This explains a lot, and an interesting topic to watch, here.

This is the movie "The Light Bulb Conspiracy", which talks about the biggest problems of modern technology: The planned obsolescence. The iPhone and the iPad, are famous examples of devices that built primerly for planned obsolescence, apart from ink-jet printers.

As I don't like to watch TV and to go to the Cinema and watch movies (Related to my handicaps), I wont watch this movie.

My last tutor, said me in the past, that she watched this movie on TV, and Apple, printers was on the top of the things, while the ceramic pan was also mentioned as a mechanism of planned obsolescence of pans (Which explained why all the ceramic pans of my mother, lasted few months before sticking all of the food that fried and sautéed on them, regardless of the amount of oil).

I kind of agree with planned obsolescence, if someone did create an `everlasting` lamp, then once everyone had it, they wouldn`t need another.
However, now its out of hand, with the onslaught of LED, too many bad ones are being churned out, and only credible manufacturers should be allowed to make them.

As for that `shutdown` chip in printers, thats just wrong, who knows what other dictating electronics are out there to screw the consumer?

the ceramic pan was also mentioned as a mechanism of planned obsolescence of pans (Which explained why all the ceramic pans of my mother, lasted few months before sticking all of the food that fried and sautéed on them, regardless of the amount of oil).

i'm using an ceramic pan from 2 years with no problem, did you washed it with hight temperature?

however i see every day planned obsolescence with my renault scenic II car (crap, crap and i repeat this is an crap brand) which have a lot of "design flaw" (i assume they are unintentional flaws), as sink holes too small (the result was the car was full of water after a rain), electrical cabling that have connections in the lower side of the car (so, after the rain, the main connector with 40+ wires was totally corroded), electronic parking brake (it have electrical motor assembled with electronics, which cost me 850€ to replace), manual clutch (after only 140000km it have some problems during changing gears); unfortunately renault make some "design flaws" also in truck line (unprotected cabling!, i hope air brakes don't have theese flaws).
Alto Samsung made me crazy with galaxy young: in the first 6 months, it worked well, but every time i updated its firmware, the phone become more slow (3 min. to start!), started to reset itself, lose signal (to regain signal, it needed an reboot), battery drain, connection problems, sometimes it whutdown itself and i need to remove battery to turn it on again.
Motherboard are also an big reference of planned obsolescence (i worked as it techincian and i needed to replace a lot of ECS motherboard with failing capacitors, sata/atapi chipset problems, fake usb fuses, with carbonized half motherboard because some silly student manage to insert reverse an usb stick).

according to incandescent literature, i think 1000h of use isn't a so bad compromise, because bulb cost will be more if less efficient (120V 75W can replace an 230V 100W, because highter efficiency).
however, leds lamp are a big question (now i'm buying some ikea cheaps led lamp, because they cost as cfl lamps in local stores); two years ago, i bought some ic led driver ( http://it.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?id=1656117&Ntt=1656117 ), all they failed after some hours of use (i didn't replaced them, but now this ic is obsolete and i think to know why).
cfl are also an example of planned obsolescence: older clf last more than newers!

I see the LED more planned obsolescence than CFLs, since unlike CFLs, which when properly made and operated on optimal conditions, can last the 6000-12,000 hours life mark, LED can never last >50,000 hours in applications intended for any form of lighting (For sure not HPLEDs, which are different light source than regular LEDs, and goes farther to require forced cooling [Thing that until the last years, only short-arc and capillary HID lamps for stage lighting, projection and other special applications, required]).
For your reminder: The 50,000-100,000 hours rated life, is the actual life of older type of non RoHS compliant low power LEDs, that are used as indicators and non lighting applications. LEDs for lighting can't last as long.

two years ago, i bought some ic led driver ( http://it.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?id=1656117&Ntt=1656117 ), all they failed after some hours of use (i didn't replaced them, but now this ic is obsolete and i think to know why).

The CAT4201 is normally in production.
But you wrote, all failed after few hours, that mean there should be something wrong in your design.
I would guess for voltage vershoots caused by either PCB layout parasitics (the IC creates very fast switching edges, what require very low stray inductance in the loop formed by the input capacitor-chip-free wheel diode; milimeters count here), or by a power turn ON transient (it can go up to twice the actual input voltage at the power ON, so on 12VAC it exceed the abs max rating of the chip)...
But to give you better support, I would need more details about your design.

But to give you better support, I would need more details about your design.

Hi, you have PM 

I came across this vid the other day...   I think a few others have said planned obsolescence spread like a disease, suddenly everything had an "Undocumented feature" added - an expiry date.  Be it on the cheap by fitting poor quality capacitors in power boards to grading the steel things are made of so it rusted after a certain time.

Very frustrating but its what some would say keeps the world going round.

PS.   My Thorn Tricity President cooker is 60 years old

I do not believe in any conspiracy or so at all. And I mean ANY conspiracy...
One of the reason why no such conspiracy theories will work is, each of them require very large amount of mainly mighty people to tightly cooperate and do not leak any information. And that is simply not possible - larger or mightier the group, the sooner they start to fight each other for even more might within the group and for that do not hesitate to even sabotage the conspiracy effort.

And do not be so naive, the past equipment was more reliable (it was only more expensive). When you show an old ballast working past many decades, it is just a lucky piece, what was either not used so heavily, or where the manufacturing tolerances happen to act in a way it lived long. But when you would go through the statistics, those ballasts did failed a lot when they were new. Bu these pieces are already scrapped many decades ago, so are just forgotten. It does not mean they have not existed...

Planned obsolescence song

The lightbulb conspiracy video

xelareverse, I merged your 2 posts and set titles for them.

Planned obsolescence song

That sadly describes what it is like today. not just with light bulbs, but with anything. For example, you will find several "old" (core 2 duo or quad) computers being thrown away just because they aren't the latest and greatest. I am also surprised that MV light bulbs were not included in the video.

I second the thing with computers (They are another thing i collect/repair except lighting)

In the case of computers, there is that thing that they indeed get slower, but the culprit is not in the computers themselfes. Software and websites get more resource heavy all the time, without adding any usefull features but only "innovative user interface concepts" that pin CPU to 100% use on every click, yet are dumbed down to the point that your desktop computer is as dumb and disabled as a smartphone

Oh no, the video sounds good, but has been deleted! (or maybe is blocked in Chile)

planned obsolence is part of the reason why human civilization is not evolving at the rate it should. If we weren't wasting so much resource on creating devices to fail simply to make more fiat currency... we would be farther along as a society.


unfortunately I think the human race will drive itself to near extinction before realizing this.