Fix or buy new?

Nothing is broken nor do I have any big purchases planned in the near future. I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately though as it comes up frequently at work. When an expensive item breaks and is getting old is it better to repair it or buy new?
I see this allot at work, I get called out to repair a piece of equipment, lets say a residential air conditioner. I get there and realize it has a refrigerant leak and the unit is over 20 years old. At this point you have spent $80 and it's still broken, to fix it the bare minimum is about another $200, including a charge to find the leak, one pound refrigerant, a small leak repair, it can however approach the $500 mark as I had the other day. Including the diagnostic charge you just spent $580 on a 20 year old air conditioning system that still has all it's original parts.
A new system will run you close to $3000. For this you get a 5 year warranty with option to upgrade/extend a much more efficient unit and since everything is new things are less likely to break. As good as that sounds though it is still quite a bit more money than the repair and also a new unit will take a few days before it can be installed the repair is likely completed same day. What to do?
I like to give people the heads up before I start any repairs because if just told the price of repair most will say just do it, however in the past I have had people tell me once they saw the total they realized they should have considered a new unit. I tend to compare it to repairing an old car, sure it's cheaper to repair it but what else might go wrong next year or heck next month?  It seems people are more willing to upgrade their car than their furnace or AC, I seen many people fix 20+ year old equipment yet I am sure the same person would never dream of dropping $500 on a 20 year old car, yet the cost of a new car is way more than $3000, why is that, heck your old car you can sell even if for only $100 there is a very limited market for 20 year old furnaces.
Speaking of cars, I got rid of my Sunfire because it was at the point I no longer wanted to spend any money on it, I had not really spent much on repairs the time I had it but I knew I did not want to do it again. Had I kept it sure there would have been repairs due but it still would have been less than what the MINI has cost me, although the MINI is many times more fun.
Now for the cheaper stuff, lots of mass produced good these days simply cost less to make than to diagnose and repair. |This is fine for a non sentimental appliance that has worked well for many years. That 3 year old washing machine on the other hand is a waste, it's no longer under warranty, is it even worth having a guy come out spent $80 just to have him tell you it's not worth fixing? Yeah there is a chance it is just a burnt wire or a no part required repair but we assume the worse and simply go buy another one, throwing the not so old one in the trash.
This repairs not worth it can be frustrating for electronics. A camera for example can take a while to get used too, if it breaks and is very expensive to repair if repairable at all(obsolete) can be upsetting sure the new one may be better but by how much really?
Anyway all that to say,,,, actually I don't really know what my point is does everything need a point?

Common sense

This my sound like a rant but it is not.
We call it common sense but how common is it really?
Today I went to a call for no cooling, I get there everything is operating. The first thing I check is the filter, it is FILTHY I have rarely seen one so dirty. No big deal people forget, heck this was a rental house (currently unrented) so I can understand having forgotten to change it. The thing is once I took it out and checked the operating pressure everything was OK. Now there is a small chance there is some sort of intermittent problem, but I am certain the only issue was the filter. Checking you filter should be common sense, since it obviously isn't it cost someone $90 for me to tell him.

What I propose is a common sense class in high school, by propose I mean discuss on the internet, there is no way I am motivated enough to try to implement this for real. Really all we need is a big list. There is no need to go in depth for most things out there, As my example above if your AC isn't working properly check your filter, if your oil light comes on in your car pull over as soon as possible you have no oil left, you can't use margarine to pop popcorn(stupid room mate story), resting you feet on the dashboard of a car is a bad idea unless you want to knee yourself in the face real hard. You get the idea. Do we have a project? Shall we come up with a huge list and put it out there for everyone?

You may or may not know but I am not a huge concert fan. I don't hate them or anything but I generally only like a few songs from your average band so I am rarely motivated to attend their concerts. Bayfest a local music festival, is usually quite the event featuring well known bands, although not usually at the height of their career, I have only attended once(The Tragically Hip) and that was only because a group of friends was going and I wanted to join them. I had a good time, but as I mentioned I only like a few of their songs so it could have been more entertaining.

I have also been to an Arch Enemy concert a couple years ago, I got invited to go and agreed having not heard any of their music, the thing is this is a metal band, well death metal I was curious as to the whole mosh pit thing. Sure I did not like all of their songs but they are all "danceable" well moshable. It's quite the interesting activity, pushing a shoving stranger without anyone getting mad is quite invigorating.

Why am I bringing up concerts? Well there is one band out there that I really want to see in concert. Rammstein, I am not sure what branch of metal they consider themselves but I do enjoy plenty of their songs, and being part of the metal genre the moshing should be quite good. Above all though their concerts are supposedly quite impressive.
Here is a video showing clips from various concerts, FIRE
As you can see, that is allot of pyrotechnics and I love that stuff. I found out yesterday that they are playing Quebec city on Sunday, sadly the concert is sold out. The thing is I had actually been checking Rammstein's site for any North American concerts and saw nothing planned. I was actually willing to take a road trip to see them and this would have been a fun one. I checked their sit yesterday and there are no other North American dates but a friend has said he heard of a proper NA tour in the works. I will certainly check out their site more often and hopefully not miss out again.

It's Summer, it's supposed to be hot!

Yep it's hot out there. It's also Summer in my 30 years of living here it always gets hot. It's not very comfortable but I don't need to be told multiple times a day that it is indeed hot out, and how to deal with it. I understands your AC is broken yep that is why I am there, I am not however your saviour, I appreciate you thanks but tone it down a little, many of us grew up without any AC and we survived. 

Sorry about the little rant, I prefer to keep my blog positive but I just needed to get it out there.