A true weekend OT.

Last week my wife complained the hose on the vacuum cleaner (more precisely, not the flexible part, but the plastic at the end when it connects to the metal pipe, held in the hand) is broken. I "fixed" it with a piece of tape - an engineer I am, am I not - but she did not stop saying we need a new vacuum. OK a new one would be fine but the old one works still fine, and we wanted to buy an another one for a certain reason, so I would need to buy one... I did not like the idea.
So I went to the shop downstairs (they sell knives and plates and batteries and similar "home" stuff, how do you call those shops?) and asked for a new one. Believe me or not, they had the plastic piece only, $4 and everything's OK now.
The point is, our vacuum is from a Czech company, ETA. 17 years ago, we had only one company for home appliances in then Czechoslovakia, so everybody had an ETA vacuum. I bought ours 8 yeras ago but still most of the people bought ETA then even than various other "western" brands were available, maybe not even much more expensive. People still got used to it and it has immense support, each shop can repair them and even people can repair them (and it is still a fair quality). And... original parts are still here and are a real bargain.

Back then, there was only one car maker (we were lucky, some of the communist countries had none and they waited for years for a car), Skoda, so everybody had a Skoda and still >50% of the cars here is Skoda... You can get Skoda parts for half the price of other similar car parts and you can get repaired them in each other village for no cost.

Standardisation is a great thing, as far as you have also an another choice.

Is it really '51-irrelevant?

Have a great weekend!

Jan Waclawek