I get it when it comes to alarm systems. Being able to get a notification when someone breaks in is nice, because the alarm system is mostly doing its job when you're not at home. It makes sense.
What it does not make sense, in my humble opinion, is pretty much everything else. Why do I need voice activated lights, outside of a cool party trick ("hey, I can turn the lights on with my voice")? Why should a vacuum cleaner, even if a robot one, be able to upload a picture of a woman on the toilet to the Internet (which has actually happened)? Why should the fridge talk to you?
Ironically, this kind of stuff might become less and less appealing with remote working. If you're at home anyway, can't you just stand up and look at the fridge or turn that light on?
My old washing machine had nobs (dials) you turn. You put the clothes and soap in, close the door and press the button. My preference of type of wash and water temperature were all "saved" by the nob position.
My current washing machine, nob is type of wash, capacitive touch buttons for everything else. Keeping the nob "on" keeps the digital display on and consuming power. And the wash options like temperature, extra rinse etc are all controlled digitally with no memory. Want 60 degrees water? Press the water temperature button 8 times, each with a delay of about 3/4 of a second for it to register before a press works again. It's utterly terrible.
It's actually very convenient :) I hated when I forgot to turn some light off and had to get out of bed just to flip it. And you don't need Internet for that, just a local hub with voice recognition (though most off the shelf stuff does everything it can for you to go with Google/Apple systems, which do need to be connected all the time - besides requiring you to be logged in at all times for no benefit to you, obviously just so they can either sell your data or to ensure you're properly locked in and can deny you service if you somehow get out of line).
My heat pump does require Internet, though. Apparently the firmware must self-update continuously and you can probably be denied warranty if you don't let it do so. But at least there are genuine use cases: it can monitor the electricity prices with 1-day in advance, so it can "plan" the best time to power up and down to save electricity (at least they say it does it)... and it can control the temperature better as the temperature outside goes up and down, knowing it beforehand via weather forecasts. But of course, to actually control the machine via the app requires a paid feature :D no thanks.
My parents are getting older. Their knees appreciate being able to tell Siri to turn off the downstairs lights from upstairs.
Though personally I think we’re barking up the wrong tree by trying to smarten up every appliance. The objective of having remote control/sensing of all your stuff would be better achieved by having a single robot “butler” that can check on state and interface with everything, but the appliances themselves should be simple and easily controllable. As long as there’s a universal communications standard for all devices to be able to communicate with the “butler” the mechanical interfacing could basically be designed in as accessibility features. That way the software and smart capabilities are all in one package that can be upgraded or modified instead of scattered across a bunch of individual things that are expensive to replace or repair.
I’m basically imagining a drone that runs around the house along a rail track on the ceiling and has a little dongle it can plug into devices to control them like Star Wars droids. Bonus points if the method of control is purely mechanical without needing much computing power in the appliance at all.
The reason this will never happen, of course, is obvious. You’ll never get everyone to retrofit their houses for a robo-rail.
I say this because maybe it goes to show that different people are different. Maybe someone gets use out of the silly camera that shows them the inside of the fridge. It sounds ridiculous to me, but evidently my lights sound ridiculous to you.
I personally like the idea of smart home things and everything connected. It feels like it opens up so many possibilities or ideas.
Do I need it for survival? No. But I do like the idea and how it triggers my imagination.
Its only after I bought it (and the free trial expired) that I discovered that an additional subscription is required to use the integrated "cooking recipe" service that guides you through cooking various dishes - insanely cheeky given how much it cost!
To top it off, I'm constantly nagged to connect the thing to WiFi so it can update god-knows-what. Never. Again.
When the replacement thermostat of my fridge broke I replaced it with an ESP32 with a DS18B20 and a relay, now it posts temperature data to a logging server and the temperature range can be adjusted over WiFi when needed. Here again, I guess if it were really smart, that this would mean that the vendor would place the requirement of me sharing all the data with them so that they then give me a subset of data.
>The EU just made it so that any new major appliance must be repaired by the maker for 10 years
I'm not sure how true that is, but I set by VPN Dublin, Ireland and did some shopping to see what brands are avaliable.
Lot of interesting brands I ran across:
BEKO
BOSCH
CANDY
HOOVER
HOTPOINT
INDESIT
LIEBHERR
MIELE
NORDMENDE
NORKO
POWERPOINT
SIEMENS
TCL
WHIRLPOOL
I think the European market is different, in general.
