At 11:31 AM Thursday 5/17/2007, Dan Minette wrote: >[snip] > >What people often refer to now, when they speak of planned obsolescence, is >the tendency to throw something away when it breaks, instead of getting it >fixed. But, that's a different phenomenon. Many items, such as TVs, are so >cheap and reliable now that it doesn't pay to have a trained person spend >hours trying to find and replace the bad component.
My recent question about security screws is directly related to this phenomenon: it is mid-May and the temperature has been in the 80s for several days already (although a front knocked yesterday's high down into the 70s and last night's pre-dawn low to around 50, making sweatpants and a sweater the uniform du jour rather than the shorts of recent days), so it's time to put out the fans. Those which have been used for awhile (like part or all of last year) tend to have accumulated dust and cat and human hair around the motor and shaft. In some cases I can clean some of it out with some kind of long probe and forceps and then use the straw provided on the can to squirt WD-40 into the works to get it going well again. In other cases, that doesn't seem to be enough and I need to take off the grill on the back to get at the motor and works. However, some of them are held together with the aforementioned security screws (in one case, alternating Phillips-head and Allen security screws). While I suspect that the company would say that the reason for using security screws is to keep kids from getting the back off the fan and sticking their fingers in to get mangled or shocked, I also suspect that they are happy that by using such screws they make it more likely that most people who might try to fix them themselves will have to throw them away and buy a new one . . . -- Ronn! :) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
