To our dear engineer friends

[Akitu]

As a tech, I've come to realize that an engineer's job is to save the consumer minutes of frustration at the cost of years of the technician's life.
In conclusion, engineers are voodoo wizards employed by Satan himself.

[roho]

I curse engineers, not just with office equipment, but consumer goods as well. I've recently had a toaster with a countdown display, which never did make even toast, not too mention how "smart" everything now is. These clowns only see from the design process, never the confusion to the end user, and despite the new "smart" technology, many things don't work as well, or last long at all anymore. My most recent cell phone can automatically post pics on the web, but the phone quality is not much better then years ago. Engineers and marketers are the spawn of the devil himself, disguised as the latest product we must get our hands on, this is progress?

I'd love to see an engineer troubleshoot a real life problem, not just based on theory.

[gwaddle]

Seriously, they shouldn't be allowed to design anything until they have spent 6 months or so working in the field on the machines they are going to design. I'm not talking about a nice clean shop either. I mean where they have to drive 100 miles to get to a machine that's used in a welding shop.

[Coptech]

I think they design them using a CAD system, animate them, and if they pass an imaginary piece of paper, they go into production. From there, I honestly believe they strategize "planned obsolescence" in that it will fail pre-maturely to promote the replacement by newer "crap". I also believe that the old days of over-engineering stuff to create a safety net for rougher usage is a thing of the past. They use parts that meet the bare minimum of duty. I had an old boss that used to have a saying for some people that fits an engineer perfectly in my opinion. He said they were the kind of people you would like to buy for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth.

[fixthecopier]

Whenever I am removing a part that is a bitch to get to, I sometimes fantasize that I am the CEO of that manufacturer and I call the design engineers in and have a contest where they have to do the repair or remove the part in a certain amount of time. If they fail, I fire them. I am pretty sure that all of them had their wives run off with a tech and this is their way of getting revenge.

While changing the MFB on a bizhub c35, removing 30 or 40 screws, I kept thinking of how on an HP you unscrew 2 thumb scres and it slides out.

[NeoMatrix]

In my own modest interpretation I believe that engineers are tied down/limited with rival company pending Patent restrictions and copyright breach. Seriously though, how many ways can you build a leggo block(plastic box) and file a patent to protect the development cost ? What we need is to take the best idea from every known manufacture an place them all into one machine. What are the chances of every manufacturer giving up their best patent idea to all other companies to build the best machine ever ? Try none,nadia,nil, no chance... While all the best ideas are tied up in separate corporate patents there's probably no hope of ever seeing a consistent working machine for the low to mid-range consumer market.

Obsolete button/Out of warranty button:
We use to openly joke about the obsolete or out-of-warranty button built into every machine. We would joke that "Someone must have pushed the out-of-warranty button by mistake". See the software industry for more out-of-warranty redundancy.

The cold hard fact's remain : it's a very real consumer throw away world we now live in.
The quicker the machine breaks the faster we/they sell a new one. The more the machine breaks; the more customer money is spent; the more technicians stay employed, the more salesmen's are needed to B/S about the next better model machine; the more engineers are employed to fix the problems and keep themselves employed.

It's the same old roller coaster track with new coaster-cars each year, I guess when we've had enough we can hop off at anytime.

It's a darn vicious cycle, don't ya luv that....

[copier addict]

To be fair to the engineers it would be extremely difficult to design a machine that has all of the parts easy to remove.

[allan]

These things do work. And it keeps me in a job. Before i read this i was thinking about how some of these machines just keeps on working as advertised. Its briliant design.

Some brands i really don't get.

[paulrid]

While changing the MFB on a bizhub c35, removing 30 or 40 screws, I kept thinking of how on an HP you unscrew 2 thumb scres and it slides out.

There is something about KM and screws, why use 1 when 25 will do

[Tonerbomb]

As we all love to hate the Engineers that come up with the ridiculous designs we have to fix, Let's not forget about those that come up with the pipe dreams the engineers are asked to create. Yes that would be the Sales and Marketing idiots that want the new greatest thing that the competition doesn't have. These blithering idiots ideas are often the cause of some of the stupidest service calls like "I can't staple anymore", on a ricoh someone pushed the Simple display button............... finishing is not shown in that mode. Dumb asses.................................