Mastodawn

I am indecisive about this post: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops/

On the one hand, it does make sense to buy used high-quality repairable machines instead of new replaceable glued garbage.

But, on the other hand, does it really make sense buying an extremely old laptop AND two more for spare parts because getting these parts is hard? This feels like an unnecessary multiplication of e-waste to me.

My approach is: I’m using my extremely underpowered 2020 Lenovo Thinkpad for the longest possible time and then I get an X220 from 2011, because that’s the last model with a good keyboard that’s still relatively powerful enough to handle my type of computing, and roughly the same specs as the current one, in fact. But it’s a hard sell even to me, because computing is heavyweight in a general case. Might be quite inconvenient with such a laptop, especially in two or three years from now.

Time for a SIMD-powered application stack anyone?

How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops

As a freelance journalist – or an office worker if you wish – I have always believed that I should regularly buy a new laptop. But older machines offer more quality for much less money.

LOW←TECH MAGAZINE

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λzyd

@aartaka If you're concerned about e-waste and the ability to repair, desktop machines seem better in every single way. The parts are all standardized and can be swapped out piece by piece rather than having to throw it all away or hunt for obscure replacement parts. Even the computer case itself can last a lifetime, which can't be said about laptop enclosures.

Of course, recent reality has gotten in the way of this a bit. If you need modern ram and modern SSDs for the desktop, you're financially fucked.

I don't know if you specifically need a laptop though, or if you already have a desktop and you're specifically wanting to talk about laptops.

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Artyom Bologov 5d ago

@zyd your points about desktops are totally valid—they are much more standardized and repairable. I mean, even the CPU used to be swappable at some point in history?

Though yeah, I’m looking for laptops exclusively, as emigrating with (even a mini-) desktop would be hard.

That’s why I’m eyeing old Thinkpads—a lot of parts are standardized and replaceable without sacrificing the laptop nature of the thing. Not sure if there’s a better combination of these qualities than these Thinkpads (besides fash Framework laptops, but oh well.)

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λzyd 5d ago

@aartaka

I mean, even the CPU used to be swappable at some point in history?

They still are! That's actually the norm. Example, I went from a Ryzen 3 1200 to a Ryzen 7 3700x. Massive upgrade, same motherboard (until I needed to replace it, died at some point). Swapped out the GPU too. All these upgrades were bought second hand, because while they were upgrades to me, they're a couple generations behind the "latest and greatest", so its cheap and beneficial (putting used hardware to use).

Though yeah, I’m looking for laptops exclusively, as emigrating with (even a mini-) desktop would be hard.

I feel that, even though I don't move countries. I was extremely nervous about even building a desktop machine again because of worries about moving. I try to minimize as much of my life as possible so at any moment I can comfortably live out of a dufflebag. A bit extreme but what growing up below the poverty line does to ya.