General > General Technical Chat
New UK plan "could spell end of throwaway culture" (BBC News)
james_s:
--- Quote from: Psi on March 13, 2020, 11:23:05 am ---Yep, a quality LED bulb with psu should last 10 years, even up to 15 years if they design it properly and pick the correct parts.
True, the light output and color temp will change as the LED ages, but it should still work.
The primary reason you see store bought LED lamps dying within a year or two is simply planned obsolescence, they're engineered to run way to hot so they can sell the replacements. The caps and semiconductors just cannot handle the heat they're run at.
--- End quote ---
I have not observed a change in light output or color temperature so far. I recently pulled the Philips 8W remote phosphor bulb that I installed in 2011 out of my front porch light and lit it up right next to a NOS one that I never installed, they were indistinguishable. The porch light runs every night from dusk till dawn so after 9 years it has quite a few hours on it.
I don't think it's planned obsolescence, it's cost engineering. I paid over $30 *each* for the Philips bulbs, part of that is I was an early adopter trying to support a product I believed in and wanted to succeed, but beyond just being new they were also very well engineered and made to last a long time. Now you can get LED bulbs for a few dollars or less, some of that his due to high volume production and improved technology, but much is also from cutting corners to cut the cost down to the bare minimum. You can't buy the cheapest of the cheap crap and then expect it to last.
james_s:
--- Quote from: MK14 on March 13, 2020, 03:23:44 am ---Fortunate, because tiny computers, should take much less resources to produce, than full sized ones.
If you want to have a 64 core monster (AMD threadripper) computer, with water cooling, multiple oversized graphics cards, many disk dirves/SSDs, and huge potential for expansion. Then, a large tower case is still the way to go. (I know even threadrippers can be achieved in small cases, if you want to go that route).
--- End quote ---
I'm not so sure that it's significant. Large tower computers are filled mostly with air, and much of the other mass is cheap and easily recycled steel and other metals. The modern super compact PCs have a large portion of their volume consumed by PCBs and silicon, and I suspect the difference in total volume of material that is not easily recycled is minimal. Another factor worth considering, when PCs were still being upgraded regularly I would often replace only some of the components, I kept the same tower case for more than a decade. The mini PCs are far more proprietary, they are essentially disposable, when one breaks you throw the whole thing out.
OwO:
Bulbs over 8 watts run too hot, and with the typical light output of 8W bulbs it would take 12 bulbs to cover the living room, so it gets expensive real fast (if you can even find fixtures that large). If they last 10 years on average, that's still one bulb replacement per year. I really prefer the big rectangular ceiling lights with huge surface area and using LED strips; it's less painful to look at too.
james_s:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on March 13, 2020, 02:45:17 am ---
You can still get station wagons... but they are taller, and are called "crossovers"!
--- End quote ---
A crossover is no more a station wagon than a spork is a spoon. A crossover is a one size fits all compromise, it looks vaguely like an SUV, vaguely like a station wagon, vaguely like a hatchback, vaguely like a minivan, etc but it is none of these things. They are somehow taller without offering any more ground clearance or interior volume, I don't even know where all the space goes. I find them all hideously ugly and could never bring myself to own one. I have hauled a sofa in the back of my Volvo 740 that would not fit in my friend's Toyota crossover, and I have hauled plywood and lumber using a clamp on roof rack, the car is low enough that I can easily load and unload without needing to stand on a ladder. The boxy shape is ideal for maximizing internal volume vs external footprint, there's a reason that boxes are box-shaped.
james_s:
--- Quote from: OwO on March 13, 2020, 05:45:52 pm ---Bulbs over 8 watts run too hot, and with the typical light output of 8W bulbs it would take 12 bulbs to cover the living room, so it gets expensive real fast (if you can even find fixtures that large). If they last 10 years on average, that's still one bulb replacement per year. I really prefer the big rectangular ceiling lights with huge surface area and using LED strips; it's less painful to look at too.
--- End quote ---
I have lots of 12.5W Philips bulbs, those are all at least 8 years old now and I haven't had any of them fail yet. The big rectangular fixtures make sense in some circumstances but they wouldn't look right in my house.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version