Do we want to go down this road again?

[Angry Customer]

As a semester comes to an end, I begin cleaning out all of the old electronics that are considered non-repairable by most standards and one glaring fact stands out, Digilent designed and sold us a flawed product and continued to do so for a number of years. I'm referring to the now "discontinued" Electronics Explorer board. I literally have over 30 boards sitting here where the micro-usb port either ripped itself and it's traces completely off of the board or just stopped working while staying in place. Students were expected to plug and unplug a micro-USB from this board countless times but many failed within their first year of use. Even at a discounted $300 a piece, we are out over $10,000. Now they introduce a new and improved product at only double the price! I know it's not technically "my money" but I find it hard to swallow investing so much more money into the same company. Fool me once?

[zygot]

Hey, I feel your pain.

The first thing that came to mind while reading your, not unmerited but silly, rant was the old saw: "We sell everything below cost! How do we do it? By volume!"

It is the customer's responsibility to evaluate a product to see how they will perform in use over time; especially if they intend to deploy a large quantity of it. Yeah, I have a drawer full of boards with torn off USB connectors but I figured out that the SMT connectors without thru-hole tabs can't withstand typical use for any length of time. You can take some measures to minimize this problem. Do you really need a warning that handing over boards to students ( or even engineers who should know how to handle them for that matter ) might have longevity problems? You didn't anticipate issues with this product in a lab setting? Really, being naive isn't anyone's fault but yours. The basic stripline breadboard systems on the product that you mention are not particularly robust.

I'm not defending any product intended for any purpose. I've done my share of complaining about deficiencies when there's no logical reason for them to exist. Go ahead and look around Digilent's Forums. Over the years I've accumulated a closet full of stuff that didn't turn out to be quite what I wanted or as useful as I thought it would be. This just happens to be the nature of technology.

Have you got a replacement in mind? I suggest that you do a proper evaluation to better anticipate the effects of lab use over time before committing to a large purchase order. Even then you will likely have to find ways of protecting them from misuse.