product engineering pet peeves

[Cybrvanr]

I was thinking about some of the latest problems with new electronics, appliances and other consumer products that we use everyday. These are problems that previously didn't exist with older products that now do. Can you add a few to these?

Products that continuously consume power, even though they are supposedly off. This is especially bad with battery operated products. How many times have you turned on your cell phone to find the battery was dead when you turned it off last with a good charge?

Products that contain a myriad of featurs, but only a few buttons to access them: Adding more features, but not more controls makes for a clean simple appearance to the product, but operating them is annoyingly complex since it involves going through menus, sub-menus, and all sorts of click patterns to do what you want.

Products that require a subscription & a fee to operate. I remember when television was free, so was radio. Even recording a program with a VCR was free, now TIVO's require a monthly subscription, along with a host of all sorts of products that cost you twice, both in the purchase price, and in operation fees. Seems like manfacturers are trying to hit you up twice when purchasing a product

Products that take excessive time to become operational when they are switched on. Computers are famous for this. It takes my windows computer close to 2 minutes from the time I throw the switch to the time I can use it. My old Commodore 64... about 4 seconds! My DVD recorder takes about 30 seconds to boot up. My old VHS deck though, about .5 seconds. A cell phone, about 10 seconds, but a land-line phone, instantainous

Products that become obsolete or unuseable because of a consumeable becomes unavaliable. I currently have a video projector that requires a special lamp in it. Yes, 10 years from now the projector will still be able to show a video picture, but will I still be able to purchase the lamps for it? I can't get toner cartridges for my old HP series II printer that works perfectly fine!

 

[petek]

No argument from me. I'm all but fed up with rechargeable anythings because after a year or so use they won't hold a charge any longer and you either ditch them or spend near as much buying a replacement battery, which never seems to last as long as the original. About 5 years ago we bought some B&D tools etc that used those cylindrical batteries, added to the set with a vacuum, dustbuster, fluoresent camping light, and some others I can't even think of now.. now try and find replacement cylindrical batteries..when you do they're like $30 each and you always need at least 2. What a waste of money that stuff was. I toss out my cordless phones when the battery dies and buy a new one, the replacement batteries cost more than a new phone. I'm talking the $20 cordless phones from liquidiation places etc. Would never never never pay big bucks for a cordless phone again.

 

[Designgeek]

Amen to all of the above!

Menus and click-click-clicks. Having to "navigate" to find or use basic functions. Having to "program" things that in no way should have to be programmed. Having those programs stored in memory that depends on batteries, so a change of battery loses the data.

All the basic functions of most appliances can & should be accessible with either a rotary knob, a set of pushbuttons (one button per function, clearly labeled), and/or a timer (another rotary knob or a keypad to set time in minutes and seconds).

Clocks that are not needed. You don't need a clock on most of the things that have clocks on them. The only reason for a clock is when you're going to use a function that's set with a clock-dependent timer (e.g. "turn on the VCR at 8:00 to record XYZ program on channel NN." Otherwise, clocks are a nuisance, not the least reason being you have to re-set them at Daylight Savings and then back again.

Batteries where they are not needed. Anything that plugs into the wall does not need a battery, yet there they are, lurking around and just waiting to die so you have to replace them.

Wall Warts that consume power when a device is doing nothing. Add them up, they're a measurable percentage of your electric bill. Then unplug them when you're not using them.

The lack of good oldfashioned corded phones in the consumer marketplace. Oh you can find them if you look, for most people, you have to look and look and look. (I get my phone equipment via my company.)

Re. products that require buying services (e.g. Tivo): I don't buy those. They are not necessary.

Re. cybrvanr, Windows machine takes 2 min. to boot up: Use the "standby" or "suspend" or "sleep" setting most of the time, and do a full shutdown once or twice a week. Always unplug your internet connection when you're not actively using the computer, otherwise baddies might sneak in and hijack your machine when you're not looking (e.g. as a spam-bot). Also it may be that you have lots of applications or plug-ins that have to load when you boot up. Or you may have viruses or spyware or whatnot. My Mac and Win machines each take about a minute to boot up because I try to minimize the amount of "stuff" that has to load each time. At the other extreme, a friend of mine said his Win machine would take over an hour to boot up, because it was absolutely infested with all manner of nasties (since cleaned up).

