Quote from: Coen on February 18, 2021, 10:50 AM

Quote from: Alex on February 18, 2021, 05:51 AM

You keep talking about legally, legally, legally. No one is going through the pain and expense of a court case just for a new pair of brushes.

That is the American perspective he, were legal spending is a significant proportion of GDP 

There will always be someone with money to burn on the hill they decided to die on. Many of the dumb suits are 15 minutes of fame situations.  But sometimes someone does it to prove a point...of some type.

USA #1

Maybe if other countries try real hard they can pass the US.

Our government is doing it's best to catch up. That is... in writing dumbass legislation that then results in massive litigation. 

Quote from: Svar on February 18, 2021, 11:31 AM

Quote from: DeformedTree on February 16, 2021, 07:33 PM

Quote from: Coen on February 16, 2021, 06:31 PM

Quote from: DeformedTree on February 16, 2021, 05:49 PM

when CMS was discontinued, the parts disappeared in a massive way

CMS still falls under the 10 year parts availability warranty of Festool. You can still order all the individual parts and build one yourself.
That is exactly what I did to get my CMS-PS module.

So I was talking about what folks would by from stores, not parts.   Still,  ability to buy spares doesn't matter much at all. It's no longer a concurrent product, no further development, no longer on store shelves, etc.  So going to those means doesn't much matter. 

I don't understand this anxiety. Get what you want when given opportunity, put it to use and be happy. Many of my tools have been discontinued, and all the rest will certainly be discontinued at some point. Should I not buy tools because of this?

It's about not buying into a dead platform. Those that already have a bunch of CMS parts; the parts availability is a way to expand. For those that have nothing in CMS yet; I recommend they look elsewhere.

CMS is still available in the US. Hence my comment to the OP.

Quote from: Coen on February 18, 2021, 11:36 AM

Quote from: Svar on February 18, 2021, 11:31 AM

Quote from: DeformedTree on February 16, 2021, 07:33 PM

Quote from: Coen on February 16, 2021, 06:31 PM

Quote from: DeformedTree on February 16, 2021, 05:49 PM

when CMS was discontinued, the parts disappeared in a massive way

CMS still falls under the 10 year parts availability warranty of Festool. You can still order all the individual parts and build one yourself.
That is exactly what I did to get my CMS-PS module.

So I was talking about what folks would by from stores, not parts.   Still,  ability to buy spares doesn't matter much at all. It's no longer a concurrent product, no further development, no longer on store shelves, etc.  So going to those means doesn't much matter. 

I don't understand this anxiety. Get what you want when given opportunity, put it to use and be happy. Many of my tools have been discontinued, and all the rest will certainly be discontinued at some point. Should I not buy tools because of this?

It's about not buying into a dead platform. Those that already have a bunch of CMS parts; the parts availability is a way to expand. For those that have nothing in CMS yet; I recommend they look elsewhere.

CMS is still available in the US. Hence my comment to the OP.

CMS was never fully available in the US with some options missing. Now that in Festool's main market CMS is no longer offered... I wonder how long it will last. Knowing Festool... announcements of to be discontinued products tend to come after the fact... 

If they didn't ask for something like a receipt, then people could go to the dump, curb, etc pull something out of the trash and then try to get a replacement.

Far as getting parts, and service. Yes, I think everyone wishes all companies made it easy for anyone to get a hold of them and buy a part. Even if it's a bit pricey for what it is, if it means being able too keep something going, great.

People hate trashing things, but at the same time most stuff made today is designed to be trashed, even if you could get the part, is it worth it? Making tools easy to repair and get parts for makes sense when they are well designed tools designed to be around for a long time.

Some companies do a good job, others a famously horrible. The nice thing about stuff festool makes is there is little reason for change, things can go on for a long time as is. Which is why when the make a dumb change, or leave out a feature that should have been there, it's extra frustrating as it probably won't get resolved for 10-15 years.

It's what makes well built, well designed corded tools nice. There is no reason they won't work just fine for decades and be serviceable along the way. For items you use rarely, maybe even pull out once every few years, they can't be beat.

Also recently, I had a Remmington trimmer which fell on the ground. One teeth on the outside of the blade was broken off. This rendered the whole trimmer unuseable as the corner would cut into my skin. I asked Remmington if I could buy a new blade. I could not. They were willing to send me an entire new trimmer instead if I could provide the receipt. While I am very meticulous with my receipts I could not find this one anymore. So I had to trash the entire trimmer because of 1 incredibly small and cheap part that was broken.

I find this outrageous. You should be able to repair your possessions. Humans are too wasteful.

Oooh. Companies that invent rules like that get an invented receipt from me, no problemo.

Quote from: DeformedTree on February 20, 2021, 03:20 PM

even if you could get the part, is it worth it? Making tools easy to repair and get parts for makes sense when they are well designed tools designed to be around for a long time.

