Repair Culture

----- Original Message ----- From: "John Foust" <jfoust at threedee.com> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:46 PM Subject: Re: Repair Culture People demanded quality and rejected cheaply made junk when the prices were very high (who can afford to buy the same item over and over again when it is expensive). Make it cheap enough and nobody cares about quality anymore. Back when people were spending $3000 on a PC a $100 keyboard wasn't that expensive so you purchased a good one expecting it to last a few generations. Who buys a $100 keyboard now for a $300 cheap PC? Do new machines even have a PS/2 port anymore? DVD players used to be very expensive too, then they got cheaper and new features came out that made people upgrade (progressive scan) or just get a Blueray player that upconverts DVD's to HD resolution. Every so often things change. Your old analog 4:3 TV might be reliable but you need something digital now and widescreen. Any finally you have style trends where you want everything to visually match so you get rid of that old aluminum finished stereo to get one in black etc (hey styling sells much more expensive things like cars).