My base level Kenmore washer and dryer are over 20 years old. When it's time to replace them I would only consider Speed Queen.

SQs are reliable, and pretty robust. However, it is important to know that the top-loader agitator models and are popular on the Internet use quite a lot of water and are pretty hard on clothing. You may keep the SQ longer, but a modern front-loader may allow you to keep your existing clothing longer.

I always use the gentle cycle anyway

I don’t think all that many people really feel this way in the end. A significant majority of new car buyers feel very strongly about having Apple CarPlay for instance. And hey, me too.

Adding Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to older vehicles is easier than adding it to a newer one. On a newer vehicle you have to worry about car systems like the AC, seat controls, etc being integrated into the infotainment system. On an older car with a single din radio (w/ cassette deck or cd) you can just buy an off the shelf radio that has CarPlay and Android Auto.

Yeah but that’s just one example. As much as I like to imagine myself as a practical driver who might want to do performance driving or whatever, in reality I like all the creature comforts of a modern car.

Electronic stuff is still reparable. Probably even more cheaply, in some regards (certainly material cost). We've just been made to become accustomed to viewing electronic devices as disposable/primarily replaceable. And while most people have turned a wrench before, knowing how to use a soldering iron/heat gun/magnifier effectively is not a common skill. Could be, though.

Electronic stuff can be incredibly hard to repair, when the manufacturer doesn't share any information or even actively encrypts/locks it down.

Really it just depends. Depends on who made it what it it is where it is etc.

Yes, but some fixes can also be incredibly simple (ie. a bad capacitor, loose wire, etc..).

My built-in refrigerator was slowly dying. Weak beeping, occasionally power cycling - and getting worse as the days went on. No longer under warranty, and no replacement parts being made. Replacing the fridge would escalate to replacing cabinetry, and possibly a full remodel since that would “enhance” the worn look of everything else. You may know how this goes…

I knew enough to google the symptoms and found someone that would “rebuild” the main circuit board for a flat fee of $250 with about a week to turn around. That’s a fair bit cheaper than the remodel option.

But that got me thinking “if it’s a flat rate, and occasionally something is hard to fix that means most repairs must be trivial or the person wouldn’t be making enough money”. What’s an obvious, easy and cheap circuit board problem? Capacitors.

I had to buy a tester for $150 but I get to keep it. And the bad capacitor it found cost $.08.

Knowing just a little and being willing to learn a little more saved me a considerable amount of time, trouble and money.

I hope the same is true for cars because I have three relatively new ones in the family and we tend to keep them 10-20 years.

We also know that any electronic stuff is very often designed to not be reparable at all. While there are standard interfaces for standard diagnostic data, you rarely can skip dealing with a very closed stack of software, intellectual property around a thick shield of armor.

This is why you get things like heatable seat DLC.

I would like people to get into the habit of spinning up homebrew firmware/software to deal with this. Rockbox for your Ford. It's a heated seat, Michael, how much could it cost? Ten hundred lines of code?

Repairing electronics is not fun. Ask any undergraduate that spent hours looking for broken op-amps and bad solder joints. I don't think its the same class of repairability as old cars.

Maybe our family have just been lucky with the brands we pick, but I definitely haven't found this... My Electrolux fridge has been 100% solid for over seven years now, which I bought because my parents had had one for eight or nine years at the time (which is still going). My Bosch Series 8 front-loader washing machine has also been a tank, same age, no signs of anything going wrong, same story - I bought it because a friend had had a similar model for years, theirs is still going to...

Seems like there are still reliable appliances to be found, it's just probably that there's more low-quality cheaply made appliances on the market than there used to be, so it used to be easier to get a good one without researching so much...

It's sad that we're at a point where you consider a washer lasting 7 years to be something worthy posting about. Not long ago, applicances routinely lasted for decades.

Its kind of ironic that here in HN, a forum about technology and software, a lot of people have sentiments about less electronics and software. We know this stuff breaks in bad and odd ways and the more you have in a product (car) the more chances there are of it happening. Less is more.