Planned Obsolescence is starting to piss me off more than usual. Besides auto mechanics and company maintenance departments, repairmen have to be a dying breed. If it wasn't for the internet, I would have given up fixing dozens of appliances, since calling around for parts would have lead mostly to dead ends or been a pain.(I'd bet major corporation hate DIY repair forums.) I'm currently fixing my dad's Toshiba 62HM196 DLP[footnote]After searching for info and reading tons of forums on TVs, I'm beginning to believe TV manufacturers used DLP tech as a stop gap solution when LCD and Plasma sets were much more expensive. They knew LCD prices would dive and don't make self contained DLP TVs anymore(all according to plan). They didn't care that the things would have to cannibalize each other for parts since that means more people will buy new sets.[/footnote] TV, and finding parts for it was a miracle as everything is now refurbished and virtually sold out anyways. What's even worse is I spent about $30 on TV coolant(Yeah, some old TVs used coolant!) to fix our 8 year old 4:3 projection TV that this one replaced. (My mom just had to buy a new TV without asking me to research new TV tech before I could fix the green convergence on the old set.)
The costs of replacement parts is astronomical unless you find an aftermarket replacement (and good luck with the quality on those). Whether or not you you DIY or hire a repairman, your running the risk of dumping money into an out of warranty item only to have some other expensive component die on you before getting your money's worth out of the repair work. I'd rather spend extra on commercial/military grade equipment, but electronics with those specs either don't exist, don't have consumer features, or require a country's sizable defense budget to buy. It also doesn't help that they change models so often that finding parts even for one particular brand of one particular kind of appliance means weeding through hundreds of model #s and hoping your number is one they didn't list for some reason.*sinister disembodied laughing and cash register sounds are heard*
I also hate auto transmissions. They're good for starting on hills and stop and go traffic, that's it. They can't tell that a hill is coming up and some other car is going up it slow, so they will up shift just to downshift is 2-15 seconds anyway. Even the newer computer controlled[footnote]By the way, have you tried fixing a computerized trannie? I have. It's not fun when you don't have the $5000 dealership diagnostic PC. Thanks to make specific DTCs, the basic ODBII scanner will either tell you vague info or nothing at all. I only hope when I have a problem of my own someday, a program like Torque will be able to scan the latest codes.[/footnote] ones that adjust the shifting based on you habits and recent conditions like winding roads, can't foresee things like new hills or the traffic light that just want red. My trans is always switching gears just to go back because of things like that. Can't wait to try and find a decently priced stick shift car in the US when it's time to get a new one. At least when I have 700ccs between my legs, I have control over the gears.
I really hate touch screens, too. The tech itself isn't bad, but its ubiquity is getting ridiculous. They are good for simplistic UIs like POSes or Kiosks. But they put them in laptops, video games, and phones. The sensitivity of capacitive screens causes random, unwanted crap to happen because of finger twitches, skin oil/sweat left on the screen and poor programming, and the accuracy of buttons, mice and analog sticks beats them into a fine paste any day of the week. The look of one after your just smudged the thing for a few minutes is ugly, too. I wish there was a good smart phone with buttons.