Even without brains, new appliances are shit.
I've had multiple Subzero basic commodity or commercial refrigerators last 15-20 years with only minor parts replacements which are easily found. Of course these are not cheap, but isn't that what everyone here is asking for? Something made well that lasts a long time?
They don't look fancy at all and nobody even knows it's a Subzero because there are no labels on it and no stainless steel front.
$10k-$15k for a refrigerator?
I’ve only ever owned fairly “basic” refrigerators (e.g. LG or GE), that are about 1/10 of that cost, and have never had any problems with them going out or even degrading in quality (e.g. 10+ years). Maybe needed an ice maker repair, but that’s about it.
Do people need to spend that kind of money for a refrigerator that lasts?
Maybe if you’re going to be in your home for 30-40 years, but not many people stay in one place long enough to outlive these “basic” refrigerators. And even then, I’d argue that a $1k-$2k refrigerator can still last that long.
(I’m using “basic” in quotes here because I feel like our refrigerators weren’t even the bottom tier — they’re quite large, and have the features we need. But now seeing other brands that cost as much as some vehicles, to some they may seem basic.)
Another example is Speed Queen for washers and dryers. They are substantially more expensive and look very plain and even old fashioned. But they are built to last a long time and be repairable. They have a large part of the laundromat market because the laundromat owners do value these qualities. But they have very little of the consumer market, because consumers don't.
Consumers also tend to favor nice-sounding features that are in fact unreliable and frustrating, such as ice makers in the refrigerator compartment.
Actually, those features seem to have become so common that they don't seem to command a price premium anymore. My washing machine was the cheapest that ticked all the boxes I wanted (most importantly size), and it still has some kind of wifi thingy. Ditto for my dishwasher.
They both work perfectly well without any connection to anything, and not once have they even tried to get me to connect them.
For the washing machine, a notification that it's done can be useful. I usually do laundry while I'm either working or playing some game, so 9 out of 10 times I won't hear that it's done and forget to take the clothes out. Now I've taken the habit of setting an alarm to check on it after the estimated time is up.
For the dishwasher, I really don't care. The dishes can stay there until I need them.
Is there an open Wi-Fi network nearby?
Those will soon also not require you to connect them to your wifi, NB-IoT both chips and plans cost for businesses are already very good.
I honestly wonder how big that market has gotten in the last few years, and I’m including software/services in it.
I know I’m definitely part of that market and also that the most technophile people from my list of friends and acquaintances are mostly working in non-tech industries. For example I was very surprised when visiting an acquaintance that works in the media and the first thing he did when he entered the house was to “talk” with Alexa, we have such a device at home but to this day it still is unboxed, hence uninstalled (received it at an IT event).
Does anyone have any tips as to the white-goods equivalents? Fridge, freezer, laundry machines, that kind of thing?
It works but I definitely don't love it, and I'm left wondering how hard it would've really been to remedy most of the annoyances. For the price (and given the reviews) I was definitely expecting better.
I was dead set on a speed queen top loader and then my wife started showing me this stuff (specifically detailed tests showing speed queens top loaders being rough on clothes)
Now, we have speed queens and I no longer am using buckets to fill our washing machine, don't have to babysit it, it doesn't randomly jump in the air suddenly as it's gotten out of balance for the 4th time in the day. I would never willingly wish that upon someone.
Only the washer dryer was able to get online, and it's the only appliance that had to be replaced after 4 years, but not because of that. The build quality was so-so, it had problems drying and repair was considered unreasonable (leaky hot air ducts, fast wear on the bearing).
The microwave spontaneously loses screws in the door though
I second Whirlpool, though, when I remodeled, I donated my working whirlpool washer and dryer that I inherited that was from circa 1980 or so....
I have a 30-year-old fridge that I would seriously consider getting repaired if it ever stopped working before I would buy a replacement.
Unfortunatley for appliances these days, to get fewer options you actually have to go up in price. It took me a long time, for example to even land on an oven that was minimalistic with knobs that you turn to set the temperature and turn it on (overall the oven isn't simple enough, because it still has too many logic boards that were replaced three times in the first year, until they got it right).
I gave up my old gas stove that cost $400 new, worked for 25 years, without fail.
Even when I was at the new appliance store, looking at the fancy stuff, the sales guy was impliying short life span, and repair contract needs, etc...
Buy whatever you can get service for. This rules out Samsung and LG, but in a smaller area this might rule out some other brands. In general avoid LG unless you want a front loading washer, and avoid Samsung in general.
