I mentioned last year about how I was trying to source some light switches and similar fittings, but the hardware store man said they were now obsolete and impossible to find (certainly weren´t there in his store), but then I went to the aladdin´s cave ferreteria in the centre of the pueblo and Antonio found me plenty of them in his tardis-like back room. Then I had the same issue with the hinges and his wife found some that were available either-handed.
Now our house was totally refitted with doors, electricity, tiling, etc about 20 years ago, but still spares and replacements are difficult to find.
I say difficult to find, but some things are impossible to find. When more than 50% of the local properties use the same sort of equipment, what goes on?
I remember reading, probably 30 years ago, about the japanese using "planned obsolescence" for equipment - this was particularly in IT but rapidly spread to cars. It is all very well offering a 7 year warranty, as some do, but when the lifetime of each and every part is planned to be 7 years, it doesn´t bode well to buy an old one. And knowing the japanese, the planning will mean that certain parts are "down-graded"to that 7 years in manufacturing if they can be made cheaper at that level. (I always remember the legendary Quality story about someone in the UK ordering parts from Japan and specifying a failure rate of 3 per thousand. When they got the order, there were 997 parts plus 3 wrapped separately. When they queried why, they were told they were the 3 failing ones and the rest were perfect. They knew what they were doing and had faith in their quality!)
We all know about HP making money out of cartridges and Kodak from their film, well Apple do actually make money from their hardware, but only by making it redundant due to software changes (mind you, that gave me a job in the old days).
My issue with Apple is that they produce really fantastic quality hardware that has a life far greater than their support. My generation really do not like throwing away things that (should be) are still usable, but software compatibility is just another method of planning obsolescence.
And why these stories now?
Well, one of the cisterns has developed a crack down the front. I spotted it last night, and spent the night worrying whether I would awake to a torrent down the stairs). This is actually the second one of the (5) cisterns to develop this fault at 20 years old. And the biggest problem is, that Roca, the biggest porcelain manufacturer in Spain, has stopped making them in beige (which is a bit of a bugger when all your five bathrooms have beige fittings) as they only seem to do white. In fact, every time I see "new life in the sun" the properties have beige sanitary ware, so it must be a business decision to push people to get everything replaced - or maybe most people aren´t as anal as me about re-matching colours.
The joke is that back in the seventies when I bought a new flat, a white bathroom suite was considered very unusual and was charged as a "special additional option".
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