> Then again, maybe that's because I'm still thinking like a consumer. When 
> I buy something, I want it to *not* brake. The manufacturer, on the other 
> hand, has a vested interest in making it so flimsy that it won't last 5 
> minutes. That way they get more repeat business. (In addition to the 
> materials savings, obviously.)

I think more people would steer away from a brand if it got a reputation for 
breaking all the time, usually manufacturers have exact targets for how many 
devices are returned failed after certain amounts of time.  They are 
carefully calculated (to produce a device that doesn't break too often, but 
is also sensible to manufacture) and then the product is carefully designed 
and tested to meet these targets.  The bad reputations usually come from 
mistakes rather than deliberate design intention.  Still this is usually a 
result of poor design/testing procedures, which are obviously related to 
cost.

> Personally it makes me angry that somebody would deliberately design 
> something to be defective so that they can make more money out of me.

I doubt anyone designs something intentionally to fail, no matter what it 
might seem like as a consumer.  It's quite hard to design something to be 
fine within warranty but then to fail just after, you risk a huge 
replacement bill if you try that tactic, plus you'll get a very bad 
reputation.

> (I still don't understand why digital devices *need* thousands of analogue 
> components in them in the first place, but anyway...)

On our boards nearly all of the discrete components are part of the power 
supply or to round off the data signals to improve EMI/EMC performance.

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