But this all settles back to today's typical product warrenty. Once you buy it the warrenty covers the product for a year (maybe two at best) and then if it (including the display) quits working it falls on your own shoulders to decide what to do. Usually you simply decide to simply go purchase a replacement and the broken thing ends up in the waste stream. Now you can also elect to spend anywhere from 15 to 25% of the purchase price to get an extended warrenty that gives you another year.

I bring this up in light of the current thread discussion. One has to wonder how much companies are thinking about 24x7 operation of a product through its life time when they know the warrenty is only one year. How many actual design criteria are tempered against that type of thinking?

Michael Karas