There aren't that many manufacturers. Bosch, Thermador, and Gaggenau; Whirlpool / Amana / KitchenAid / Maytag / Jennair; Electrolux / Frigidaire / Zanussi / Westinghouse /; etc etc etc. Ikea's all Frigidaire these days, and Kenmore you've gotta check the part number (typically Whirlpool or LG).
Dishwasher – pretty much the universal opinion is Bosch. The quiet part is that their current lineup has design decisions you may not like (no heating element, no grinder). And they definitely feel cheap. But they're quiet and USA made.
Washer – Speed Queen for a top loader, but again read up on the caveats. Whirlpool's commercial lineup is basically their consumer lineup from 20 years ago. They may be cheaper/easier to buy and service than Speed Queen. Lots of folks seem to love LG front loaders.
Fridge – top freezers with no ice maker are about as simple, efficient, and reliable as you can get. But Whirlpool's current top freezers are junk. Supposedly Whirlpool's more expensive fridges are still decent. Other designs (e.g. bottom freezer) are more complicated and will be less efficient. At the higher end Bosch's big side by sides with the dual compressors are supposed to be pretty solid.
Ranges – figure out what you want and go from there. Samsung is reportedly pretty bad with gas ranges, and obviously electronics aren't their strong suit either. Induction ranges will typically have more assemblies and fewer individual components to replace ($$$ to service). With induction the low end Frigidaires don't have any WiFi bullshit, but only the higher priced brands (and Samsung) will eschew the touchscreens.
Microwaves – American kitchens tend to feature those big hulking units hung right over the stove. But counter top models are waaay cheaper and all mostly the same guts.
Your fridge and freezer don't need any more screens than a LED panel telling you the current temperature and the laundry machine can make due just fine with a LED panel + some buttons and turning knobs.
You’ll maybe want to do firmware updates now and then, but you can plug it in temporarily for those. It’ll still do more than you strictly want it to, but the most invasive behaviors will be off the table.
Alternatively you can get a huge computer monitor and use that as your TV. But there’s some issues with that approach. Monitors are designed for sitting closer up and may not have as good viewing angles.
If you want something more structured data, look at sxml (see Racket or Guile). Then implement that in a library and use it in place of the default of most (all?) SPA frameworks.
For what it's worth, the developer experience is also highly subjective.
There are lightweight frameworks (like knockout) that keep things simple but keep you safe with bindings, without giving up control to a bigger framework.
$40 in parts rescued a fridge that my subdivision neighbors each traded up years ago the first time theirs started acting up. I already had the BLE sensors.
Runs like a champ, and remains free of an IP address.
I have a 'keezer' - a chest freezer I run at fridge temps to store and serve homebrew beer.
Buying a new A+ rated chest freezer cost me £199 but only costs £35 a year to run. A friend scored a free 15 yo freezer from Facebook and it costs just under £100 a year to run. So he saved £200, but now is down £65 a year. It won't take long for my keezer to be significantly cheaper over a 5 year horizon.
I hate to see old tech wasted, but the energy and cost savings can be significant.
Also, if his is not a chest freezer, that's another big difference --- a chest freezer is inherently better if opened often, since the cold air stays at the bottom, whereas in an upright one, it spills out.
This infuriated me greatly because of the waste, not one of money, but for the environment. I considered paying the $2100 just to avoid the environmental waste, but realized this would probably be only one in a line of upcoming repairs.
The "side by side" standard US frige is what we call in France American fridge because it has two door and look so oversized and fancy compared to the standard fridge in france.
The US "french-door fridge" take the oversizing a step further by adding a third door on the bottom of the "side by side" design. We don't even have a name for theses fridges as nobody buy theses, so I guess we'd call them big American fridge.
Symmetrically EU "regular fridge" probably don't sell in the US because it's perceived as too small. An thus is probably called small/tiny fridge.
In the "french door" fridge, the two doors on the top both open to the same compartment, which is the refrigerator. The bottom compartment is a freezer and opens as a drawer.
For the biggest fridge you describe, the extra space is usually a freezer. If you are going to have a freezer anyway, it seems like an overall savings to include it in the fridge. If you don’t have a freezer, you won’t have any icecream, and then is life really worth living?
While I’m glad enough to save the money, definitely not eager to learn how to fix the fridge too.
Or if it is the same thing each time, that's equally frustrating.
