General > General Technical Chat
What happened to RF cooking?
tom66:
--- Quote from: BradC on June 14, 2023, 12:11:09 pm ---There's a message in those two paragraphs, but buggered if I can figure out what it is. I've always been taught "A poor man pays twice".
--- End quote ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory from the late Pratchett's novels.
--- Quote ---The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
--- End quote ---
BradC:
We recently replaced our NZ built Dishwasher. In 22 years it had 1 new hose and 4 new capacitors. The reason it had to be replaced was my son decided to use the drawer handles as steps and bent the chassis in several places. We replaced it with another brand because the new ones are no longer made in NZ, and whilst the price is relatively similar (from an income perspective) to when I bought it, the longevity of the new ones isn't (even the guy selling them warned us off, even if it meant buying from another chain).
Sometimes you can't buy the device you want with the quality you want at any price. We've had to settle for a totally different machine from a different manufacturer, with a completely different operational philosophy just to ensure continued spare parts availability and serviceability. Anyway, I'm rambling now.
BrokenYugo:
I didn't live through it, but this whole thread reminds me of when home microwave ovens first got popular/affordable and there was (based on literature that survived) a great deal of interest in this new "microwave cooking" until it was realized the only cooking you can easily/practically do well in one is reheating and steaming things. There's a lot of goodness going on in that whole browning/frying process that any RF oven just won't do without more trouble than it's worth.
tom66:
--- Quote from: BrokenYugo on June 14, 2023, 03:49:04 pm ---I didn't live through it, but this whole thread reminds me of when home microwave ovens first got popular/affordable and there was (based on literature that survived) a great deal of interest in this new "microwave cooking" until it was realized the only cooking you can easily/practically do well in one is reheating and steaming things. There's a lot of goodness going on in that whole browning/frying process that any RF oven just won't do without more trouble than it's worth.
--- End quote ---
I guess it's a bit like those old ads for microwave ovens, which showed people cooking whole chickens or turkeys inside one;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185790969368
I don't think I know of anyone who actually does that. If they do, I hope I'm not invited over for dinner.
BrokenYugo:
--- Quote from: tom66 on June 14, 2023, 05:41:16 pm ---
--- Quote from: BrokenYugo on June 14, 2023, 03:49:04 pm ---I didn't live through it, but this whole thread reminds me of when home microwave ovens first got popular/affordable and there was (based on literature that survived) a great deal of interest in this new "microwave cooking" until it was realized the only cooking you can easily/practically do well in one is reheating and steaming things. There's a lot of goodness going on in that whole browning/frying process that any RF oven just won't do without more trouble than it's worth.
--- End quote ---
I guess it's a bit like those old ads for microwave ovens, which showed people cooking whole chickens or turkeys inside one;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185790969368
I don't think I know of anyone who actually does that. If they do, I hope I'm not invited over for dinner.
--- End quote ---
My parents actually had one of those old timey top of the line "cook everything" models until it got replaced by an inverter. "Quasar" brand, solid floor, came with a temperature probe and 1/4 inch headphone socket for it in the oven wall. The only thing I remember my mom making in it with that feature was meatloaf, and even that came out better in a real oven, the manual had instructions for whole birds and whatnot, even detailed strategic aluminum foil application for reasons I forget.
But yeah, feels very reinventing the wheel trying to improve a microwave oven, advances in driving the cheap magnetron aside they're very mature tech, the market long ago shook out the desired feature set and I don't think much has changed in the meantime.
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