Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance

[Jules Richardson]

Billy Pettit wrote:
> Companies don't survive if they make consumer products that wear out 
 > in "a year and day".

Where's the incentive for a manufacturer to make something that'll last five 
or ten years if a year down the road there's some hot new technology out and 
they can be pressing consumers to upgrade to that?

To most consumers, "new technology" or "more features" equates to "better 
product", regardless of whether they have a large investment in the old 
technology or whether they actually need the new features provided.

If a company can build a cheap product that'll last as long as it takes for 
them to bring its next generation to market then they'll do it; it doesn't 
make sense to do anything else.

> Tony, you have your preferences and choices and more power to you.  But if
> you did a study of current state of the art electronics, you would find it
> to be far superior to that of 20 years ago.  Even if it won't provide a
> maintenance manual.

I think there's a line to be drawn somewhere, although it's hard to see what 
the defining characteristics are. You're right in that things like hard drives 
and computers as a whole do seem to last (failing capacitors and obsolescence 
aside :) - but in most modern DVD players, TVs, VCRs, and stereo equipment 
that I've been inside, the quality of construction (mechanical and electronic) 
has been piss-poor and obviously built to the lowest cost possible (same seems 
to hold true for things like kettles, toasters, microwaves etc.)

cheers

Jules