My A/C is only four years old and the maintenance guy is telling me one of the fans is drawing too much power and will need to be replaced soon. Despite the part being free under warranty, they want $600 to replace it. This seems to be standard in the industry. Same for the capacitor: the part is only $17 but the authorized service companies want several hundred dollars to replace it, a job that should only take 15 minutes. It's almost as if they know they have us over a barrel.
Nearly every industry feels like a scam now.
Outright lying to customers, over-charging them. Heck, I get it, they’re a business and need to make money. But there are reasonable limits.
How many of those old appliances had to break and fail in the first 10 years for these two to survive.
So yes, many old appliances have broken and were likely not worth repairing, but on average all the evidence points to newer devices being more finicky, easily broken, and harder and more expensive to repair than older, simpler devices. Every engineer worth their salt knows that simpler is usually more reliable.
I myself have repaired everything from toasters to microwaves in the last few years as things have aged in my house, and it got me a reputation that has encouraged family members to bring things to me to be fixed. There's a stark difference in how things are made post 2010, and the quality only gets worse post 2020. Often times the cost cutting goes so beyond making manufacturability easier that it makes it impossible to use whatever it is for it's intended purpose for more than a few times.
For example older smoke detectors have the boards on legs where the screws go through them, and for high quality ones the legs have threaded brass inserts so that if you tighten things down after replacing the battery you don't have a chance of stripping the threading. Newer ones the boards just float freely inside the case and are held in by snap clips which become brittle after just a couple of years and break easily, meaning you have to glue the board back in after replacing the battery. Key fobs and remotes often suffer the exact same problem of using plastic snap clips which will break the first time you have to pry the body open to replace the CR2032 battery inside. I've had to buy a new car key specifically because of that. Showerheads use soft compound plastics for the flow rings which break down unlike their older rubber variants, not only clogging some of the showerhead's openings but also failing to function as a flow ring and allowing the full force of the pipe's throughput. Freestanding lamps no longer route the cable through the bottom and attach it via a ring inside the body as a double insulator. Instead often times the cable is just glued into a hole in the side, and if you're lucky there's a rubber ring to cap the hole and act as an insulator. I've gotten shocked from cheap metal desk lamps because of this. Clocks these days are just single chips blobbed onto a cheap board with an induction motor powered by a single AAA battery and three plastic gears to move the hands. Most have as severe a drift as minutes per week which gets worse as the batteries lose charge. Old ones used batteries to periodically wind springs under tension or the 60Hz frequency of the electric grid which would move a gear system at a consistent ratio, keeping drift under a few seconds a month.
Survivorship bias may be real, but even cheap garbage from the '90s is far better built than anything I can buy now that isn't hand made.
Depending on local power costs a modern compressor dryer will easily pay for itself in a couple of years compared to sticking with the old one.
I’ve started to learn how to do everything myself via YouTube.
Am I an expert? Heck no. Can I do a dang reasonable job for easily 1/10th the cost? Sure seems to be true.
I dont trust regulators and have a five stage reverse under the sink filter. Result? In the last five years in my little section of the midwest:
- I've dodged Pb poisoning when my local water authority switched corrosion inhibitors (note, this is after Flint MI)
- I've dodged vinyl chloride poisoning from the Palestine OH fire that Federal regulators pretended was a nothing burger until dead cows started showing up everywhere.
Not to mention the countless times the lines are fixed and the water comes out brown (this is "safe" because it's iron oxide. Except it is only mostly iron oxide plus all the crud that has caked onto the pipes.)
Best case scenario I trust the regulators. Even then F- ups happen and Id rather have a filter I keep myself.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/jury-awards-229m-to-v...
I don't know where you're getting this from. Generally speaking, regulations and enforcement are tighter than they've ever been. That doesn't mean they're perfect, but you're going to have to show some evidence it's getting worse.
I really don't think you want to go back to the 1970's and 1980's, or the 1940's and 1950's.
I mean, I totally believe you about your water -- I just don't know where you get the idea that it was better in the past. If anything, you as a consumer just didn't have the ability to detect it or filter.
The Royal Society of Chemistry is calling on the UK Government to overhaul its drinking water standards, after new analysis reveals more than a third of water courses tested in England and Wales contain medium or high-risk levels of PFAS, more commonly known as forever chemicals.
https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2023/oct/pfas-clean...
I personally don't like my water to taste like diluted swimming pool. After the first time I tried a blind tasting of tap water vs. Brita-filtered at home, I never drank straight from the tap again.
