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How and why I stopped buying new laptops

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Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#91

Post by WalterBright »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #19

I also stopped buying new laptops. The full biological cost is hard to fully imagine, just incredible in size. If you think about it, hundreds and thousands of plant, bacterial, animal, mammal, bird, and other lives are laid down for each of these amazing powerful artefacts. If there are previously used alternatives available, I cannot in good conscience vote for the creation of another one. So I started with a coupl…

I get them from the pawn shop. They'll be a year or two old, but perfectly serviceable. That and the thrift store are great places to pick up TVs, stereo equipment, guitars, tools, etc.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#92

Post by foobar1962 »

rsync wrote: post #9

The 11" Macbook Air solved the laptop form factor. Thin, light, very portable, USB ports on each side , headphone jack and an external monitor port (in this case, thunderbolt). Could there be some refinements to my 2015 MBA ? Certainly - the two type-A USB ports could remain type A but be upgraded to USB3 ... you could add a USB-C port on each side in place of the magsafe and lightning ports and gain the ability to c…

Funny you mention that machine... I just finished a development contract that I did on an early 2013 MBA 11 inch. That little machine made me about $50K. I'm disappointed it cannot run Big Sur but keeping it anyway.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#93

Post by bxparks »

yangikan wrote: post #76
bxparks wrote: post #29

I guess I've been doing something similar. I currently use 9 laptops (2 Windows, 5 Linux, 1 MacBookAir, 1 Chromebook). Only the MBA11 and the Chromebook were purchased new. The rest were bought on eBay for $250-$600. After getting them, I max out the RAM, replace the HDD with SSD, or upgrade the SSD. A few of them needed some parts replaced (e.g. fans). The battery almost always needs replacing at some point. Fortuna…

Where do you get the batteries from? The HP batteries I get from Amazon give up on me after 3 months.

I get them on eBay, but you are right, the success ratio is not great, maybe 50-70%. Batteries are advertized as "New", but the BIOS will say 100-200 cycles. I have tried 3 times to find a battery for my MBA11 without success. I'm going to try iFixit.com for my 4th attempt.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#95

Post by pvorb »

rowanG077 wrote: post #82
nuker wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germans are cheating a bit, they just concatenate existing words and "hey, we have a word!"

That's not true. You can find "verschlimmbessern" in any dictionary [1][2]. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verschlimmbessern [2] https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/verschlimmbessern

That is really a bad example, but in general this is true for long German words. Often there's a similar combination of words in English, the only difference being that in German everything concatenates to one word and in English there are spaces between the words which describe the same concept.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#96

Post by rowanG077 »

nuker wrote: post #88
rowanG077 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. You can find "verschlimmbessern" in any dictionary [1][2]. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verschlimmbessern [2] https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/verschlimmbessern

Blend of verschlimmern (“to make worse”) +‎ verbessern (“to improve”) From your link ...

The point is that's in a dictionary and thus is not a random combination of words.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#97

Post by hzhou321 »

I am afraid the author can't really hold on to his old laptops much longer. The web browser may demand more resources than the old hardware can support and the websites the author frequent to may embed enough scripts that slow his experience to a crawl.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#98

Post by foundart »

raunakdag wrote: post #55
dmichulke wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In German you have verschlimmbessern - making something worse in an attempt to improve it

Has anyone else noticed that when conversations about “we need x word for y concept” arise, the German language nearly always seems to be the one that has something similar or already present?

Yes they have noticed it! To the extent that I have seen articles in which people explain in detail concepts for which they hope a concise German word exists. For example: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/concepts-for-which-i-sus...

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#99

Post by johnny22 »

xyst wrote: post #67
fakedang wrote: post #57

Who tf be spending 1600 Euros on a laptop? Bruh... And who substitutes that with a 2006 version laptop? face-palm Like another comment down below mentions, companies toss away perfectly good laptops after a year or two, which can be bought in the ballpark of 150-300 quid/euros/USD. They'll last 2-3 years on average, and even longer if you aren't into intensive activities. Just go to some IT guy in a multinational - I…

doesn't even have to be a "multinational" company, any entity that buys computers in bulk can be a candidate (local schools or a small business). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EATdYG7h9IQ apparently a private school is Aussie land was going to throw 100 of these MacBooks into the dumpster/landfill. They were intercepted by someone else and this person received 15 of those MacBooks (I guess he just paid for shipping…

a local computer store sells such machines for $100-$200 USD that are clearly from old offices/schools. You can tell because they're all the dell optiplex. My father is using one of those.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#100

Post by Tade0 »

I get the point the author is trying to make, but I think the environmental savings on not buying a laptop are miniscule comparing to all the other components of his carbon footprint.

That flight from Belgium to Spain alone, which he likely took, was around 1,000 megajoules.

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