Many busted gadgets may not be fixable at all

In the old days, when your VCR broke down, you took it to a repair shop and paid a guy 100 bucks to break it open, replace some worn down parts, and give it a tune-up. Bang, good as now.

Now, when gadgets break, many users are finding they simply can't be repaired at all.

A Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that on average, 15 percent of people owned electronics products that broke down in the last year and were unable to remedy the problem (resulting in the product having to be thrown away). It's even worse for some highly-popular categories. About 25 percent of cell phones were found to be unfixable and, surprisingly, 20 percent of computers couldn't be repaired.

Even stranger, of those items which were reparable, many users said they ended up deciding to fix the devices themselves or asking a friend for help instead of consulting an official repair service.

What's going on here? This is a trend that's been accelerating for years, actually. As electronic devices get smaller, they cram more capabilities onto single chips or circuit boards. That's good for getting prices down, improving battery life, and adding features... but it comes at a price. If a single component on that circuit board breaks, the entire board almost always has to be replaced to make the item functional again. And the cost and effort of doing that is often greater than the price of buying a replacement.

Meanwhile, product failures seem to be on the rise. The survey notes that 40 percent of computer users and 30 percent of cell phone users reported their devices had become unusable in the last year. Ouch.