By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 1993, The Syracuse Newspapers
I call them the five great myths
of home electronics. They're assumptions that many people make,
and they're all untrue.
The first is the belief that you
can buy an American-made videocassette recorder.
Every single VCR sold in this country
is made overseas. Many come from Japan, but many others are made
in South Korea, Taiwan or other countries in the so-called Pacific
Rim.
Some VCRs have American-sounding
brand names, such as Sylvania and RCA, but they're imported like
all the others.
And that brings me to the second
myth. It's the belief that American companies still sell the best
home electronics products.
The problem with this assumption
is that nearly all the major American companies that make such
things as TVs and VCRs are not American any more. They're owned
by the Japanese or by the Europeans.
Here's a sampling. RCA's electronics
business is owned by a French company. So's General Electric's.
Quasar is Japanese. Sylvania is Dutch, as is Magnavox.
In fact, the only major American
company left in the TV and VCR business is Zenith, and it could
be bought up by foreigners before long.
The third myth has to do with computers.
It says the best kind of computer to buy is an IBM compatible,
because it's the kind used in offices (or in schools, in a variation
on this myth).
The fact is that IBM compatibles
are crippled by an oversight in the original design. All IBM-compatible
PCs, even the latest and most powerful versions, have to adhere
to that original design. There's no way to get around it.
Yes, most office computers are IBM
compatibles, but that's not because they are better. Until recently,
IBM compatibles were cheaper than the major alternative, the Apple
Macintosh, and that was a powerful inducement to stick with the
old design.
The fourth myth is that you can get
more life out of your electronic devices if you turn them off
when they're not in use. Makes sense, right? No, not really.
If you're going to use them at least once a day, it makes sense
to keep modern electronic devices on all the time. They'll last
longer this way; the single biggest source of failure for an electronic
circuit is the jolt of electricity it gets when it is turned on.
Most home electronic components don't
use much power, and so the added cost to the electric bill is
smaller than the cost of fixing or replacing the item when it
goes bad.
The only exception to this rule
is a large TV set (with a bigger screen than 25 inches, let's
say), which soaks up a lot of electricity. Big TVs should be turned
off when they're not in use.
The fifth myth is that money counts
— that more expensive compact disc players or videotapes, for
example, are better than the ones that don't cost much.
In the case of CD players, the cheap
ones often sound just as good as the expensive models. The reason
is simple: These days, with all the improvements in electronic
design, it's relatively easy to make a digital-audio device that
works properly. More money may get you more features, but it probably
won't get you better sound.
In the example of videotapes, even
the cheapest tapes from established manufacturers are made to
very high standards. Those standards usually ensure that the tapes
perform better than nearly all the VCRs they're used on.
That's my list. If you have your
own, send it along. Myth-slaying is a sport we can all share.
technofile:
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