However, most people now base how water tastes from bottled water. So the preference at home is to not drink off the tap.
Here in Sweden and many other European countries, the tap water is indistinguishable from bottled water.
https://tappwater.co/blogs/blog/can-you-drink-san-francisco-...
Also, "the developed world" is a very polarising statement to make.
Had no issues until the plastic drain pan cracked while moving the fridge to redo the floors. Rather than deal with the repair (a replacement drip tray alone was $120 shipped) we sold it to an appliance flipper and put the money toward a new one. I was bummed, but when the buyer came to haul off the old one he was pleasantly surprised that it had made it a decade mostly intact.
Replaced it with a dumb white top-freezer Whirlpool fridge (WRT318). Both were about the same price, inflation adjusted, when new (~$650 from Lowe's). It was in stock and installed the next day. Only tech "upgrade" in the new fridge is a membrane button to control the fridge temperature instead of a knob.
When my wife wanted a touchscreen in the kitchen so she could queue up Spotify, I got a refurb last-gen Lenovo Duet chromebook/tablet for $120. The tablet back has a strong magnet for the cover that made it perfect for slapping onto the side of the fridge. We put a pair of used Kantos on top of the fridge and charge the tablet off its USB port; Google Keep also handles the shopping list, Google Voice on functions as our backup phone. 100% of our "smart appliance" needs done and dusted.
Reading about the failing condenser fan and compressor reminded me of these items, worth watching again:
Apparently, I'm not the only one (mine looks cleaner than this, and is a bigger model): https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/13obhfp/my_gr...
I don't think the word efficient means what you think it means.
Have you ever measured their power consumption?
Fridge: still working perfectly, light, temp control, auto-defrost, fans. I think the compressor got a bit louder but that's it.
Dishwasher: still working fine, the upper basket (or whatever that's called) and its rails show some wear ie tilting downward when pulled out. Sometimes the drainage pump sounds a little strange, maybe something's stuck in there.
Stove: induction, still working fine. Unfortunately all the models they had available had touch buttons on top, probably to make it appear modern. They don't work when your finger is wet or greasy, and the whole stove turns off when water spills on any of the buttons and it starts beeping like crazy. For some funny reason, the stove stopped making beeping noises on button presses. I guess when you don't have real buttons you want this as some form of feedback that the press registered, but the beep sounded really cheap like a square wave. It still beeps when you turn it on or off, and when there's water on the buttons.
Oven: working apart from the bottom heating element. It broke about 3 to 4 years ago. Never bothered to replace it, just using hot air mode now.
They all look like simple no-bells-and-whistles appliances, but also not sturdy. I think in all cases I picked one of the cheapest options.
Bonus nerd stuff on the stove: when the beeping-on-button-press still worked, very rarely one of two things happened: a) a button press registered, but no beep was emitted. b) a beep was emitted but nothing happened. I was suspecting that there's something going on like two completely independent sets of wires going to all the buttons, one for actual functionality, the other one just for beeps, like it was bolted on later by a different department or even company. Maybe the original design had it just beep on power on/off and they wired this in after the fact.
Case in point: factories producing my mother's washing machine model were located in three different countries. Depending on the country of origin, one important part would be either integrated with a few others or not. In the former case repairs were not worth the cost.
Only way to tell if your particular machine would be repairable was to check the country of origin.
See this message from an independent parts seller:
https://spares2repair.co.uk/search-results?main_page=advance...
> Miele have unfortunately changed their sales policy in UK and Europe.
> This applies to all online spare parts retailers including Miele directly.
> Most Genuine spare parts are now only to be available to repair engineers and not directly to the public.
> Unfortunately we have had to remove thousands of parts from your view.
> Hopefully Miele will change their sales policy again in the future.
Our fridge however is Japanese Panasonic. Not a common choice in Europe but it’s been great so far. Zero maintenance. No frost. Has some minimal digital control but we don’t touch it. YMMV.
Bosch, Siemens, Neff, is all the same brand underneath and there is little difference between the models across years. Just get something that is offline.
The repair guy told them that the thing breaking was their own fault since the manual clearly started you need to run one of the other modes every X cycles if you normally do ECO, otherwise all the internal tubes gunk up. They got a rebate on a new one, but they refused to replace it. I'd been done with Miele at that point, but they just bought a new one. How a company known for quality and engineering can't implement a simple logic that the device would automatically use more water/temperature every X runs, or at least show a warning on the display, is beyond me.
