When the microchips are down

by Chris Johnson. Published Mon 14 Dec 2009 12:59

It sounds like the script from some kind of lame sci-fi drama but I'll swear there is a conspiracy afoot amongst inanimate objects, especially those that contain silicon chips.

Does it sound a bit paranoid - imagining that devices fitted with a "memory" are capable of plotting against us? Of course it's nonsense... or is it?

The fact is that, in the last fortnight, it seems that, anything near me that is equipped with a plug has either decided to give up the ghost or been spooked into malfunctioning .

I am talking about computers and printers and mobile phones, even fibre-optic trees and twinkling Christmas lights. There has been a procession of them going bad in the office and at home.

Is it too paranoid to suggest that they really do have built-in obsolescence that makes them go wrong just before Christmas - just like some other electrical goods go pop two-days after the warranty runs out!

Most intractable has been the "wireless router" for my home computer. Warning: You may think you will use the disk for such a device only once. Wrong! So, take my advice, and unlike me, keep it safe for use when the machine says "Insert CD".

Otherwise, like me, you risk going stark-staring bonkers, on the phone to someone like a nice chap named Danesh in Mumbai, who still won't be able to talk you through fixing the fault after five
remorseless, mind-numbing hours of trying.

There is something about these wireless routers that makes them a particularly difficult problem. When they go wrong the go very, very wrong and even, otherwise technically-proficient people, can end-up being completely stumped.

And another thing: who on earth thought it was a good idea to switch off analogue TV in the first week of December? Madness, if you ask me.

Okay we had years of warning about it, but the powers-that-be know very well that people put things off to the last minute. So why impose this burden of being forced into buying new TVs and decoder boxes just in the mouth of Christmas?

I got a new flat-screen digital to replace our "second TV" at home. The one we had in the kitchen was about an old model that was about 15 years old and would probably have been good for another fifteen. But it had no scart socket, so it had to to go. (Incidentally the replacement does not work properly but that's a different story).

When I went to dump the old one, the jolly chap who was the chief Womble on guard duty at the tip confirmed my suspicions. They are inundated with people dumping TVs and telling them "It's in perfect working order but ...."

Somewhere there is a shed full of tellies in perfectly good condition that are being sacrificed, en-masse, on the altar of Digital broadcasting.

What they used to call "Granadaland" is the first region to see the analogue signal switched-off. But is does it make environmental or economic sense to press-on with forcing the entire
country to follow-suit while we are in a recession?

I suspect not when you bear in mind that the flat-screen TVs use more electricity than older models and the new ones are all imported to the UK.

Add to that the concept that new equipment comes with a built-in "break-down just before Christmas" timer built into a microchip and I start to to doubt that I am paranoid. It's not the microchips that are conspiring against us... it is the folk making a fortune out of them that are to blame.

Merry Christmas!