Wouter van Ooijen wrote:

>> Yes, I like the consumer-friendly approach too. However I take
>> your point about standards. If I make my product indestructable,
>> would that lead a customer to take liberties with other products ?
> 
> It would probably lead to the customer buying the other product, which
> is $.01 cheaper.

Not always. In some areas there exists something like brand recognition,
and some brands have a reputation for robustness that isn't earned
overnight or with one product (and not necessarily with actual robustness
either... :). And some people are even willing to pay a premium for that.

For a $300 consumer product, I imagine that distribution channel
distortions make much more of a difference than a $.01 supply protection
diode. In this particular case, the fault can even be predicted to happen,
because it is quite frequent for guitarists to have various effect pedals
from different manufacturers. Pair this with the lack of a standard for
power supply connectors, and I'd say the lack of that diode, overall, is
providing a serious contribution to the entropy level of the universe :)

Gerhard
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