Oh, and the new one, according to my parents at least, occasionally just stops in the middle of the washing cycle and they need to restart it. But I wouldn't rule out that this is some sort of user error. Maybe you just shouldn't go with the model that has a dozen buttons and knobs when you're 80. :)
My washing machine is a Bosch series 8 which has also been really good, same age, no problems.
So a tfal pan is legit in Europe, but a Chinese cheap knockoff in Canada, the brand name sold to Canadian Tire.
But the first year service rate for even high end dishwashers is very high(over 10%!). Got a Bosch and got lucky so far but it still feels like luck..
I just can’t say the same over the other appliance brands in my house.
All 3 are quite good, and knowing this you can try to get more bang for your money.
The OP brings up an interesting contradiction: appliances have become less reliable but cars have become more reliable. Cars have become worse in some of the same areas as appliances, like the use of touch screens instead of physical controls, but cars have nevertheless become more mechanically reliable. What would explain this opposite trend?
The reliability of cars, on the other hand, used to be pretty awful. Lots of maintenance, regularly needing repair work done - not to mention regular servicing, oil changes and tyre changes. And people replacing their 5-year-old cars because 'old cars just aren't reliable'. So there was a lot of scope for improvement.
Ford's EcoBoost and Peugeot's Puretech engines come to mind in particular, with the latter being so bad, that they tend to fail well before 100k km, and there's an active investigation going on about it by European Commission.
Before, it didn’t matter because the feature set was so limited that software bugs were make or break. If you can’t decode a signal or change a channel, it’s not getting shipped. But now, where there’s an entire OS, GUI, applications, network access, etc.? Now there are vast areas where a million mistakes can be made and shipped. The software industry is (relatively) well-equipped to deal with this. The hardware industry is not. So they ship garbage quality over and over again.
That’s not even covering the perverse incentives vendors have to make their products cheaper and make up for it with spying, adverts, etc. That just compounds the problem.
Minmax'ing cost and marketable shiny features over literally every measure of quality, usability, repairability, and longevity is abhorrent. It's an accelerating arms race to the bottom.
I can only hope we reach point where the market segments and opens space (with sufficient demand) so that more people and companies can focus on making sane, well designed, simple things again.
Incidentally, I happen to have almost the same refrigerator as the author (same thing, but without the hot water dispenser). My only failure so far has been the condenser fan after seven years of operation. It was clearly an electronic failure of the onboard motor controller, which honestly has no excuse to fail.
I also have a more-recent Kitchenaid 48-inch-wide side-by-side purchased in 2020. It's a remarkably simple appliance given the year of manufacture. Yet the interior lighting is horribly unreliable. The freezer killed three lighting modules in its first three years. They inevitably go high impedance, usually emitting zero light. One of the three was still emitting a tiny amount of light post-failure. The lights are all in series, so when one fails the entire chamber goes dark. I've even had one of the replacement lighting modules fail already. This component is clearly flawed and I'm tempted to design my own replacement.
It's actually not at all, but people [in general, not here] want Cheap + Features. There are expensive "prosumer/consumer" level no-feature refrigerators but people don't want to pay for them.
It’s tiny at only 470L, however it’s designed for maximum storage in small Japanese apartments, so we can fit heaps of groceries and frozens. It also has a chilled compartment specifically for sushi meat!
Also, 10 year warranty on all parts.
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We bought a Samsung (would have preferred LG) fridge 4 years ago and have not needed a single repair. But it is pretty bare bones — French door and in freezer ice maker — no water dispenser or door controls.
My oven on the other hand - it's a GE Cafe slide-in dual-oven. I'm very happy with it. And I know how much people here rail against it, but I like being able to preheat it, turn it off remotely. Of course, baking is a hobby for me, so I wanted the extra oven.
As evidence, check out some of the manufacturers that do make higher-quality dumb appliances, like Subzero and Speed Queen and notice how little consumer market share they have. Of course they are more expensive, but that's where the supply and demand curve cross. But where people like business owners WILL pay more for quality and longevity, they do have a major share of the commercial market.
[0] this doesn't mean it's a sufficient, let alone universally applicable, argument in favour; I'm well aware of many examples of central planning failures.
E.g. a decent toaster in 1984 in the UK was about £18. That's £72 now. Only posh people spend £72 on a toaster. Most people I imagine want to pay no more than £40.
