From my perspective as a doctor, treating hearing loss in young people comes with a completely different set of priorities than treating hearing loss in the elderly:
Young people: Prioritize excellence in technology. They often have high levels of verbal communication due to work and/or socializing. They can’t afford to miss information due to suboptimal functioning of their equipment. They are likely to travel more often and need equipment that can travel with them. They rarely have visual, cognitive, or manual dexterity limitations.
Elderly: Often don’t care if their equipment doesn’t work well some of the time. They are often ok with falling back onto having those around them talk loudly. They tend to regard just a moderate improvement in hearing as good enough, they don’t need anything close to perfection. They often can’t see the little batteries, and in many cases are too shaky to replace them. Having a charging station plugged in at a certain location (and thus always there) helps them remember where they left their hearing aids.
It’s just an entirely different set of priorities, and unfortunately the elderly market share is much bigger than the young market share, so priorities are aimed at the elderly. It can be a real problem for the young.
@Data10 , I have old battery ones as a back up and rechargeable ones that I charge overnight every night. I do not wear hearing aids to bed. Once in a while I accidentally don’t set one in the recharger cradle quite right and it will run out early, so yay for my old, old back up aids.
I hope they never get rid of the battery ones so people like you can continue wearing them.
I had similar issues with my rechargeable KS 10s, but it was more often than just once in awhile that I didn’t line them up correctly in the cradle for charging and/or didn’t charge correctly for other reasons. This may partially relate to something unique about KS 10s, which were discontinued due to charging-related issues.
After my negative experiences, I chose to return my KS 10s and keep using my old KS 9s, which use traditional batteries. I’m not looking forward to when my 5-year-old KS 9s fail, forcing me to “upgrade”. All of the hearing aids listed on Costco’s website are rechargeable battery models.
I was a summer nanny when I was 15. They had a glass coffee table. There were three 3 year olds, so 6 little hands putting fingerprints all over that table all the time (as well as adults who weren’t much better, and 3 older boys). I had to windex it all day long. I refuse to have any kind of a glass table, even a glass insert in a wood table.
Reminds me of a story where my two year old (who was a grilled cheese fan) asked for a cheese burger at McDonald’s. When she unwrapped it she almost cried. “There is a hamburger on my cheeseburger”. Of course this is the same logical little kid who could not figure out why grapefruit had that name yet tasted nothing like grapes.
I had a glass top table I bought 49 years ago when I was in my bachelorette apartment. It was chrome legs and a smoked gray glass top. We hung onto it for many years. When my kids came along, it was fantastic for Play Doh sessions! Easy to play on and easy to clean up the mess.
Had I been in charge of the Fruit Naming Committee, I would have called the grapefruit the “Ughfruit” or “Big Nasty Orange” instead. Or maybe the Bitterfruit, Needs Sugar Fruit, Fruit of Tears, etc. hehe
