Markus (2/18/2014)
I can understand both sides of it really... the thing is a furnace, washer, car doesn't run completely on software that needs to be patched every single month. If Microsoft kept supporting every single operating system forever they would have a nightmare on their hands and it would be quite expensive for them to write a patch for each different operating system. So, it is a little different than a mechanical product sitting in your kitchen.
The thing is with an appliance when it gets to 9+ years half the time when a part goes bad it is cheaper to buy a new product than the part.... our Fridge compressor died at 8 years old... new fridge was cheaper than compressor... and it was 40% more energy efficient... dishwasher the same thing.... the heat exchanger on our furnace died and we got a new furnace that was 17% more efficient because it was cheaper than replacing the heat exchanger in the old one.
Yes, it's different than a mechanical product in your kitchen, but that's because you're looking at it from the point of a software guy, someone who's become accustomed to constant replacement, no permanence whatsoever.
Many people are not at all into that mindset. They buy something, they keep it till it stops working, not simply until the manufacturer declares it 'obsolete'.
There is a problem with the throwaway mentality, tossing out 5 year old appliances, 2 year old cell phones. I drive a 25 year old car, I maintain it well, I have no plans to replace it any time soon. The furnace in my house was old when I bought it 24 years ago. I bleed it yearly, have replaced a valve, but it's still running. Interestingly, it's convection flow and thermo couple design means that it is fully functional without electric power... really helpful during Sandy. (You can't get systems like that any more, our overlords at the EPA have declared them not efficient enough).
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --