A few days ago, we had a thread about games that released in 2004, and I made a comment that ended with "old shit is better." And then I started thinking about it... old things are better.
Case in point: vehicles. I needed a truck for the family farm, and I went shopping. Quickly I realized that 1) newer 3/4 ton diesels are designed to fail as a revenue stream and 2) buying a $80,000 truck that will probably need at least one, maybe two $5,000 service visits before it hits six digit mileage wasn't in the cards. So I bought a 20 year old truck... that every mechanic who has seen it has tried to buy. Total cost was less than a Tabroma with the same mileage.
This continues on to just about everything. My house was built before I was born, and has the original air conditioner, stove and hot water heater. The original fridge died a few years ago, and the washer and dryer finally shuffled off this mortal coil last year. I doubt, seriously, that any of the replacement appliances lasts a decade, much less two or three.
Printers? Unless it's Japanese, don't buy a new one. HP will remote control your printer, if you opt in to the program (which they don't make clear what it is), and Xerox is a crapshoot if it works out of the box. Meanwhile, I have seen cheap Brother lasers go to half a million pages easily.
Tractors? Buy a new John Deere, and if it breaks, you either have Deere's mechanic fix it, or it stays broken. (Keep making your payments, please.) Meanwhile, you can buy an older Deere or Yanmar tractor and keep it going forever.
The modern world is starting to give me serious 40k vibes. Almost nobody knows how things work, new things are bad knockoffs, and there are mutants everywhere.
Do not buy a new high efficiency washing machine if you can in any way avoid it. Bought one new in 2016 and it died in 2021. Buy used/learn to repair what you can and keep that 30 year old ge chugging as long as you can.
My cousin bought a house around 2015. His wife is a big conspicuous consumer so they immediately replaced all the appliances with shiny new ones. Since then he has gone through two dryers and, in a moment of clarity, had the refrigerator repaired once instead of buying new, only to replace it after it failed a second time. He doesn't see it as an issue.
This is insane to me. My house has "updated" appliances from the 90s. They work fine. If my washer or dryer went out there is no $250/hour repair fee to replace some circuit board that may or may not be available or even manufactured now. They are pretty easy to repair DIY style and other than maybe a couple of hours lost time are cheap to fix.
I keep hoping my 90s fridge dies so I can "downgrade" to those gorgeous mid century refurbs you can find around. No luck yet, it keeps chugging.
Brother, I am in the exact same boat lol
I've had the same problems with washers and dryers. I'm fairly certain the manufacturers don't even know that metallurgy is a thing. You can't just grab any random Chinese scrap lying around, melt it into a washer, and expect the spin cycle not to rip the thing apart.
My problem was that the washer and dryer (Maytag both, and from the 80s) died. So, I'm hoping that their "commercial grade" replacement lasts until I can find someone with a stockpile of old appliances for sale.