Miraculous button makes things work again.

Thanks, Jeff!

I would never, ever buy anything from a company who used such tactics to screw customers over. For a similar reason, I would never buy a VW car after it emerged they were purposlely falsifying their emissions tests by a similar sort of scheme.

Is there a tiny hole in the case above that switch for usimg as paper clip to reset the device?

Amazingly, Flux is still in business.

No, nothing like that. Like most VCRs, DVD players, DVDRs, amplifiers, One big piece of sheet metal covering the top with no holes, no writing. I wonder how it decides when to break?

Two days after the warranty expires, of course.

Additionaly, if you have 'normal' hearing loss, those piezo buzzers cannot be heard without hearing aids. I don't wear hearing aids to bed -- so smoke and carbon monoxide alarms will never awaken me. We had a CO 'incident' several years ago, and my wife heard the alarm. Not me. I can be standing in front of the microwave and I won't know my coffee is hot until the "END" lights up.

Microwaves usually have a fan that makes lots of low frequency noise. They don't really need a buzzer.

Piezos are cheap. For a few cents more they could use a speaker and give users a choice of sounds.

Several ways to determine when to self-destruct:

1. Warranty timer. The timer records how many elapsed days between when power was first applied and the current date. When the timer shows 110% of the warranty period, it declares a fault or failure. The extra 10% is to deal with errors in the timer.
2. Predicted use. The "chip" in many inkjet printer cartridges is a good example. The manufacturer decrees that the inkjet cartridge should last 1,000 pages. When the chip counts 1,001 printed pages, it ceases printing and produces a difficult to decode error message. It's much the same with laser toner carts and drums. With older iPhone batteries, the clock was slowed down to simulate the effects of an aging battery.
3. Predictive QA. Estimating the length of time a product and its individual components might last is calculated by the QA department. If a component survives longer than the approved warranty period, the component is subjected to a "cost reduction", which reduces the component lifetime, quality and cost. If this ritual is performed often enough, all the components in the product will fail almost simultaneously.

The actual length of time or number of operations before self-destruction is set by the manufactory marketing department.

So you would rather have Klaxons???

They can use a Piezo AS a speaker

Any companies we might have heard of been found out doing this, Jeff?

Don't buy HP printers. They are in the theft business.

Brother is a much better deal, both laser and inkjet.

Yes. I've had the displeasure of attending a few design reviews, which were mostly cost reduction exercises. Only suggestions which lowered costs were considered acceptable. Please don't be overly judgmental. Missing a cost target could result in the loss of a bid, having a volume buyer switch to another vendor, or a blood red loss appearing on the bottom line of the annual report.

I assume you want me to provide a list of companies who had implement cost reductions based on QA statistics. Sorry, but I'm not thrilled with idea of disclosing the names my clients and their activities on Usenet.

Most of the company I've worked for have done something similar. Substituting inferior parts doesn't require QA statistics. Some companies will gladly substitute cheaper parts if that improve the bottom line. QA will usually fight such downgrades if only for show. They know their jobs might be at risk without the cost cutting.

After such downgrades were implemented, they sometimes hire me as a consultant to "fix the problems but don't change anything". Sometimes I give up in disgust or suggest they replace the inferior parts with the original parts. What they really want me to do is give up. Then, management declares that because I couldn't fix the problems, the junk parts must be the best that can be found for the intended purpose.

I fix a few home and small biz laser printers. The low end inkjets go directly to the recycler. My favorite brands are HP and Brother. Home users tend to keep their HP laser printers far longer than their computers which translates into HP repairs instead of replacements. A few business users recycle their HP printers immediately after they run out of toner.

I like HP because some (not all) of their printers are good quality. OEM and aftermarket parts are erratically available. Brother laser printers also have their problems. However, I can buy 2.5 Brother printers for the price of an equivalent HP printer. Both companies have baked in design defects which they seem to be ignoring. Looking around my house, I have 2 HP color laserjet printers and 3 Brother laserprinters.

HP sells printers cheap with half-filled cartriges, and charges as much as a new printer for a new set, which don't last long. If their printers came with full cartriges, people would throw away the printer when it ran out of toner.

Our Brother B-size inkjet printer/copier/scanner is great, and ink refills are cheap. We do B-size schematics. They have a giant black cartrige too; we mostly use black.

What are the Brother design defects?

Wasn't it HP that was spying on customers by some ingenious yellow pixel scheme? Then made some excuse about catching forgers or some such claim.

My laser is a rather ancient Lexmark (2014 production) and it 's screen is starting to flash and misbehave but it still prints just fine, My Inkjet is a Canon Maxify MB2020 of the same vintage and other than ink cost I love it. I have a laserjet 1320 and a Canon LBP430 sitting on the shelf along with a brother MFC295 inkjet gathering dust in case either current printer breaks down. The old Laser Jet 2 and 3 were TANKS and we kept them in service until OS support totally disappeared.

Years ago their print heads dried out if you didn't print at least once a week - but that "defect" was cured decades ago - - - Their early MFC inkjet units were REALLY BAD for that!!!