Re. petek and cordless phones: Get a corded phone that needs no batteries. Or buy a decent brand e.g. Panasonic; you can get replacement batteries for maybe $5 - $15 at Radio Snack.

 

[tolivac]

Wall-Warts-feel these things should be BANNED-put the transformer back into the equipment.the main thing there is that the wall warts can overheat and catch fire-this almost happened to me.Or at least put some sort of a fuse in the wart or the device it powers.So if there is an overload-the fuse blows preventing anything elese from happening.Had a wall transformer overheat ot the point of smoldering when I left one to recharge an electric razor.When I came back-lucky I did-there was a fault in the shaver causing the wall wart to dangerously overheat.

 

[petek]

No need telling me to get a corded phone, I probably have 50 of them in all shapes, designs and colors, standard 501's and 502's, princesses, contempras, starlites, ericofons. They're something I can't pass by when I see one at a thrift store. Matter of fact I just got another one yesterday,, a tan 501, the standard rotary dial deskset, indestructable.

 

[jasonl]

Stuff that doesn't work

Bought a Sanyo DVD player at WM. Wouldn't play many of my dvds, and the ones it played, it did so badly. Returned the sanyo and bought a Sony DVD. Plays 100% of what I put in there. Even scratched DVDs I rescued from Chalmette plays.

Samsung 42" tv. My mom bought it for their room but decided to let me have it. No complaints. It's a big television. Besides having a plastic screen, the power button is so flimsy. And convergence is an option. Every 30 minutes it has to reconverge the crts. The big Sony in the living room has NEVER needed to reconverge (self-focus)

 

[DADoES]

I never shut off my cell phone, but it's irritating that the battery ages in about a year such that it no longer holds a charge as long. I do dislike all the submenus on the phone, and the useless functions.

My GE micro has a cool touchscreen that changes the available functions per context, which makes it a little simpler, at least for me. RJ had trouble finding the popcorn setting a couple days ago. Cook -> Select Food -> Popcorn -> Start. My Sharp has a scrolling display that gives additional directions but after sitting unused in the garage for 10 months the display has gone wonky. It's almost impossible to use some of the settings unless I remember what are the subselections. For example both the Minute Timer and setting the clock are done under the Set Time button, but then either 1 or 2 has to be pressed to set the respective function. Can't tell that from the display anymore (it might be detailed in the manual, I don't recall). I remember 1 or 2, but someone else using it would not know.

Interesting that my Sony receiver and Panasonic plasma will retain the sound/video parameters for quite a while without power. I had them disconnected for probably a month after I moved, and all the settings were intact. Of course a VCR may not hold timer settings that long.

I can't turn off my computer, as it does a tape backup every night. Same for the servers & workstations at the offices. But I do turn off the monitors.

 

[jasonl]

Sony ES

Aren't those some wonderful recievers? I loved mine, unfortunately lost it in the hurricane. 100w/chx5. Made those Boston Acoustics speakers rock. Now that wasn't a toy stereo. It was heavy. big transformer and capacitors, MOSFet transistors.

 

[maytagbear]

I hate most modern remote controls!

To me, most remotes are dreadful! Not particularly friendly to use, hard to read, hard to manipulate.

For a while, RCA had some really lovely remotes, but RCA's other quality was "iffy."

The remote to my new dvd player is a case in point. Yes, I don't expect wonderful interface from a dvd player made to sell for around 40.00 US. However, this remote is small, lots of buttons jammed together (4 x 10!),and the print is hard to read. Have to take off my glasses most of the time, and my bifocal area isn't much help.

The manual isn't much better.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[roto204]

Products that consume power

LOL--my cell phone has the option to flash the LED intermittently (about once every 30 seconds) for no reason whatsoever whenever it's on.

My friends and I looked at it once, and one of them christened it the "battery draining" light.

:-D

 

[petek]

My worst remote is the one that came with my JVC receiver about 15 years ago, its near 3/4 the size of a shoebox lid and has I don't know how many buttons on it, lots anyways, and they're all tiny little rectangles the same size, row after row of about 5 per row. It was probably the height of remotes then when they tried to squeeze as many buttons on them to look impressive.

