These 5-inch touch panels from 5 years ago are finally dying on me

I pulled up to a service call out in Bakersfield last Wednesday (about an hour drive, hot as usual). Customer says their system is beeping every 90 seconds. I get there, expecting a bad battery or something simple. Nope. It's that old 5-inch touch panel from a job I did back in 2019. The screen has this weird ghosting on the left side and the touch response is lagging like crazy. Three years ago I would have swapped it with the same model, no questions asked. But now? That part is discontinued. Had to explain to the homeowner that the whole panel needs upgrading to the new 7-inch model plus a new hub. They were not happy about the price jump. Anyone else dealing with these older panels crapping out faster than expected?

2 comments

2 Comments

sullivan.john18d ago

Man it's like everything with a screen these days is designed to die right when the warranty runs out. Planned obsolescence is the only thing that's still reliable in this world.

faithrodriguez18d ago

And it's getting worse too because now they're using software updates to throttle your old phone or laptop so you get fed up and buy the new one. Like the hardware is fine but they just decide your device is too old and slow it down on purpose. I've had a printer literally stop working because they said the ink was "expired" even though it was still half full. These companies figured out that if they can't make stuff break physically they'll just brick it digitally. The worst part is we just accept it because there's no real alternative unless you wanna go back to a flip phone.