Your Gadgets Are Built to Die

About once a week I get a letter from a reader with a typical refrain: My camera stopped working. My laptop won't turn on. My monitor is broken. Can you help?

Well, probably not. As Wired's Kris Wagner writes, that was supposed to happen. It's all part of the circle of high-tech life, something that is charitably known as "planned obsolescence."

Now there are a couple of competing theories as to why this exists. Wagner is a fan of this neo-conspiracy: Your gadgets all have a switch inside that activates to blow up a critical piece of circuitry the day after the warranty expires. The more generous explanation: Gadgets are made with shoddy components that have a life span that's well known and tends to lie within a fairly small time frame. (That time frame, it turns out, is usually about two years.) Or, in other words, they just don't make 'em like they used to.

There are a lot of pressures on consumer electronics that make this the case. The biggest, which Wagner doesn't really discuss, is price. Manufacturers face intense price pressure in nearly every category, and that inevitably leads to corners being cut along the way. As the industry standardizes on cheaper and cheaper parts, quality converges on a happy medium: Cheap enough so demand keeps up with supply and rugged enough that "this product sucks" web sites don't pop up too much. Besides, as Wagner notes, part of planned obsolescence is consumer choice: People get tired of their old, outdated gadgets and eventually look for any excuse to upgrade. (And, as a side note, I still don't recommend those extended warranties. Not only are they terribly expensive, you'd be surprised how often they don't cover common problems.)

The debate could rage endlessly, and until someone discovers the secret switch that makes all gizmos die, it's not likely to be resolved. Ultimately I throw it to you, the reader, to share your experiences: Got a frustrating tale of gadgets dying, as if on cue? Share it!