Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Unecessarily complicating a simple product

I just bought a new wall clock. It's a pretty typical clock - the analog kind with a second hand and a quartz movement, battery powered, in the back. As you can expect, these clocks take a AA battery and last, well, forever.

Not anymore. Whoever made this clock thought it was too simple. So they added a small LCD indicator on the back to set the date/time/zone so that it would automatically change to a new time during daylight savings time. Because really, turning the gear on the back of the clock is more work than the average consumer can do twice a year.

But they were too lazy to actually make a new clock with this fantastic design, so they just screwed on a MORE complicated LCD box that is simply wired into where the original AA battery. Now it needs 2 AA batteries. AND the LCD box needs its OWN small lithium battery (those coin-like batteries).

So we went from a simple quartz timepiece with a AA battery to a quartz timepiece with a second LCD clock attached to the back that now requires 3 batteries - all so I don't have to spend 10 seconds changing the time twice a year.

Thanks!

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