I was interested by a piece on Gizmodo reporting that Leica -- rather than releasing brand new models of their digital rangefinders -- are offering a service whereby they will upgrade the components of your Leica M8. Given that the M8 costs $4795 (body only -- sheesh) that's probably just as well.

It's rare enough these days to find companies making products which are repairable at all, so it's great to see some enabling not only repair, but also upgrades to the features as technology advances.

We're having problems with our espresso maker at the moment, not much more than a year after we bought it. We're going to try get it repaired (it's a Krups model) because I hate the thought of the financial and ecological waste of essentially throwing out a product so soon after we bought it. We've treated it with care (cleaning and de-scaling it regularly, using filtered water in the tank and so on), but we do use it at least once a day. It seems really difficult to find home appliances that are actually built for frequent use, unless you buy one intended for commercial use.