In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 390 of 1154
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Sometimes I think big companies need design input from regular people once in a while. What sounds good on paper and what looks good on the showroom floor just doesn't work well IRL. How about if you write them a letter??? No need to be nasty, just describe the problems you had and your suggestions for making it better. It might just help them improve their product.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
That might be a good idea SIG. I've still got the instructions on how to put it together and it should have something on it I can use.
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The instructions for that bookcase gives the company name but no address. There is a phone number that is only good for the US. The case was designed in the US but made in China.
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FWIW whenever a service tech came in to set up/ maintain/ repair an instrument I always asked them if their engineering departments ever asked the service people for suggestions ... and the answer was always no.
Why not have NO feedback for your what I'm sure you think is your perfectly perfect product!
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
FWIW whenever a service tech came in to set up/ maintain/ repair an instrument I always asked them if their engineering departments ever asked the service people for suggestions ... and the answer was always no.
Why not have NO feedback for your what I'm sure you think is your perfectly perfect product!
Because this is all cheap stuff made in China that sells well enough even though it's cheap stuff from China with instructions that can hardly be called English.
The entire plant is set up, and mostly automated, to make the products specifically as you get them in the box. Altering just one little thing would cause the need to alter the production process which requires shutting down a portion of the plant, re-configuring everything, then testing it before putting it back into production mode.
Given the fact that this stuff is manufactured, packaged and shipped halfway around the world and is still as cheap as it is, they are working on razor thin margins to turn profits.
The only time they're going to look into altering anything is if something is broken so bad that all of the units are getting returned, or (much worse) it ends up causing injuries or death.
I think about computers and computer parts and their history when I think of this. In the early days of building computers with a friend of mine, everything was made in the States and was SUPER expensive. But despite the fact that the processing power, storage and memory were just mere fractions of what we have at our disposal today, those old PCs were almost perfect when it came to stability compared to what we have today if you set them up right.
You'd be hard pressed to find any electronic parts now that are made in America. They're a boatload cheaper, for sure, and everything is so much more powerful after 20+ years of R&D. From the quality of anything from motherboards, CPUs and GPUs to the software you're running whether it be an office suite or video games, the coding is also quite lazy these days, relying on the processing power of today's technology rather than expert coding and intelligent decision making to really push the limits of today's hardware.
By all rights, the machines we use in our everyday lives should be capable of quite a bit more than they currently are. But everything from the Operating System to the software package for your Graphics Card/Chip is written so sloppily that countless cycles are lost every second executing redundant code.
But nobody is ever going to fix any of that. Nobody's life is at risk. Most of the time, even though it is thought of as an inconvenience, a simple power down of the system and reboot is all that is required to "right the ship".
That's arguably a small price to pay compared to the $4000.00 it would cost to build a new computer if all of the parts were made here in the states and the fact that the days of $600 Office Suites are long gone. Hell... you can just use Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets which are almost as good as Microsoft Office and offer more to most people then they're ever going to need to use and you don't have to pay a cent for it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Call the US number. Or maybe you can find the corporate office address online. I would be looking for "product development" or "design", or "customer feedback" or "complaints" but if you can't find those, ANY address will do!
Originally posted by Brenda:
The instructions for that bookcase gives the company name but no address. There is a phone number that is only good for the US. The case was designed in the US but made in China.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
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And as I keep pointing out - that's THE essential internal contradiction of capitalism.
The person who makes a Mercedes can only afford a Kia ... yanno, the difference between the value their work creates and the sales prices is profit. They literally can't afford to buy their own work.
The person who makes a Kia buys a bicycle ...
The person who makes a bicycle buys shoes ...
The person who makes shoes goes barefoot ...
And I suppose that's OK. There are enough warm places on the planet where going barefoot will get you parasites, but at least your feet won't freeze off. But then you start considering the food production cycle ...
OF COURSE people can't afford to buy quality, or even buy American! That's a DUH! And OF COURSE business will only makes what they can sell! That's another DUH!