Microwaves were around £200. That's £805 now. Nobody is spending £800 on a microwave.
But I think the "Other appliance anecdotes" part suggests that the author has very different requirements than I do. I grew up without a garbage disposal, but its a huge convenience to have one. Also I've had top loader washing machines that don't have easy access to the trap, gimme easy access to the trap ANY DAY and I don't care how its loaded.
I've also heard landlords say garbage disposals are a net-negative for maintenance visits: disposal-related problems are more costly than the occasional clog because someone put down something the disposal would've stopped.
Also, in multi-tenant buildings, disposals can be a nightmare. Too many people with varying folk wisdom of what's good to put down it. Some people create blockages for the entire stack or more, which ends up causing powered backflows of nasty wastewater into some units. And then what eventually gets snaked out of the drain, and dragged across their kitchens... mere bleach will never get that sufficiently clean. (Even after 3 of these kitchen-apocalypse episodes, you just can't get some people to understand that they can't keep grinding orange peels in their disposal to freshen the air, even when the rot of previous orange peels in the increasing blockage they created might be the reason they want to freshen the air now.)
I try to tell people that pretty much only water and dish soap should go down the drain, and that one of those few-dollar mesh drain strainers is a great tool to help follow this rule. (Also, a container for collecting most of the grease/oil that would otherwise go down the drain.)
On top of that, with scratch and dent, you do get what you pay for at some point. If an appliance is visibly damaged you don’t know what happened to it: could have been dropped, hit with a truck, returned due to problems/abuse, etc. When physical damage is involved you don’t know if it can exacerbate a design weakness, loosen some screws, whatever you might dream up.
I get it, a lot of appliances are cheap shit that aren’t “built like they used to.” But also, nobody twisted OP’s arm to buy a fridge with an LCD touch screen.
Here’s another thing: good, built-to-last-decades appliances exist and just cost a lot because that’s what they cost to produce. We can’t really blame appliance manufacturers for either the decline of American purchasing power and/or the change in consumer preferences toward shopping on price and nothing else.
You can buy a tank of a washing machine like a Speed Queen but you also get into it knowing you’re paying three or four times the cost of an equivalent shit box. And here’s the thing, if the shit box goes for 6 years without repair/replacement and the Speed Queen lasts 20, congratulations, the shit box wins on TCO. On top of that, your money can sit in your bank account or be used for something else instead of being paid up front for the appliance.
It’s the same deal with refrigerators like Sub-Zero. I talked to an appliance technician who told me all the luxury brands are less reliable, but I think the more accurate statement is that customers don’t call for repairs and blow money on labor costs for their cheap refrigerators, they just buy a new one. When you look at Sub-Zero and similar offerings, they mostly eschew gimmicks, often not even bothering with a water dispenser and going with a basic ice machine instead.
They’re not universally good, because there are shit brands in that space too (like Viking), but you’ve got a lot more quality options at that price point.
I think one solution to the situation of disposable goods might be a disposal tax that the manufacturer and customer share half and half. Or, improve warranty laws for product categories that should last longer. Nobody’s going to make a shitty fridge if you make a 10 year warranty mandatory.
Ceiling fans that can only be controlled using a remote. No way to wire at switch.
I am very much into local home automation, that is where no internet connection is required or allowed (HomeAssistant anyone?).
One thing I always watch out for is the automation must allow manual interaction. These fans have no pull chains, or switches when the remote breaks or more likely get lost.
For other parts of life this is great though: keeping track of what is going one with some friends I don’t often see or distant relatives.
Impressive.
So I've invested more times in Emacs than I'll probably ever get back in timing savings from ripgrep'ing through my notes.
However, they're nice to have when I need them.
It often seems impossible to buy things that are quality or free of extraneous features no matter what you are willing to pay. It's frustrating.
Nobody has done it, yet.
I have hope for the Chinese to figure this out and create a national standard.
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/avantco-a-23r-hc-29-solid-d...
looks great!
I really do not expect that a newer fridge will last as long. I may try and find something in brushed aluminum off Craigslist which has been sitting in someone's garage since 2000 when this one eventually goes.
I have an aunt who has had a fridge running without issues since about 1962. It is all white ceramic over stainless steel and a thing of beauty.
This is the kind of product engineering modern companies seek to avoid.
I seem to recall a Heinlein novel about inter-dimensional travelers who wanted to take over the world by destroying the economy. The first thing they did was found companies which made products which never wore out (razors and cars).
