pay for that bounty is that 5% of the manufactured items fail early. It costs more to provide repair infrastructure than to run a warranty program, so the dead stuff ends up as waste. I get it. Still, I don't like waste, and I love repair. My feelings are not economics, they are emotions. And so so they persist. And that's perfectly OK.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago
> I think it is a psychological condition. People can have trouble letting go of obsoleted, unneeded object due to some emotional attachment. [Unless you hoard socially acceptable items, like status symbols or plain money, in that case most people will not see the problem] > an espresso machine ... performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago ...or not. A rational reason for fixing stuff is that many products are objectively worse. > My feelings are not economics, they are emotions Another perfectly rational reason is prevent environmental collapse. It does not get more reasonable than that.
- deleted 6y ago
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lostlogin 6y ago
> an espresso machine ... performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago This is a terrible example. How coffee is made has not changed much, so machines don’t need to change much. New hardware trends towards more plastic, more logic boards and at the worst end of the scale, more proprietary parts, including the actual coffee. I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and grinders, and currently run a 37 year old grinder and a 23 year old espresso machine. Older machines are easier to service, easy to get parts for and nice to work on. The quality of the coffee is hard to beat and I would need to pay around US$3k for a new version of the machine, where the old one is generally around US$250. Often the changes over time are few (eg La Cimbali Junior). Brands like La Marzocco, La Cimbali, Rancilio and Mazzer have a lot of great machines going back a very long time. Electric parts often connect with spades or screws, there is documentation and parts are easily ordered and you can usually talk to someone at the supply end about difficult repairs. New coffee machines at the lower end of the price scale are mostly just disposable crap, and make bad coffee. They are not cheaper over their lifetime.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  50 years ago, there were no cheap home espresso machines, only the US$3K commercial versions you work on. What changed was not the way coffee is made, but the way coffee is sold and consumer grade machines are manufactured at scale. We now have cheap espresso machines which don't last very long, as you have noted. I bought one last week second hand for $70. The new price for that machine was $300, but the guy sold it to me for $70 because it was dripping water whilst idle. I disassembled the head, cleaned the rubber ball end, stretched the spring, reassembled, and now it works like a new $300 machine. I'm told the quality of the coffee is determined more by the grinder than the espresso machine, assuming the latter is working. There are no good cheap grinders. > I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and grinders, and currently run a 37 year old grinder and a 23 year old espresso machine. Awesome! If I knew someone like you who lived near me, I would be the same.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Keep an eye out for Mazzer ones (Super Jolly or Luigi, but other models are also great). They are indestructible as far as I can tell. While there are better ones out there, there aren’t many that are as inexpensive second hand, whilst also being easy to get parts and instructions for.
ashneo76 6y ago
I am so in this situation. I love phones. But I haven't bought a new phone in like 3 years. I still use a Nokia N900 and a Nexus 5. My laptop is state of the art from 2010. That thing still flies. For gaming, I got a laptop with eGPU. It is going to to last another 10-15 years. I have so many vga cables, ethernet, nokia phones. They all work. Just change the battery and done. Manufactured obsolescence is killing us. 2G worked great for things. Those phones had VoIP. I want to get them working with that. Someday...
neop1x 6y ago
There is eBay and similar sites where you can list "For parts or noy working" items and get quite a good value out of it. If you keep it for X-years in your garage, after those years these models won't be actively used anymore and less people will be looking for parts => it will become less worthy to the point you will have to throw them away...

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

> I think it is a psychological condition. People can have trouble letting go of obsoleted, unneeded object due to some emotional attachment. [Unless you hoard socially acceptable items, like status symbols or plain money, in that case most people will not see the problem] > an espresso machine ... performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago ...or not. A rational reason for fixing stuff is that many products are objectively worse. > My feelings are not economics, they are emotions Another perfectly rational reason is prevent environmental collapse. It does not get more reasonable than that.

deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lostlogin 6y ago

> an espresso machine ... performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago This is a terrible example. How coffee is made has not changed much, so machines don’t need to change much. New hardware trends towards more plastic, more logic boards and at the worst end of the scale, more proprietary parts, including the actual coffee. I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and grinders, and currently run a 37 year old grinder and a 23 year old espresso machine. Older machines are easier to service, easy to get parts for and nice to work on. The quality of the coffee is hard to beat and I would need to pay around US$3k for a new version of the machine, where the old one is generally around US$250. Often the changes over time are few (eg La Cimbali Junior). Brands like La Marzocco, La Cimbali, Rancilio and Mazzer have a lot of great machines going back a very long time. Electric parts often connect with spades or screws, there is documentation and parts are easily ordered and you can usually talk to someone at the supply end about difficult repairs. New coffee machines at the lower end of the price scale are mostly just disposable crap, and make bad coffee. They are not cheaper over their lifetime.

wombatmobile 6y ago
50 years ago, there were no cheap home espresso machines, only the US$3K commercial versions you work on. What changed was not the way coffee is made, but the way coffee is sold and consumer grade machines are manufactured at scale. We now have cheap espresso machines which don't last very long, as you have noted. I bought one last week second hand for $70. The new price for that machine was $300, but the guy sold it to me for $70 because it was dripping water whilst idle. I disassembled the head, cleaned the rubber ball end, stretched the spring, reassembled, and now it works like a new $300 machine. I'm told the quality of the coffee is determined more by the grinder than the espresso machine, assuming the latter is working. There are no good cheap grinders. > I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and grinders, and currently run a 37 year old grinder and a 23 year old espresso machine. Awesome! If I knew someone like you who lived near me, I would be the same.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Keep an eye out for Mazzer ones (Super Jolly or Luigi, but other models are also great). They are indestructible as far as I can tell. While there are better ones out there, there aren’t many that are as inexpensive second hand, whilst also being easy to get parts and instructions for.

ashneo76 6y ago

I am so in this situation. I love phones. But I haven't bought a new phone in like 3 years. I still use a Nokia N900 and a Nexus 5. My laptop is state of the art from 2010. That thing still flies. For gaming, I got a laptop with eGPU. It is going to to last another 10-15 years. I have so many vga cables, ethernet, nokia phones. They all work. Just change the battery and done. Manufactured obsolescence is killing us. 2G worked great for things. Those phones had VoIP. I want to get them working with that. Someday...

neop1x 6y ago

There is eBay and similar sites where you can list "For parts or noy working" items and get quite a good value out of it. If you keep it for X-years in your garage, after those years these models won't be actively used anymore and less people will be looking for parts => it will become less worthy to the point you will have to throw them away...