Havn't seen anything like this for a while....

[Nigel Eaton]

In article , Peter A Forbes writes

I keep thinking I need a shot blasting cabinet in my life. Was this place cheap, and are you prepared to name them?

[Jules]

The the above gives the consumer no net loss though - the impact's only an environmental one in producing three crap widgets rather than one good one.

IME a good quality widget will outlast a crap one ten times or more but *not* have a price tag of ten times the shit one; the odds are very well stacked in the good quality widget's favour.

The problem though is that it's hard to tell 'good quality' these days. Recognised 'good' brands are peddling sub-standard crud just as much as the unknowns, and the fast pace of new good coming to market means that even if the consumer reads the reviews, they do nothing to tell them how well the item is going to last.

cheers

Jules

[Jules]

How practical is it to make one?

[Peter A Forbes]

The people we bought the crane from and the sandblaster cabinets page are here:

that line doesn't break into two.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: [e-mail]

[Tim S]

Jules coughed up some electrons that declared:

I agree with all that. Badge engineering should be illegal, but I don't know how you could actually achieve that in practise.

With the emphasis on the environment and landfill, there should be a serious drive to discourage "tat consumerism" but that contradicts the capitalist underpinnings of our flakey economy so it won't happen.

Although not entirely replated, this rather sums it up:

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Badge engineering usually means effectively just changing a badge and relatively minor things to try and get a bigger market while saving costs. One obvious example is VW, Audi and Skoda. Are you really saying this should be illegal and they should be badged VW Popular, Standard and Delux etc only?

If something is genuinely unfit for purpose like a chocolate hacksaw blade your recourse is with the retailer.

I'd hate to see some form of restriction on what's available - there'd be no more bargains from the likes of Lidl.

[mark]

[e-mail]://www.oldengine.org/members/dieselhttp://www.stationary-engine.co.ukhttp://www.oldengine.co.ukhad my 30 ton press off them ..good kit

all the best.markj

[Tim S]

Dave Plowman (News) coughed up some electrons that declared:

Well, I don't have an answer - but I do think that perhaps (and this is an extreme view which I won't bother defending) if a company buys another company, it should get the assets, but not the right to use the name.

That would put an end to trying to trade on brand familiarity when the brand no longer has the meaning that people think it does.

If a previously reputable company dies, then let the name die. Stop confusing people.

Skoda is a bit of a weird inverse case - VW had to go to some lengths to remarket the name away from the crap that it used to stand for. If Skoda are as good as VW, VW should, IMHO stick their own name on it and just sell it cheaper. After all, everyone is happy that a VW Polo is a small cheap car that basically works, a Fox is really cheap[1], but a Golf is something a bit better (depending on your taste) and much more expensive.

[1] I had a brand new Fox as a loaner for a day whilst my Touran was in for service. It was about as cheap and unrefined as I could imagine. But it seemed competant to do it's basic job. The fact it had a VW badge on it doesn't tarnish the VW name in my mind. I can cope with the concept that a manufacture makes cheap unrefined products and expensive gold plated (or wood trimmed in this case) ones. But I do expect the unrefined cheap product to be as well built in terms of longevity.

Daewoos are now sold as Chevvys (soon to be Fiat?) - that's rediculous.

Well, (and we're off the labelling and onto the quality point now), I've been quite pleased with goods from Aldi. The 8kg SDS is a bit rough and bloody heavy, but ideal for rough work and plaster mixing and it appears to be built like a brick ****house. I have no objection to that, because it feels like it will last more than 5 minutes. I use a Hitachi 2kg for normal work, but I wouldn't say that is more robust, but it is smoother and more refined. I hope both will last a long time, but I'd have to come back here in 10 years to verify that.

Pliers from poundland that bend as soon as you squeeze them are a waste of natural resources, but a solid but unrefined small set of household tools for a fiver from Lidl are fine.

I fear that the problem is difficult to define and more so to solve, but I stand by my sentiment that somehow we should clamp down on selling (and by implication, soon binning) useless short lived crap. The country would be a better place for it.

Cheers

Tim

[Nigel Eaton]

In article , Peter A Forbes writes

Thanks Peter, I shall have a rummage.

[David in Normandy]

Maybe a bit extreme but it reminds me of Pyrex and a news article I read some time ago. Apparently the brand was sold to a Chinese firm who adjusted the formula for making the glass so it was cheaper, the net result was Pyrex that was less stable and sometimes exploded when hot. A number of customers were injured as a result. I don't know if the Chinese firm has since reverted back to the original formulation or if the Pyrex brand is now worth sh*t.

[Tim S]

David in Normandy coughed up some electrons that declared:

A very good example of why name-selling should be prohibited. I know Pyrex in their original guise could have pulled the same stunt, but I doubt they would.

[Andrew Gabriel]

The Pyrex name has been sold to different companies around the world, and they don't all use the same Pyrex glass anymore. I've noticed that Pyrex bought in the US is different quality to Pyrex bought in the UK, even though the glass products look identical. They turn out to be different glass.

[Jules]

I would like to see something a bit more in-depth than the typical consumer reviews, though - something which assessed case construction, PCB quality, use of components which might stand a reasonable chance of still being around in a few years (and/or which might be fabricated locally by friendly fixit chap).

In other words, something which makes a stab at assessing product longevity, rather than commenting on how well the thing works when it's working or on what gimmicky features it has or how pretty it looks.

