Now look here Acer.  I usually like your products.  They are generally pretty well made (we’ll overlook that case in the late 1990s where the edge connectors in one of your laptops had insufficient gold plating causing a fault common to that model).

Anyway, I was not impressed with your model A2.1 multimedia speakers for a couple of reasons. Firstly, even though you gave it the nice design feature of supplying the mains power out on a IEC 60320 fly lead why on Earth didn’t you put in a current sensing circuit so that the speaker circuitry is only powered when there is a load connected?  And while we are on energy efficiency,  why did you use an inefficient main frequency transformer instead of a switching power supply?

Secondly, why did you simply glue the thing together?  And weakly at that.  It virtually fell apart when I showed it the spludger tool!  Well not quite but you know what I mean.  Now I am no health and safety Nazi but mains powered items that come apart easily are a bit of a electrical shock hazard.

Yeah, I know the answer to these questions.  It comes down to cost doesn’t it. But come on.  Just how much market share will you lose if you made a slightly better product that costs a bit more?

The speakers came in for recycling but when I tested it the only fault was a scratchy volume control that sometimes caused the left speaker to cut out.  All it needed was a squirt of cleaner to fix it, and I suppose I will just have to glue the thing back together.