Wow, there is a *ton* of misconceptions and weird thinking, just to keep it short in here. One could write a novel about it and I could write an entire encyclopedia.
But in the interests of keeping it on the short-ish side:
1) the fight about water usage is not that water is leaving the planet for Sirius or Orion. Treating the water, as it was mentioned, costs an absurd amount of resources. If people were *all* washing in cold tap water and not using the energy to heat up the wash water, there wouldn't be such a rush to get HE washers, but most people rightfully refuse to do so, given that the "proper" cycle times and even cycles to wash *well* in such conditions would force people to wait *much* longer to get their clothes clean. Given that *none* of the whiners here have signed up for a new power plant and/or water/sewage treatment plant in their backyard/neighborhood, and we *know* you haven't because it will *instantly* lower the prices of your homes, your next best option is to minimize resources consumed, thus HE appliances.
2) from the point of view of engineering, everyone who has an engineering diploma will tell you point blank that a transmission is the *last* thing one would want anywhere. It has been a necessary evil and that's it. It's been there for so long because having multiple motors used to be prohibitively expensive in the past. If you visit old mills, you'll see drive shafts overhead and belts and pulleys everywhere -- that started with the water wheels, for sure, but even when combustion engines and electric motors showed up, that configuration was kept for *decades* before machines would have their own electric motor. Single motor. With transmission. Because the motor was often the most expensive part of the machine, with all that copper wiring. Now we have motors, plural, in all sizes and they can speed up or down or stop on a dime. Cheaper, easier, lasts longer. Bye-bye transmissions and you should be all happy if what you were complaining about was how long the machine lasted.
3) Bearings. Sweet Jayeeesus on a crutch! Ball bearings (which are by far the most common in household appliances) work *best* when the load is on a horizontal axis, just like on a bicycle wheel, a car wheel or a front-loading washer. It would be *best* if the whole tumbler were set on *two* shafts and have a door to open on top from the point of view that then *all* the load would be in one direction, but then again, it's *safer* if you don't have a door that opens up in the direction the clothes will put the *most* load during high-speed spinning. In fact, for ball bearings, the *worst* configuration is in fact a top-loading agitator washer, as then there is a lot of weight shearing the bearing to keep the shaft from moving up and down.
There have been "special" bearings designed specifically for both toploaders and frontloaders and they are not identical to other run-of-the-mill ball bearings, but all things considered, cars, buses, trucks, machine tools etc have bearings that are subjected to much nastier conditions and they survive just fine.
This "the bearings will break sooner" crap started from companies that were *not* producing frontloaders to begin with decades ago, just like "the door will leak all over your basement/home". Now that they all make frontloaders, they've stopped singing that tune that you folks keep repeating.
Nothing like experience to tell what is true. Now that the general population *has* experience with frontloaders, they see that the chances of leakage are no different from toploaders in general -- in fact, many machines lots of people here love *had* a boot that could leak just as readily as a frontloader's but it was located out of sight under the basket in those toploaders, so many people never even *knew* their machines had boots too.
As for "government this, government that", blame the investors -- they are the *biggest* force in twisting the arms of corporations to "accept the 'generous' 'gift'/'incentives'" to produce High Efficiency machines. The *second* biggest force is the *consumers*, that is, people just like you and your neighbors that do not want another sewage treatment plant near their homes, and also the ones that bought a HE set and could readily see their clothes getting cleaner and lasting longer while at the same time we were *saving money* which doesn't grow on trees.
I, for example, have bought several sets of HE machines since 1999 and am not planning to go back to the energy/water hogs anytime soon. Would have bought a set way sooner than that, but there were no frontloaders for sale for a while. (For the pearl clutchers out there, no, they are *not* in the dump polluting, they are *still* working, I just like to upgrade when I can and I do. My friends enjoy coming to my "laundromat" to do their laundry for free when the laundromats in/near their buildings are not up to task, which seems to be often.)
And I am frankly often flabbergasted by how people cling to the *bad* parts of life. I've just heard the other day that companies had to pipe "engine sound" into their cars because of cry-babies like some here. I'm not talking about electric cars that are so silent that blind people were having difficulties with -- I can see having something that tells them a car is coming is nice. But no, the cases I've heard about are in the super expensive luxury cars, they got too quiet and instead of letting people enjoy being in quiet inside the car, they pump engine noise into the stereo. I guess that even if I could afford such cars I would rather save my money if I'm not gonna be riding in peace and quiet.
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
