Re: Again, PalmOne proves Tungsten E is disposable crap...
From: Daniel James (wastebasket_at_nospam.aaisp.org)
Date: 09/28/04
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Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:05:00 +0100
In article news:<be09aeca.0409272122.5d476ac9@posting.google.com>, Sceptre wrote:
> According to a post on Palminfocenter
> (http://www.palminfocenter.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24293&sid=0d0f12daa02e5e1fdef0dd4fb55b08e6),
> PalmOne is officially charging Tungsten E users US $135 for battery
> replacement service.
Worse, they're proposing to charge that amount (less 20% for some
unexplained reason) to someone whose Palm is only 9 months old, and
is obviously suffering from some sort of fault.
In the UK the owner would have the right to have it fixed or replaced
as being "not of merchantable quality" if it failed so soon.
> NO ONE in their right mind will do this because the cost of TE itself
> was $200! PalmOne is forcing its users to throw out TE, and buy their
> latest model! When the Li-ion battery wears out after 3 years from
> first using the TE, you have to inevitably throw out the device.
Palm, like any other manufacturer of hi-tech goods, have a difficult
balancing act to perform. You can attract customers by making a device
cheap, or you can attract customers by making a device good. Ultimately
people will perceive value if the device does what's asked of it, and
"feels" more expensive than it costs.
Given that PDA technology is advancing rapidly, the device you buy today
will be obsolete within three years (the Palm you buy today will be
obsolete withing three months, if the rumoures of PalmOS6 devices are true).
Would you rather buy a device that lasts until you want to replace it, or
a device that lasts longer than that, and costs more as a result?
I'm playing devil's advocate here. I detest the common attitude toward
disposable devices that is promoted by our "effluent society", but I do
recognize that manufacturers' success depends on their balancing costs
(of manufacture AND of warranty service) against quality of experience.
Palm *could* have made the Tungsten|E so that the battery was user-replaceable.
To do this they'd have had to build in an enclosed battery compartment
so that J.Public's probing fingers couldn't damage circuitry, and they'd
have had to put a plug and socket on the battery wire, rather than soldering
it in place. That would increase the component cost, and would lead to
a risk that the plug might work loose and give intermittent connection,
causing unreliability of the PDA and possible loss of data. Soldering the
wire cuts manufacturing costs and increases reliability, and doesn't stop
technically savvy users replacing the battery at reasonable cost if they
want. Saying "no user serviceable parts inside" and "opening this case will
void your warranty" stops people fiddling without knowing what they're doing
(or, at least, absolves Palm of the blame) and saves Palm in servicing costs
(which are potentially far greater than manufacturing costs).
The only people who lose out are those few who use the PDA sufficiently
heavily that the battery really does pack up before the device has been
replaced with something better (or has been lost, stolen, broken, ...).
It turns out that such people are relatively few. Heavy PDA users are
precisely the people who can be most expected to replace their devices
frequently and so not run into these problems.
Again, I don't approve -- but my orbital mind-control laser is broken,
so I can't control the behaviour of the PDA buying/using public.
> Sorry, but putting $200 hard earned dollars into something you throw
> out 3 years down the road is simply unacceptable.
What are you saying here ... that something you use and derive benefit
from every day should cost less that $200 over three years?
What's that? A little under ¢20 a day? You use a PDA for a day for less
than the cost of a cup of coffee and you think it's too much?
I object to the environmental implications of throw-away gadgets, and I
object to the sheer waste of throwing away a device because it's obsolete
or because part of it no longer works -- but I do recognize that this
commoditization of PDAs makes them extremely cheap in purely financial
terms.
Having said that: I'd happily pay more for a PDA that was going to be
cheaper and easier to service, and that was fully recyclable at the end
of its life. I suspect I'm in a minority.
Cheers,
Daniel.
- Next message: Lisa Randall: "i know this is going to sound really stupid but ..."
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- In reply to: Sceptre: "Again, PalmOne proves Tungsten E is disposable crap..."
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