Does anyone design a product with a problem that should be there in the first place ?

Yep. Most consumer goods manufacturers. It gets called fashion, planned obsolescence, and all sorts of other things, but it amounts to a problem of some sort that is deliberate and/or inherent. Often, they could build better products, but that would be too costly. Costly to you because they would cost a lot to buy or to the manufacturers because they would last too long and thus mean you wouldn't need to buy new ones as often.

For example; the internal trim of fridges is deliberately flimsy because this offsets the extraordinary level of reliability that is inherent in the hermetically sealed compressor and condenser/evaporator. Additionally, the functional part of fridges has not changed in decades. They cannot be improved with new faster processors or new programming features or whatever. They are just about the most reliable electromechanical devices ever created. If the interior of a fridge was as robust as the one in a dishwasher (something that would't actually add a vast amount to the cost) the chances are that a fridge wouldn't just outlive its owner, but could even outlive their children. Of course, what actually happens is that the deliberately flimsy door shelf or door seal or something else breaks or something purely cosmetic breaks or the nasty sprayed brown colour goes out of fashion. The colour bit is part of the ongoing attempt to bring fashion trends into 'white' goods and make you buy stuff more often than you need to.

Most interesting but when I tried using my fridge as a cable router nothing happened - worst throughput I have ever received.

Interesting you should want a 'connected' fridge. Samsung have been promoting this idea for years. They've trotted out concepts for why you should want such a thing at every opportunity. The reason is simple. While we know Samsung as a brown goods company alone in their home market they are one of the largest suppliers of white goods as well. Of course, it's not lost on them that if you have an internet fridge they will be able to make it obsolete a matter of a year or two after you buy it. Just imagine how profitable that designed in defect would be for them.

Edited by Desmond (Sun 05-Jun-11 11:21:25)

Stick the old O2 router in the fridge to stop the overheating. Brilliant!

MS tried that with the xbox 360 but overdone it and got caught out, mine and the replacement lasted just over a year.