One solution could be to side step the issue by getting really good at flexible just in time manufacturing. This lets you decouple the company from products. When someone needs a fridge, a fridge is made. The companies running the factories could be big build to order companies that could make a huge variety of things and the plans could be for sale by “fabless” appliance companies or open source.
This is sort of how chip and electronic parts manufacture works.
In this model making something with a really long life span is fine. You might run low on fridge orders, but that just means your factories are free to make e-bikes or server racks or heat pumps or whatever the thing with demand happens to be.
It's a lot more efficient than my old fridge though and a lot bigger. The old one had issues with it's design and defrosting as well that the new one has fixed esp being a lower cold drawere model vs the old one with freezer on top. I can't block the vents on the new one and they can't freeze up, but it does use a blower. The old one could ice over the vent and I had to modify it with a extra passive heating wire to keep it from freezing up.
Anything over 10 years really should be replaced.
A bit like leds vs incandescent at this point time. Especially problematic given a fridge freezer runs 24/7 and is the largest contributor to your energy bills.
Also isn’t this a classic example of old things that survive are likely more expensive and well made. However, the cheap stuff back then likely got replaced sooner. Probably a similar thing applies where an expensive modern fridge will last ages too.
I've never hooked up water lines for ice makers for my refrigerators, including refrigerators at my other properties. Call it a hunch.
Mine's an LG, we've had it for roughly 10 years now and never had a problem with it. But we don't even use the icemaker in it (we have a separate ice maker as well).
The fridge that was in my house when I bought it (recently) has an ice maker fully contained in the freezer at the bottom, you have to open the freezer section fully to get at it. Apparently that can work fine.
Just some tips for the future :)
Because over here, northern Europe, only the high end refrigerators have ice makers, for example.
Why would one ever want that?
I need my fridge to connect to the internet about as much as I need my oven to operate as a fax machine, though.
(Also Northern Europe btw.)
I vowed to never buy another fancy appliance again and took it off the WiFi network.
I compared many machines to that of a mocca spanish/italian espresso maker. Simple design as simple can be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot
Advocate US navy KISS design principle.
Are a smart phone smart when it distracts you from close ones?
Smart devices can get hacked Dumb devices much harder. Which is more secure old CRT or new smart tv?
Same goes for IT shiny new complicated thing or simple kiss thing.
We are past the point where you can not buy a "dumb TV" anymore or to do so you need to pay an absurd premium. The next in line are our home appliances. Your fridge, your vacuum cleaner, your clothes iron... everything will be built in a way that makes you dependent on the vendor.
I know it is easy and tempting to blame "late-stage capitalism" and corporations' endless appetite for growth bringing up Planned Obsolescence, but have we really made ourselves so helpless that we are unable to say "no, I refuse to accept this crap you are offering me"?
I've had one for ten years and it didn't have any issues, and I didn't buy a premium model either (no ice machine on the top door tho).
But a friend of mine has a new one and it has the issues of the heat exchanger freezing due to bad insulation or something.
I feel it's not that these things are very complicated, as much as the fact that it's a market for lemons.
Some people argue it's just incompetence, not PO. But if you've been in the business of making the same type of hardware/appliances for more than a few years then it's definitely planned obsolescence.
tl;dr: side-by-side = one side freezer, one side fridge. french door = freezer on bottom, fridge on top with two doors
Capitalism in action
Why is the following timeline counterfactual (as far as I know) for basically all household appliances:
1. it was invented
2. it was commercialized
3. some decades of varying modes of specialization, advancement, innovation
4. reach technological maturity/saturation
5. open source designs with idiot-proof manuals emerge
6. everyone uses the open source versions
7. maybe a freelancer market emerges
8. it's no longer commercially viable
9. it becomes a near-zero-cost improvement on the baseline human condition
10. focus on new technology
The cynical view (IMO) is that the capitalist system operates by pulling a bait and switch on the average consumer. As technology becomes commercially viable, we use the slack it creates to pump everyone full of skittles and pretty little liars and then sell refrigerator-television-vending-machine appliances until the Decadent Society collapses under its own weight.
Maybe a more moderate view (IMO) is that it's naive to think that everyone could possibly have the time or desire to maintain their own refrigerators? FWIW My take on this particular view is that we should be trying to develop a society where it's not naive, where the average human stands on top of centuries of innovation rather than cocooned inside of it.
/idk
Having a good reliable appliance is just a matter of buying good stuff and caring for it properly.