Darn right it is worth it, the trimmer was only 6 months old. I had my previous corded Philips trimmer for almost 15 years. The Philips is still good, but I wanted the new one because it was cordless and very cheap. Guess what? I can still order a new blade for my old Philips.

Suffice it to say, I bought a cordless Philips now. I am NEVER, EVER buying anything from Remington again, and I will diss the brand at every occasion I get. Remington just scored a life sized -1 with me.

Right, which is just my point. Some items are built to be supported, they also tend to be tools that are built well.  I was thinking originally you were talking outside string trimmers / weed whackers. Now I get you are talking face trimmers (shavers). I suppose you could use either type of tool for either job if you are careful.  But both fall into the same place where some are made to last and be supported, others are not. The key is picking the right one. I've run into similar with the trimmers that they just stop making the blades, sometimes on models not even that old.  These products also tend to have manufactures that change things just for change, or create a bunch of different models where you can't even tell what is what, I think Braun makes a new model every few weeks and they are unique to each state you live in.

When you said Remington, my first thought was the gun maker. But the same name tends to also get slapped on all sorts of consumer products. Buying anything that isn't from a real company is a big issue (generic/store/house brands). Where the same no name company makes the same thing under 30 different brands, and you have no way to sort out where to get support for it.

Wow, I didn't know they even made kitchen appliances (Philips), had to look it up, apparently they do even in the US.  I see their stand mixer "discontinued".  Any company trying to challenge KitchenAid on a stand mixer just sounds like a business model for "what is a great way to loose money and fail badly".

Also funny that most the kitchen appliances they make (in the US anyways), are functions all done with a kitchen aid stand mixer.  Way to completely target a massive fail. Like to see that meeting.  "so there is a US company that makes many things, but is mainly know for one appliance, they have existed in every kitchen of every house in the US virtual unchanged except for trendy color of the time for a half century, and has specialty add-ons to do everything one can think of. Are built of steel and so over constructed they cannot be destroyed, are available used for next to nothing because there are more of them then people and folks buy new ones just to change the color. So we think we should challenge that market"  ....  wow.

And Philips makes a "soup maker" which I'm struggling to understand what that is. The description almost makes it sound like philips thinks they have new inventions like "the pot"  "a spoon"  "heat".

Quote from: DeformedTree on February 20, 2021, 09:59 PM

Wow, I didn't know they even made kitchen appliances (Philips), [...]

Philips is also in the business of selling off their brandname to the highest bidder. In the Netherlands a lot of (especially old) people have this image of Philips only making high-quality products and continue to buy products from Philips that are just junk but with the Philips brand on it. I guess it made for some nice bonus of an executive...

As for the kitchen aid stand mixer... I see them more in American movies / series than in real life in Europe, hehe.

Same happened here with brands like RCA and GE among others. People kept buying RCA tvs for a long time, I think ironically they might have been the same company who was making Philips tvs.   GE was probably the worse.  All the appliances, and so forth, they just kept selling to old folks, still do, where most folks have moved on to European and Korean brands for stuff.  GE even sold off the light bulb division (or tried to).  Today they basically make Trains, Jet Engines and medical stuff, they used to make everything.

Funny on the mixer, I remember the issues a few years ago when the "Great British baking show" got rid of the kitchenaid mixers. The kitchenaids came back in later seasons.

They make LED bulbs, but they're bad and 4 times as expensive as the rest.

The Philips non-dimmable LED bulbs at least dont tend to flicker. The Calex lamps, available in the bigger DIY stores... definitely do, in a horrible way.

Philips’ lighting division has speen spun off a few years ago. So that’s another 'mainstay of Dutch manufacturing' gone. BTW: the firm was founded bij mister Philips on rip offs from American and English lightbulb tech at the end of the 19th century — copyright laws were only introduced in the Netherlands in 1918, so Holland was kind of the China of its time. Same thing for engine manufacturers etc. — blatant copies of UK and German tech.

Wasn’t it David Bowie who said "It is hard enough to be clever, you don’t have to be original."?

The whole patent system is ofc to benefit current powerful players. Funny thing was in the early days when communication took forever the same thing got patented in different places by different people who never knew about each other.

Most stuff that is patented should have never been. Like Apple claimed the sole right to "slide to unlock"... something that is just the digital edition of something the Romans already used.

The bottomline is that it benefits layers, attorneys, courts and judges. Wealth and innovation... not so much.

It is not that simple.

Take the Domino. There is no way (any) company could justified the development costs if they has no exclusivity period and competitors could take the completed design and just sell it out.

A century ago, I would -possibly- agree. At the time figuring out which exact material type was used was non-trivial. NO spectrometers for the folks.

The problem is not the patents. The problem - in Apple case and similar - is the practical cost of a prior-art challenge. And that is more of a US legal system issue than anything.