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| Simon:
The important thing is to design for longevity and change the attitudes about constantly buying a new one. Fortunately the market i work in wants longevity and robust designs so I don't have to cut corners to the degree that commercial product cut. i once read of a guy returning 3 lexmark printers to the store after every single one stopped working after 16 pages were printed. I have a hard drive that mysteriously stopped working. When I went searching I discovered that this was a common fault and happened after a certain time period and that the manufacturer was offering a firmware upgrade for those that had not reached this time or if the drive had stopped working they would take it back and sort it out. I sent mine back and it was returned to me in perfect working order. No explanation was ever given of why it stopped working in correlation to a particular number of hours. We all know what happened but the manufacturer (seagate) would never admit to having a time to fail in the firmware. |
| Microdoser:
--- Quote from: Simon on March 24, 2021, 12:41:56 pm ---The important thing is to design for longevity and change the attitudes about constantly buying a new one. --- End quote --- I'm currently designing a product, and I am designing it to be easily repairable. I want the end user to keep using my product and repair it, extending the time they use my product well beyond the standard product lifetime. Every time a user needs to buy a new product is a chance they won't choose yours. Furthermore, I will offer a repair and refurbish service at a fair price and I hope this, as well as consumable parts, will become a steady income stream. Repairs will, at the preference of the end user, be simple board switching or component level repairs to minimize repair cost. It should always be cheaper and easier to repair the product than buy a new one IMO. I am fully aware that any vested interests will reverse engineer any product. My defence against that will be to offer superior customer service and a trustworthy brand identity. |
| SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: Simon on March 24, 2021, 12:41:56 pm ---The important thing is to design for longevity and change the attitudes about constantly buying a new one. Fortunately the market i work in wants longevity and robust designs so I don't have to cut corners to the degree that commercial product cut. i once read of a guy returning 3 lexmark printers to the store after every single one stopped working after 16 pages were printed. I have a hard drive that mysteriously stopped working. When I went searching I discovered that this was a common fault and happened after a certain time period and that the manufacturer was offering a firmware upgrade for those that had not reached this time or if the drive had stopped working they would take it back and sort it out. I sent mine back and it was returned to me in perfect working order. No explanation was ever given of why it stopped working in correlation to a particular number of hours. We all know what happened but the manufacturer (seagate) would never admit to having a time to fail in the firmware. --- End quote --- There are those who claim that planned obsolescence isn't a "thing". - It is definitely a "thing"... in fact, every product ever (competently) designed has had a specific defined design life... if you buy a car, everything is designed for 100K miles or 10 years... if you buy a cell phone where the battery can't be changed, you know you are buying a product with a 2-3 year design life... and so on. |
| Alex Eisenhut:
Hmmm, how about a CSP embedded in a cavity in the PCB? That's doable. Pot that, and I think we have some more "security". Might slow down a determined hacker by a whole extra 24 hours. |
| Simon:
--- Quote from: blueskull on March 24, 2021, 03:58:18 pm --- --- Quote from: SilverSolder on March 24, 2021, 03:31:43 pm ---in fact, every product ever (competently) designed has had a specific defined design life... if you buy a car, everything is designed for 100K miles or 10 years... --- End quote --- True. In Simon's case, I'm not convinced it is a blatant counter. If it was found out, Seagate would be in deep trouble. If I were Seagate, I would have implemented a seemingly benign "performance log" or some sort of logging system that runs in the firmware NOR flash, and wait for that block to get worn out in a reliable but not exactly predictable fashion. This is a catch me if you can thing, and I think their lawyers have done their math. --- End quote --- Yes I am sure you are right and I never believed that there was an explicit counter but something reasonably predictable had been implemented hence the error I guess where someone miscalculated the indirect mechanism but there was an hour count given and I think it was seagate that said there was an issue that would fail the drive after this time, but no further explanation was given |
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