2 years without a mobile phone Bliss

[mrcharly]

You've had a lot of bad luck with electronics, Robson!

We are a tad frugal in my household. Phones aren't thrown away when someone gets a new one on contract, they are handed down. There are smartphones nearly 7years old still going strong. Computers bought for a tenner from a school that are 12 years old and still in use.

OTOH, when I lived on a boat it seemed that the water pump packed up nearly every 6 months. Bloody overpriced crap. I got good at stripping them down and doing repairs, cannibalising one to repair the other.

My sneaky mind suspects that the mains power supply in your area is 'dirty'.

 

[Stew]

I was waiting for some constructive assistance. Not. I get more help from my musicial friends.

What a great attitude.

Out of interest, what actual assistance do you want. To me it just looks like you're moaning about how technology doesn't work for you. Repeatedly. I don't understand what you're trying to achieve. It doesn't work for you, device after device after device. We get it. Perhaps it's time to move on?

 

[rik_uk3]

Right now, I'm prepared to believe just about anything beyond what the Sirius geeks try to tell me.
Anything I do for repairs (no such thing = operator error) requires 5 hr on a winter mountain highway and $150 in 4x4 gas.
Hell, I have not even tossed the boxes that all the new stuff came in.

Maybe I need to make a doll, stab it with some copper pins, choke on a bunch of smoke and kill the beast with a 6lb hammer.
That's actually a lot more economical. Next time I'm in the city for other reasons, buy another one.

Honestly, it's cool to see how this technology has boosted exploration. Forgot a dozen spare batteries? You are snookered, but good.
How about the guy, following his GPS, was instructed to drive off the end of a partially demolished bridge.
The drop and the crash and the subsequent explosion killed his wife.. .. thank you, GPS.

I got along without it before I found it, I can get along without (the crutch) now.
The utter lack of reliability really bothers me.

Map and compass can be seen as a crutch? As for the 'utter lack of reliability', well your either very very very unlucky and or trolling, no offence meant.

 

[OldJimbo]

My sneaky mind suspects that the mains power supply in your area is 'dirty'

Exactly my thought, and in that place I'd bet on it. While I know a bit about power conditioning for a specific device like a computer, that wouldn't help for other devices in a house. I can ask my electrician kids about that.

Since I live in the north, too, I can understand the frustration. I've pointed out on this thread that I expect my vehicle GPS to fail in getting a signal until revived due to winter weather conditions, and so on. That doesn't make the technology bad or even totally unreliable - but it does mean learning a few tricks, going to a lot more trouble and effort, and probably extra expense. When I want stuff to actually work, I found/find that worthwhile. Dealing with customer support up here will drive a person to distraction and almost never lead to resolution unless the person asking for the support knows all about issues and can force the support centre to get an engineer on the line.

Yep things can be tougher than believed. Here I'm delighted with my Garmin GPS - but their Basecamp maps are as out of date as the QLankarte. So the GPS works fine but features such as the local rivers have changed position considerably. Thank goodness for Google Earth and satellite imaging.

 

[Robson Valley]

Dirty power? Where I live, that makes perfect sense but only for the plug-in devices.
We can have 60+ outages in a single day.

10 seconds and I can be off the grid, running a 2kW pure sine wave inverter which
is supposed to be clean enough for medical equipment.

I have a little 800W square wave inverter that's OK for stringing Christmas lights all over my truck
or electric lights (funky old antique floor lamp) in a campsite. 2 x 6VDC Deep Cycle batteries out of
my home solar unit and away I go!

There's a concept in the consumer electronics industry called: "infant mortality."
I have perfected the ability to select the items destined to die in less than 6 months.
The rest of you appear to get along fine.

 

[OldJimbo]

There's a concept in the consumer electronics industry called: "infant mortality."
I have perfected the ability to select the items destined to die in less than 6 months.
The rest of you appear to get along fine.

Now we might get somewhere!

What you have there with the dirty power and climate is called a "hostile environment". While there are no bullets flying overhead, the combination of electrical low voltages and spikes are going to do a very thorough job on your electronics in the house if they are less than top grade and so made for such. Outside with the truck the combination of low temps and humidity coming in waves at it will affect electronics too.

This is not a myth. it it so. Part of my my kids' education was building explosion proof trailers to hold monitoring equipment for gas fields. I guess the name tells you everything you need to know about the durability and price... I did an experiment once with four obsolete IBM PS/2 computer towers - so $30,000 in original price. We drove my 3/4 ton over them, subjected them to high voltage, not a problem. Well price is a problem..

So in your case work the statistics. Big stores will actively try to sell you extended warranty. You have to read it carefully and do research - but then buy that and return the goods when they stop working in your hostile environment. You'll soon find that you have to get people to buy stuff for you because you will be flagged as a person in a HE and so they know everything you have dies.

My first concern would be if you have any of that LoJack satellite controlled anti theft stuff on your vehicle then get it properly disconnected. I saw my kid do that, and was very concerned about if he had missed payments on the truck or something. Nope, with certain WEATHER conditions the device can shut down the truck, which could be a problem in winter. So after dealing with the fleet he was getting down to his own truck.

There's a lot to this stuff, and getting down to actual solutions is important.

 

[OldJimbo]

I'd forgotten to add something important.

My friends' daughter took a position between here and Prince George and so went there with her new VW Golf with the 2.5 motor and unfortunately an integrated theft prevention device. Well in -30C the car didn't start and with the big motor the battery went down. A friend came by to jump start the car, but the anti-theft device didn't like that and locked everything down. The car being under warranty, it was hauled on a trailer to PG, where the dealership finally figured how to fix things - there was no fast local fix..., and put in a block heater etc..
That could have gone poorly if up in the mountains when everything went south.

I got a frantic call from mom who was worried about her daughter waiting by a bus stop for a bus to PG to get her vehicle, which can be hours late here, in low temps. So I said I'd drive the kid. As it happened there was some good weather for a few days that February, and due to the miracle of texting I had the girl get 4 days off and we made a slight detour to go visit her mom in Kamloops before picking up the vehicle and getting it home. Shining times!
Things could have gone poorly, and I recognize that. If there's one place not to wait for a bus if you are a young woman, then it has to be highway 16.