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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Konrad Hinsen 5d ago

@aartaka Every piece of electronic becomes e-waste in the end. The only way to reduce e-waste is to discourage the production of new devices.

From that perspective, the question is if three old laptops bought by one person to serve as one reduces production more or less than three old laptops bought by three people for independent use. Which is a question I cannot answer!

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Artyom Bologov

@khinsen right, this is a valid argument! It’s just that the mantra is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, in this exact order. So buying less things, even if used, is better than buying too much and reusing. But it’s complicated in this particular case, true.