From: blockedofcourse@foo.invalid   
      
   On 12/19/2025 2:02 PM, Buzz McCool wrote:   
   > On 12/19/2025 11:49 AM, Don Y wrote:   
   >> (e.g., I used to rescue Viewsonic monitors   
   >> and found them to not be very good so opted for other choices when   
   >> larger monitors became available)   
   >   
   > That was my next question. In your experience in having seen many TVs   
   > at the rubbish tip, are there certain brands to avoid? Are there brands   
   > you rarely see with failures?   
      
   I used to think I could learn from "analyzing" the numbers of   
   units encountered.   
      
   But, that's specious reasoning.   
      
   If brand X sells 10 times more than brand Y, you would   
   EXPECT to see 10 times more brand X failures!  Without   
   sales figures (for the local population), any observations   
   are out of context.   
      
   I *did* encounter a large *lot* of a particular HP   
   monitor with *NO* failures!  This made me suspicious.   
   I did some research and discovered they were known to   
   catch fire (!).   
      
   No, I wasn't going to figure out how to fix THAT potential   
   problem.  And, wanted to ensure no one "rescued" one of   
   them from the discard/recycle pile so deliberately damaged   
   the screens in very obvious ways.   
      
   [Another make/model had a software (? hardware??) bug   
   that would cause it to appear to fail.  The "fix"   
   was a simple thing that a casual user could perform.   
   But, you didn't want to send something out with the   
   HOPE that the user would remember some "trick" if/when   
   it failed.]   
      
   I *can* learn about the types of failures that seem   
   to plague units (almost always power related; you'd   
   think folks would put more effort into this aspect of   
   the design but they only care about making it through the   
   warranty period -- and, customers are almost eager to   
   upgrade so why bother with "quality"?)   
      
   There are some devices that have nothing electronically wrong   
   but the design of the power switch leads to a bit of plastic   
   failing thereby rendering the switch inoperable (not broken;   
   just "not possible to mechanically operate!)   
      
   The biggest win in having access to lots of "the same"   
   devices is you can sort out how to repair ONE and then   
   leverage that knowledge to (likely) repair other identical   
   units.  Often, just disassembling the unit (without   
   damaging it or disfiguring it) is a big part of the job.   
      
   [Hence the reason I have multiples of everything instead   
   of a *variety* of things]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)