Friday 5 for June 24: Consumer Reports

Friday 5 for June 24: Consumer reports

The questions as usual come from the Friday 5 website.

1. When did you last eat or drink something purchased from a truck or other wheeled vehicle?

I used to go to a variety of lunch trucks in the past. The last time I went to one was probably in 2019, months before the COVID-19 attack happened. Since then I have not returned. Also prices for plate lunches spiked A LOT higher since the start of that darn pandemic.

2. When did you last purchase something previously owned?

A couple of $1 record albums that I bought from the Thrift Shop. New vinyl records are now WAY TOO EXPENSIVE! Thanks millennials for spiking the prices higher. Ugh! You folks should have just stayed with digital.

3. When did a purchase most recently exceed your expectations?

For any purchase to exceed my expectations, it has to 1. last longer than 10 years and 2. be affordable. That said, many of the cameras I use are older than 10 years. Some of my audio gear is old and analog. Love em. We need more devices that do not connect to the internet.

My Toyota Corolla is way older than 10 years. I certainly got my money's worth on that car, which I bought used many, many years ago. Things that cost more than $100 should last a long time. I use a 10 year time frame to gauge the quality of expensive consumer items. Long ago when you spent serious money, you expected things to last a very long time.

4. When did you last overpay for something because you needed it right away?

Gasoline! Damn that Biden. The Keystone Pipeline should be re-opened and our national policy should go to making our nation oil independent free of expensive foreign crude from the Middle East, Indonesia and Russia! Trump had that right.

Like everyone else that drives, we are severely impacted by the price of gas at the pump. Per gallon, while we are not the highest in the nation, $5.50+ cents per gallon truly bites, even if I only drive a Corolla!

5. Among recent purchases, what was the best bargain?

I got two FREE (with coupon discounts, etc.) Paul McCartney CDs from Amazon this week.... Egypt Station from 2018 and McCartney III from 2020 (see photo at top). Happy belated birthday Paul... 80 years strong and thanks for the decades of great music! Yeah!

Overall, CDs are now a way better bargain than new vinyl LPs. They cost way less, and like it or not, are more durable than record albums (which I still love, thank God I already have a big collection of many classic titles) and sound great even when bought used. Can't say that about vinyl record albums, especially when you take a chance on used titles (though I have been lucky with most).

Record albums should be $8 to $9 for a standard black vinyl issue as new. Clearly less than $15. I was cringing when reissues of LPs that I bought brand new for $8 or even less back in the day, are now selling for over $20 a pop and more recently with an industry price hike, selling for more than $30. I mean is a $30 copy of The Beatles Abbey Road worth it when a perfectly fine CD can be had for half the price? Duh! Good thing I have both the CD and a vinyl record copy of this classic album in my collection.

As for new music released this century I am more than happy with a digital download or a regular CD. Musicians of the current generation are not worthy for issuance on vinyl and the high prices that go with that.

Friday 5 for March 19: Consumer reports

Expensive stuff should last a long time.

1. What tool did you most recently purchase, and what tool will you purchase next?

I recently purchased a Canon 100mm macro lens for my Canon DSLR camera at a thrift shop.

My next purchase? Probably sometime this year a Google Pixel phone of some sort. Haven't quite decided.

2. What toy did you most recently purchase, and what toy will you purchase next?

Toy I recently purchased? None, though last year someone gave me an old iPad. The thing is stuck on iOS 9.x, so it is limited to what it can do since Apple has long stopped supporting this OS. So the iPad is relegated to "toy status" since I have a bunch of useless games on it for when I want to veg out. The basic apps that came with the iPad works OK, so it is still good for some stuff... like camera, though it is kind of clunky to carry around and use it as a camera.

Next toy purchase? Huh... can I dream on for this... computers, new cameras and anything else expensive that I cannot afford will probably make good "toys", though I tend to buy these types of things because I need a new "tool". For now I am just putting all or most of them off for a later time.

3. What staple did you most recently purchase, and what staple will you purchase next?

Food is pretty much a staple.. and I will probably keep on buying more food in the future until the day I die. 

4. What did you most recently purchase to give away, and what will you next purchase to give away?

Electronic massage "peanut" for Lisa.

I don't know what I will purchase next.

5. What are you most recently glad you did not purchase after consideration?

Not very recent but at one time I considered purchasing an Apple iPhone or an iPad... but the built in battery experience does not make the expensive purchase last very long. A shelf life of 5 years or less for anything made by Apple is abominable! 

I have always had this unwritten rule. If you buy something that cost over $100 it should last at LEAST 10 years before it breaks or you need a new something of the same thing

Things that I have paid a lot of money for that lasted a long time (and I still have them)....

1993 Toyota Corolla - yes, Toyota makes good cars, at least the older ones. I don't know about the newer models with all the computerization built in.

Power Mac G4 tower - Still works, bought it new back in 2001. Though I hardly use it, when I want to boot into something with Mac OS9 or an older version of OSX, it is still there. Unfortunately the monitor went bad about 5 years ago, so now I have to use a standard VGA monitor with it. Still good for what it is.

MacBook Pros (2009 and 2011 models) - Bought these brand new, and they still work, despite the built in battery.

Canon Digital Rebel 6 DSLR - Bought this in 2011 and 10 years later it is still working. The batteries are removable! Yay!

I have several other older digital as well as film cameras, and all of them still work. My Minolta XD11 and X700 are two of my favorite film cameras and both still work. Bought them years ago. And someone also gave me an old X700, more than 15 years ago, and that still works! Yay.

Other things that I own that still work and stood the test of time for longer than 10 years... Technics turntable, Optimus Cassette Tape Deck, and Tandy analog mixer among sound system stuff.... appliances? Kenmore refrigerator... had that since 1986 and it still works! 

That all said, why don't many devices today last a long time????

I was most disappointed with my Apple iPod Touch 4 that I bought back in 2010. It cost $500 had 64 gigs of storage and worked fine with most of the same apps that you could run on an iPhone. However after 7 years, the battery started going and about a year later the dam thing would not even boot up, even connected to the AC circuit. Ugh! I should have known that damn built in battery would not last.

The same fate has rendered most of the 7 standard iPods I have of different models useless or nearly useless. The built in batteries have either lost the ability to hold a charge at all or can only be used for 10 to 15 minutes before the battery has to be recharged. 

Those batteries like those of the iPod Touch and other Apple iDevices are all sealed in shut and cannot easily be remove and replaced by owners. This practice really sucks. The iPods were great players... but the shelf life is just too short. The same can be expected for all new iPhones, iPads, copycat Android devices that have also adopted this stupid Apple mantra of sealing the batteries in.

Consumers should have the option to buy the same type of devices with removable batteries. 

But I get it. It is manufacturer's desire to sell us products with built in obsolescence. The built in battery is just the ideal symbol of that built in obsolescence, which is followed by too frequent operating system upgrades that eventually render useful devices useless, especially if that device has to connect to the internet.

Ugh!

I hate built in batteries. 

Sadly if I want to get something new like another Android phone I will probably have to get one without a removable battery. That is a major reason why I do not want to buy a really expensive phone. Planned obsolescence is a bad thing.