designing for maintenance, a success story
I hate cordless phones. Hate hate hate. They are expensive, break easily, interfere with other wireless devices, and when the battery starts to die down, you have to buy some obscure, phone-specific battery for way too much money.
Last week, we bought yet-another-cordless-phone after the GE died and the replacement handset would never sync properly with the base station. This time, I decided to go with a Panasonic, as some similar models had received good ratings in Consumer Reports and Costco had them for cheap.
Setting them up, I was happy to discover that instead of some cordless phone specific battery, they use regular NiMH AAA batteries. Plentiful and cheap when the time comes to replace them.
Now if I could just get a set of schematics and a parts list so we’d have a chance of repairing the phone itself, maybe I’d have a phone that I could maintain over the long run…
Technorati Tags: batteries, design, sustainability