I suspect that a lot of people don't appreciate how bad the things they buy are - they have no way of knowing because nobody tells them. I think consumers generally want three things from a product:

1) A low up-front price, 2) For it to do what they need, 3) For it to last forever.

... nobody takes a shot at the latter, so people buy based upon the first two, even if it means they end up spending more in the long-run because they're replacing the products more frequently than they should have to.

cheers

Jules

[David in Normandy]

The firm that originally created Pyrex probably did a huge amount of research and development getting the formulation perfect so it was strong and stable at high temperatures - even if it meant small amounts of various expensive ingredients in the glass. As a result Pyrex has become a household brand name and trusted by many.

The last thing anyone wants is to remove a hot casserole from the oven and for the Pyrex to go "bang" and shatter into hundreds of shards of broken glass and boiling hot liquid all over the cook.

We recently needed to buy a new "Pyrex" casserole dish but being aware of the news article and uncertain of the country of manufacture we left the Pyrex on the supermarket shelf and bought a ceramic pot instead. Brand names can easily be destroyed through shoddy practice.

[Tim S]

Jules coughed up some electrons that declared:

Yes. I did a trial subscription to Which a few years back. It was probably the same as it ever was and when there was nothing else, it was good (ie better than nothing).

These days though, it seemed utterly pathetic. I'm used to reading massively in depth reviews on dpreview.com (digital cameras) and equivalently excellent field test reviews on PC motherboards and random computer kit.

Which's test of hoovers doesn't provide a good feedback, nor do they seem to abuse them (coal dust on a white carpet or half a dog's worth of hair).

I know few reviews go as far as you say (occasionally, especially with mobos, PCB and component quality is commented on) but there's really nothing that in depth for white goods or tools. Well, not that I've come across. You sometimes get the odd good power tool review where some SDS gets taken to task, but there's no real central place to go.

For white goods, you can sometimes pick up stuff from the comments left on the Argos website, but those guys don't take things to bits.

A few comments on the availability of spare parts would be nice too. I like Vax hoovers - all the random bits are easy to buy online (don't know about motor parts and switches though).

Bosch are excellent - there's an entire website selling Bosch parts with exploded diagrams keyed by model number and serial number. You can buy pretty much every damn nut that goes into one of those. It's daft things - like the little cap on the water reservoir on my >10 year old Bosch dryer. Every 3-4 years, the little "string" snaps off, meaning the cap is going to fall off and get stuck in the machine eventually. I went and bought 3 for very little cash a long while back and used one, stuck the rest in a drawer.

When the Bosch dishwasher's filter started to come apart (6 years old) it was a painless excercise to get another.

Trouble is geeks don't care about toasters - or SDS drills. And it's usually geeks who would have the lid off something and be looking at the quality of the bits inside.

Lots of digicam and PC geeks though.

Cheers

Tim

[Tim S]

David in Normandy coughed up some electrons that declared:

Apparantly, reading the Wikipedia article, they used to use borosilicate glass. Now they only use that in lab equipment (so thus proving that the substitute glass used in the cookware range isn't really a good substitute, otherwise it would be good enough for lab gear).

I agree. We are in one of the worst states of consumerism that capitalism has ever seen. Honour and reputation count for nothing except amongst a few last bastions of quality.

But that's what the majority want and if someone can provide it, then the bastions of good quality will be a minority as there are only a minority of people who care of such things to patronise them.

It's good that you can buy a quite decent TV for a few hundred and a reasonable but basic car new for maybe 6-7k (thinking VW Fox) - I'm not advocating a return to the times when only the rich could afford cool things. But I really really get pissed off with all this "don't use any nylocs - it'll save 50p" attitude.

Cheers

Tim

[Man at B&Q]

y

Maybe when they are building for, or are a subsidiary of, a Japanese company. There's a lot of crap made in China by Chinese companies. The trouble is, some of us are only too willing to buy it.

MBQ

[Tim S]

Huge coughed up some electrons that declared:

Do you reckon if one (or a collective) of us started a formal review website that toaster makers would send us free samples to abuse and dismember?

That's a neutral question BTW.

I know mobo makers and digicam companies view it as part of the marketing excercise (and presumably the loan samples are budgeted from marketing funds) as a decent review on a popular site = cost effective advertising.

Can I be Clarkson, please please:

"We put rocks in the pockets of old builder's trousers worn for 50 days straight by Handy Andy, covered them in petrol, sawdust and 1/2 pound of iron filings and horse glue and and ran them through our sample of washing machines.

The Miele survived with only minor denting and the trousers - are - clean.

The spanish machine - as you can see - is now a heap of bolts and twisted metal.

And the french machine looked like it was about to explode. Just to make good on that, here's a bucket of thermite..."

And I'm fat enough :)

[geoff]

Easy - BTDT

But Nigel's only 15 minutes down the road from me if he needs to use one

I think he's more interested in buying a new toy

[David Billington]

I bought one of the small ones that looks like the one on the right about a year ago, IIRC about £60 off ebay. For the price I couldn't be bothered to make one and it works fairly well although the shallow catch base is a bit too shallow and the area around the pickup can run out of grit. I'm likely to fold up a deeper base soon and add legs so it's not sitting on a workmate type thing. I have seen similar sized ones made from clear plastic storage boxes. My larger blasting booth is in the process of size reduction from 8' x 4' x 3' to 4' x 4' x 3', it's collapsable so doesn't take up much space when not in use.