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Quote:Well! You know quite a bit more than you let on, SIX! Hubby (who programs in C and many other languages and is also a computer hardware expert) says the same thing.
KIKI
FWIW whenever a service tech came in to set up/ maintain/ repair an instrument I always asked them if their engineering departments ever asked the service people for suggestions ... and the answer was always no.
Why not have NO feedback for your what I'm sure you think is your perfectly perfect product!
SIX: Because this is all cheap stuff made in China that sells well enough even though it's cheap stuff from China with instructions that can hardly be called English.
The entire plant is set up, and mostly automated, to make the products specifically as you get them in the box. Altering just one little thing would cause the need to alter the production process which requires shutting down a portion of the plant, re-configuring everything, then testing it before putting it back into production mode.
Given the fact that this stuff is manufactured, packaged and shipped halfway around the world and is still as cheap as it is, they are working on razor thin margins to turn profits.
The only time they're going to look into altering anything is if something is broken so bad that all of the units are getting returned, or (much worse) it ends up causing injuries or death.
I think about computers and computer parts and their history when I think of this. In the early days of building computers with a friend of mine, everything was made in the States and was SUPER expensive. But despite the fact that the processing power, storage and memory were just mere fractions of what we have at our disposal today, those old PCs were almost perfect when it came to stability compared to what we have today if you set them up right.
You'd be hard pressed to find any electronic parts now that are made in America. They're a boatload cheaper, for sure, and everything is so much more powerful after 20+ years of R&D. From the quality of anything from motherboards, CPUs and GPUs to the software you're running whether it be an office suite or video games, the coding is also quite lazy these days, relying on the processing power of today's technology rather than expert coding and intelligent decision making to really push the limits of today's hardware.
By all rights, the machines we use in our everyday lives should be capable of quite a bit more than they currently are. But everything from the Operating System to the software package for your Graphics Card/Chip is written so sloppily that countless cycles are lost every second executing redundant code.
But nobody is ever going to fix any of that. Nobody's life is at risk. Most of the time, even though it is thought of as an inconvenience, a simple power down of the system and reboot is all that is required to "right the ship".
That's arguably a small price to pay compared to the $4000.00 it would cost to build a new computer if all of the parts were made here in the states and the fact that the days of $600 Office Suites are long gone. Hell... you can just use Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets which are almost as good as Microsoft Office and offer more to most people then they're ever going to need to use and you don't have to pay a cent for it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
But even I can see the sloppy (SLOPPY! SLOPPY!) programming. Our tablet, for example, has all the horsepower under the hood to be able to run several applications at once, and yet it can't manage to run more than one tab at a time. (eg play a video while you look at something else online.) Even my phone does better than that. Our DVR? Can't manage something as simple as "file management". What about "memory management"? Why do products need to be rebooted every once in a while? Doesn't the system do cleanup on powering down?
And that's just the stuff that I see. If someone (not me) were to look at how man
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Call the US number. Or maybe you can find the corporate office address online. I would be looking for "product development" or "design", or "customer feedback" or "complaints" but if you can't find those, ANY address will do!
Originally posted by Brenda:
The instructions for that bookcase gives the company name but no address. There is a phone number that is only good for the US. The case was designed in the US but made in China.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!
I was thinking about trying to look up the company name on line and see what falls out.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
And as I keep pointing out - that's THE essential internal contradiction of capitalism.
The person who makes a Mercedes can only afford a Kia ... yanno, the difference between the value their work creates and the sales prices is profit. They literally can't afford to buy their own work.
The person who makes a Kia buys a bicycle ...
The person who makes a bicycle buys shoes ...
The person who makes shoes goes barefoot ...
And I suppose that's OK. There are enough warm places on the planet where going barefoot will get you parasites, but at least your feet won't freeze off. But then you start considering the food production cycle ...
OF COURSE people can't afford to buy quality, or even buy American! That's a DUH! And OF COURSE business will only makes what they can sell! That's another DUH!
Also what happens when I have to depend on people with cars and they will only go so far i.e. the local Walmart.
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