The decreasing price of technology...

how we used to live.

Not only has the price of technology constantly creeped down over the past 30 years that I have been spending my money on it but my earnings went up along the way so today I can buy even more "stuff".

The cost of TV's is killing TV repair companies. They are dropping like flies. We can only hope my company is one of the survivors! A Guy

Funny I just bought a new printer, a really simple one with a scanner and printer and it only cost me $40usd :P Stuff is geting cheaper compared to back then, got me a 22' 1080p tv for 150$

A Guy said:

The cost of TV's is killing TV repair companies. They are dropping like flies. We can only hope my company is one of the survivors! A Guy

the starter is going on our samsung, takes ages for it to power up with green lines and crackles etc.
once i would have tried to have it repaired but if it can hold out a few months im looking to upgrade it for a smart tv.
i think the problem is that tv's are becoming like computers they are always bringing out newer higher specs and people want to upgrade not stay with the same old sets.

boohbah said:

A Guy said:

The cost of TV's is killing TV repair companies. They are dropping like flies. We can only hope my company is one of the survivors! A Guy

the starter is going on our samsung, takes ages for it to power up with green lines and crackles etc.
once i would have tried to have it repaired but if it can hold out a few months im looking to upgrade it for a smart tv.
i think the problem is that tv's are becoming like computers they are always bringing out newer higher specs and people want to upgrade not stay with the same old sets.

Can you solder? You have 3 or 4 bad capacitors in the power supply you will be able to identify them as their tops will be "popped" . An easy fix if you can get the caps (often 1000mf at 16-25v), and can solder. A Guy

Bill, won't the caps need to be discharged first?

I saw Modern Marvels which said the first consumer GPS device cost $10,000, back in the early 90's I think.

Nah, even if you shorted across them, it would just wake you up, lol. I've done that repair hundreds of times. A Guy

Britton30 said:

Bill, won't the caps need to be discharged first?

I saw Modern Marvels which said the first consumer GPS device cost $10,000, back in the early 90's I think.

It depends on the cap and where it is used. Small caps that are around the diameter of your thumb or less don't generally store enough energy to hurt you. It's usually the big caps associated with the power supply that are potentially dangerous.

If the first consumer GPS device cost $10,000 in the early 90's then they must have come down in price rather quickly. I purchased a Delorme Tripmate GPS with AAA Map N' Go software in 1996 for $300.



Notice that the GPS attached via serial port, USB was just starting to appear and USB support in Win 95 was flaky at best.

I ran it on a Fujitsu Lifebook 735DX laptop that had a 133Mhz Pentium M processor, 48M of RAM and a 2G hdd. All that power for $2,000!