Back in 2014 I purchased a Kindle HD color tablet/reader. I don’t recall the exact model number—I think it’s called a “Third Generation”. It’s given me excellent service; I couldn’t be more pleased with it.
As is generally the case with this sort of technology little by little its battery is holding a charge for an ever shorter period. Now it needs to be recharged roughly every other day whether used or not as long as it’s powered on which is most of the time.
I’ve looked at the successor products from Amazon and at every tablet on the market and I’m saddened to report that they’re all inferior. None of them have the screen resolution of my three year old Kindle. And it’s not a minor difference. Most of the tablets have screen resolutions half that of my old Kindle. The best have three quarters its resolution. It’s clear to me that keeping my old tablet is a better choice for me than replacing it with the latest and allegedly greatest.
I’m not sure what I’ll do when my Kindle HD nears the end of its battery life. I’ve looked at the instructions on Youtube for replacing the battery and, while I could do it, I’ll probably seek out someone more adroit than I to change it for me. It’s a tedious, involved, exacting process and one better suited for younger eyes than mine.
I’m not sure what the point of this post is. Maybe it’s just to air a grievance. Maybe it’s to disabuse any of you of the notion that technology is always replaced with better technology. That simply isn’t so. I could present a dozen examples of that. This is only the latest.
Men’s dress shoes are also made to a lower standard than they were ten years ago. A $200 pair used to last over a year; now, six months tops. Less expensive shoes can sometimes fall apart within weeks.
I have several pairs of shoes that are 20 or more years old and still in excellent condition. Every few years I have them resoled and they’re good to go.
My newer shoes tend to wear out in about a year.
The message is that your interests and shoe manufacturers’ interests are not necessarily the same.
Remember all the noise about planned obsolescence a few decades ago? Seems the current rhubarb about sustainability likes to gloss that over. However, constant turn over of retail stock grows the economy and share holder value.
Ben’s complaint about shoes is an example of planned obsolescence. My primary complaint (about the Kindle) is that the new products are technically inferior to the old ones, a somewhat different issue.
Will leave definitions to those who delight in such things, however, ponder the gushing reviews, ad copy, etc that tries to tell you the 1280×720 res, 16 gig sd in your choice of six colors, is much better than that old tried 1920×1080, 32 gb sd comes in only one color cutting board/snack tray. Then there’s things like my home AC compressor, washing machine that expired a day or two after the warranty did.
My Kindle battery is starting to go. Hope there is a better option soon. Isn’t the free market supposed to provide those?
Steve
More seriously, this is par to one of the arguments I used to have with Boudreaux at his site. He would claim that nearly everything was so much cheaper now. Well, yes, but was it really a better value? The old jeans we had wore like iron. The new ones fall apart. In some areas, we clearly get a better value, just not so sure it is universal and price alone does not tell the story. (Of course this could just be old guy walking up the hill in the snow both ways kind of reminiscing, but I really don’t think so.)
Steve
steve:
One of the things I noticed when I lived in Germany was that the people had a lot fewer things but what they had was of higher quality. Rather than having five cheap suits a man would have one good suit. Maybe it’s changed. I concluded that Americans like a lot of crap.
My suspicision is the inferior Kindle is also planned. At some point they’ll re-release the older, better model which they’ll represent as an upgrade while saving on R & D.
I doubt it. The tablet market is a highly competitive one in which Amazon can’t really compete readily. Their products just have to be no worse than the leaders so that’s what they’ll do.
We just got a 7th generation kindle fire to replace one of my kids older 3rd gen Kindle HD fires. It’s true that Amazon doesn’t make a 7″ HD version anymore, so the resolution is a bit lower, but the screen is small enough that I can’t really tell. Everything else about it is a huge upgrade though. The smallest screen HD version is now the 8″ Fire HD.
The biggest gripes I have about worse tech replacing better tech is with operating systems and specifically UI’s. Companies constantly feel the need to iterate their UI’s frequently and you often don’t have a choice about upgrading.
Another grip is standardization. I still haven’t forgiven Microsoft for use ctrl-f for “find” in everything except for Outlook.