Someone at a PC Repair shop is going to see the ones that fail. How many are not failing? What do you think is a fair split of failing within 1 year and not failing within 1 year? What percentage do you think have to fail in order to make the claim that they are DESIGNED (emphasis yours) to fail?
Essentially, you are making a claim based on your own experience and some forum posts. You present no data and make a claim that manufacturers want their product to fail quickly.
I find it far more likely that: 1 they use cheap parts, 2 they are all using the same cheap parts, and 3 some component in those parts has a high failure rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
This is not an indication that the part was designed to fail. No manufacturer designs their part to fail. They might design it to maximize profits. They might not design it to last for 5+ years. To say the part was designed to fail is a far stretch.
They have a built in limited lifetime. That means they are designed to fail. Computers sold by makers have almost no margin on them. Dell, HP, Asus, and whomever you want to name does not make much money per unit sold. They don't even sell that many units. So where does the money come from? Services. Plain and simple. Stores make money on the upsell of high margin items like cables and printers. Pre-built computer companies make money on the back end services. It has always been that way.
So a company that makes it's profit when the products it owns FAILS is going to make sure that product has a failure rate. It's pure simple logic. Of course they don't them all failing in 6 months time as that would make consumers lose confidence in their product. Instead the failure rate is pretty much design to be just outside the 1 year mark on average. It's at that mark where most consumers aren't willing to buy another new computer yet, and don't want to be without their old one. With proprietary hardware built into those pre-built systems, the makers are assured they will make money off the replacement parts if not the service to replace those parts as well.
Again, this is not speculation. I have many a friend who has worked at dell, some of them pretty far up the management chain to be people that MAKE those decisions.
It's like lightbulbs. Incandescents didn't have a long lifespan and were fairly cheap to make. Since there is a fairly high turn over volume on those lightbulbs, the companies that make them can afford to sell them pretty cheap do to the assured sales volume based off failure rates. LED lights cost practically the same to make as incandescent lightbulbs used to cost to make. However, they have a much longer lifespan and carry a much larger price tag for that reason.
Do you not get get how these various markets work to turn a buck? I can point out other fun stuff that is very similar from just about any tech product sector. Especially when there isn't a hyper competitive market for that specific item.
So back to power supplies, good ones you buy yourself for your system from good makers tend to cost more and last far longer. I have had power supplies last for decades now that were quality built. They produce the same electrical characteristics that they produced from day one of usage. No extra ripple, no signal degradation, no popping caps, and no heat build up problems. Can't say that about any cheapie power supply ever. Do you know WHY the "capacitor" plague you linked to in your article still continues to this very day? Because it does what computer makers want them to do. Last for a finite time then go POP! As well as be cheap. The power supply makers from back then to even now know which caps are good to last for decades and which ones don't. So any guess as to why the cheapie caps that go pop are still in use today in modern tech equipment? If you can't figure that out you need to re-read what I've posted here as well as do some more research.