I about ten minutes (see what I did with the title?) I will be losing my internet connection as an engineer arrives to “improve” the service I will receive from BT. I have pointed out that I am perfectly satisfied with the service, but consider the price to be ridiculous. Their answer is to put me on fibre broadband and charge me less. This seems illogical when all they needed to do was to reduce the price to reflect the fact they have done very little to improve the service in the last 20 years. All they have done in that time is to provide an expensive new router to restore the service to the levels it used to be. This is not, as they claim, about progress, it is about built in obsolescence.
First we had internet, then we had broadband and now we have fibre optic broadband. That is, of course, the advantage of living in town. In the country I believe many people still struggle with speed and reliability.
We will soon see if it is an improvement or a nightmare.
Meanwhile, let us all think of Dyson’s contribution to modern life. Dyson’s main invention is not, as many think, a slickly advertised, powerful and heavy vacuum cleaner, but the concept of filters which need to be replaced (as in purchased) on a regular basis. In the old days when one Hoover bag could last a lifetime manufacturers of vacuum cleaners had to rely on selling new equipment to make money, and as they used to build them to last they didn’t sell much.
That’s the way to riches in 21st Century – design something a little worse, which needs a little more maintenance. Then you can use your money to buy up farmland and talk about responsible farming whilst creating tons of plastic waste. Simple.
I’m off now. Wish me well.
Pictures are durable old-fashioned technology.
From Pottery to Canal to London to Manchester. 19th Century technology which still works.
I hope your internet now works like a dream. Ours is quite patchy (is it because we live in a village outside Leeds?). The O2 mast is down as well, so I’m glad I like paper books.
It has been good for some time now – particularly since the kids left and we stopped using so much. One of the advantages of living in town.
Mind you, at work the internet has sometimes been annoyingly slow and glitchy.
We have had several incidents at work connected to telephone engineers working – though they always deny their work should impact on the internet.My sister always said you could tell when the US got into the office, as her speed in Cambridgeshire would fall dramatically. So may factors . . .
And food for thought…
Having read today’s offerings in reverse order I know you dun good
🙂 That can be the trouble with catching up. I have discovered, several times.that people were recovering before I knew they were ill.
🙂
Fingers crossed. Dyson is like Apple, a specialist at selling people very overpriced bits of quite well designed engineering.
The Microsoft system of renting out software is a masterstroke too. I hear their regular “upgrades” for Windows now detect old copies of Office – I wonder why they need to know that . . .
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I hear you, Derrick, and totally agree. Many things are not made as solidly as they were in the past. On the vacuum cleaner filters, sometimes there are reusable, washable filters one can buy for various appliances. You may want to take a look around the net for one. It is possible there is one for your vacuum.
Oops, I mean Simon! 🙂
One white-haired old codger with dodgy knees is easily mistaken for another . . . 🙂
We went back to basics and bought a simpler yet effective machine. 🙂
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you’ve neatly touched a sore nerve all the way from there to here.
It seems to be a universal experience – the engineer says the changes are upsetting for many people, who merely want a connection rather than cutting edge technology.