 

[Cybrvanr]

The discussions about remote controls made me remember another peeve about new electronics. When there are features on a piece of equipment that are ONLY accessable by the remote control. My car stereo is like that. If the stereo looses power, it goes into a demo mode that switches the display screen mode every 10 seconds. The problem is to take the stereo out of demo mode, you must push a menu button that ONLY exists on the remote....I DON'T have the remote to the stereo!

 

[DADoES]

So True! VCR timers, receiver functions, TV submenus. Universal replacements usually can't do the submenus.

 

[jasonl]

Aspect friggin ratio

And the universal remotes don't have an aspect ratio button (4:3 or 16:9). As if people use that anyway.

You people with HDTV's know what I'm sayin. Common people that watch everything in widescreen.

I wrote a huge rant about certain people I know that want all 56 inches of their Sony regardless if the picture is distorted or not, but I decided not to.

 

[westytoploader]

Steven, all very good points. My 486-DX computer from 1992 (runs on MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1), boots completely in 15-20 seconds, but our 2004 Dell, a Windows-XP machine which runs on a Pentium 4 and is theoretically supposed to be fast, takes 5+ minutes to become fully useable!! It seems like the vintage computers were much simpler as far as operating systems were concerned...now we have hundreds of files (*.DLL or Dynamic Link Library files for example; these didn't exist before Windows) and the like that the computer has to mess with. Part of the reason they didn't take any time at all to boot was that there was less for it to load!!

While I don't care much for the sub-menus on TVs, VCRs, receivers, etc., it is better than it was in the early 1990's!! Whew...remote controls with so many same-size buttons you needed a sliding cover to hide the ones you didn't use! One of the reasons I like my Sony DVD/VCR combo so much is the 1-touch recording dial. Turn it to set the date, CLICK, set the start time, CLICK, set the stop time, CLICK, and that's it! Although it is VERY annoying to have a "streamlined" look on the device itself and have functions only accessible by remote!

I do wish they would make cell phones and "small" electronic gadgets easier to use!! It takes a lot of manual-reading to get the hang of a new phone I'm unfamiliar with (one thing I've noticed is that sometimes they share the same menu layout, Samsung and LG do this). I received a 1GB Apple IPod Nano for Christmas, and I've only played with it a couple of times so far, because the menu is so confusing. What's up with "thumbing" the silver touch-ring to scroll down?? One of these days I'll get the manual out and try to master that...

The worst, however, in my opinion is the constant-drain syndrome associated with way too many rechargeable devices!! I can't remember how many times I've turned my phone or digital camera on only to have the battery go dead in 5 seconds...

 

[DADoES]

A common fear (which I think it's unwarranted) is that watching 4:3 at the correct aspect on a plasma will cause burn-in. I HATE the "stretched look" so I NEVER do 4:3 at anything other than 4:3. My Panny has an extra aspect mode that stretches the sides without affecting the center, assuming that the action focus is toward the center, but I don't like that either. If 4:3 is letterboxed, I sometimes zoom it but that doesn't cause distortion. I do sometimes run the 4:3 filler sidebars at gray or even full white instead of black. For something that needs the full impact and sidebars are distracting, I turn them off (black).

Austin, I have a Sony VCR with the "quick-set" rotary timer. It goes in 15-min increments on mine, but pressing either channel-up or channel-down while on the start or stop time increments it by 1-min for adjustment. Just as bad are VCRs that ONLY have on-screen display, so the whole damn system has to be turned on just to set a recording event. I had a Panasonic like that. It also had a bar-code reader for programming (with an included bar-code sheet), but the wand went dead after a few years.

 

[jasonl]

side bars

You can do that? My Samsung won't let me change the bars. The bars seem to react to the brightness of the picture. The lighter the picture, the darker the bars, vice versa. Either it's an illusion or it really happens. So maybe they're automatic? I dunno. This Samsung has a nice pic but a pain to adjust and tweak. I set my parents Sony to its "Panorama" setting (stretched sides) so to fill the screen but have a somewhat normal center.

VCR's. After Katrina I dont own the first videotape. Well ONE but that's already been converted to dvd (using a borrowed vcr). The only other videotapes I own are a few Digital 8mm tapes for the cam.

 

[DADoES]

Sidebar adjustment is under the "Screen Saver" menu. But that's on my Panny plasma. YMMV.