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How and why I stopped buying new laptops

solar.lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#241

Post by Const-me »

Too wrote: post #228
Const-me wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500W is pretty average for a desktop PC. In my particular computer, CPU, GPU and display are rated to 65W, 250W, and 80W respectively. That’s 400W just for these 3 most power-hungry components, under high load/maximum brightness. Lower-end office PCs often ship with ~500W PSU. Gaming PCs typically include 700W PSU or even more. For instance, nVidia recommends 750W PSU for their released but unavailable RTX 3080, that…

Pure electric isn't considered efficient when it comes to heating. Heat exchangers, somewhat counterintuitively, have a lot more than 100% efficiency. Especially when combined with other sources of heat such as the ground or the sun. This is just considering the colder season of the year.

That paragraph explains why consumed electricity is ~equal to the heat that needs to be removed by coolers. I'm not advocating to heat space with computers.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#242

Post by Normille »

I had to play, after reading this. So I've just searched my emails for the receipt from when I bought my current laptop:

  > Delivery: 23 Jul, 2013 - 25 Jul, 2013 by Standard Shipping
  > 11-inch MacBook Air
  > £1,159.00
  > With the following configuration:
  > 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
  > 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
  > 512GB Flash Storage
Which according to this site [0] means I've had it => 2708 days. Which averages out to => 42p/day or => £156/year.

The only deteriorations I've noticed over those 7 1/2 years is that; the battery doesn't hold charge for much more than an hour [not a problem, as I tend to work with it plugged in all the time], the screen has a couple of pock-marks [made of soft plastic, rather than glass], the fraying adaptor cable is held together with glue, screen hinges are a bit floppy and I had to replace the keyboard [although that was down to 'wine error']

Other than that, My MBA still works fine and feels quick enough for anything I need to do on it. And that includes a lot of graphics work in Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as all the other less demanding 'stuff' I do on it. So, all things considered, I reckon that's a pretty good return on my investment!

[0] https://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?d1=24&m...

Further thoughts:

Given that the guy's 'raison d'être' seems to be about sustainability and green energy, it seems quite ironic that:

1: He abandoned his first fully functional laptop to land-fill and bought a new one just because the adaptor died. Rather than just buy a new adaptor [non-Apple ones are available at a fraction of the cost of OEM, if the price was too much to stomach].

2: He abandoned his second fully functional laptop to landfill and bought a new one just because the version of WindowsXP he had running on it was no longer supported. Rather than just install Linux on it, instead.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#243

Post by _nalply »

Normille wrote: post #242

I had to play, after reading this. So I've just searched my emails for the receipt from when I bought my current laptop: > Delivery: 23 Jul, 2013 - 25 Jul, 2013 by Standard Shipping > 11-inch MacBook Air > £1,159.00 > With the following configuration: > 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz > 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM > 512GB Flash Storage Which according to this site [0] means I've had it => 2708 d…

> He abandoned his first fully functional laptop to land-fill and bought a new one just because the adaptor died.

Perhaps the laptop-side of the adaptor died?

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#244

Post by herbst »

brutus1213 wrote: post #132
HPsquared wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fashion, "newness" is a function.

IMHO the Ribbon UI in MS Office is the same. Also, most things Reddit has done in the past 5 years.

To be fair reddit is less about new and more about making their ad platform more lucrative.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#245

Post by Kaibeezy »

karaterobot wrote: post #12
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…

> We need to actually coin a word to describe "company solved their use-case wonderfully and can't resist fiddling around with it for reasons that don't align with their user-base*. Can't help coin a new word, but Ralph Caplan described this phenomenon really well. I'm a (software) designer, and I think about this all the time: > When cuffs disappeared from men’s trousers, fashion designers gave interviews explaining…

Another “function” of a trouser cuff is visual. It demarcates the end of the leg, creates a transitional element between the leg and the shoe. It is closely analogous to the capital on a classical column, eyeliner, the frame around a picture, the line at the bottom of this page, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#246

Post by Delk »

pvorb wrote: post #95
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

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.

Finnish also has lots of compound words. German might be different, but in Finnish words might sometimes have a slightly different meaning if the words are written separately (with a space) or as a compound. (Often that other meaning is rarely used, and there would almost never be any actual potential for confusion, but technically there may still be a difference.)

Some of the compounds may be written as compounds because that's just how you're supposed to write them, but sometimes there might be some kind of actual semantics behind it.

Could there be something similar going on in German, or is it really that German-speakers just concatenate things that English-speakers would write separately?

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#247

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Anthony-G wrote: post #107

I have a similar attitude to the author. I bought one new laptop in my lifetime but realised that second-hand or refurbished offer better value for money. For the past eight years, I’ve been using a Core 2 Duo Dell Vostro from 2007. I’m conscious of the environmental cost to manufacturing brand new devices so I only ever buy second-hand mobile phones and I apply the same philosophy to other consumer goods – cars (20…

I had a second hand notebook, and one problem with it was yellow screen. Is it not a problem now?

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#248

Post by Normille »

aksss wrote: post #125
chiefalchemist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That word is: lack of market research. I recently finished up shopping for a Windows laptop. It took awhile, as I balanced price with features. You'd be shock how many otherwise decently config'ed offerings lacked a key and basic feature (e.g., backlit KB), or was deficient in some key way (e.g., mid-priced models with only 8 GB RAM soldered, no ability to upgrade). I agree. Some might not need backlit or more than 8…

I think 16 is getting to the end of its usefulness in a laptop these days, but finding ultrabooks with 32 is still rather difficult (surface, XPS, ...?). Truth is the OEMs are just trying to move product, their mission isn’t to be the rising tide that improves compute capability for society. High competition, low margin business in the PC world and most consumers don’t know enough about computers to understand what t…

  >I think 16 is getting to the end of its usefulness in a laptop these days..
Seriously?

What are you people doing on your laptops to need so much RAM? I'm producing graphics and doing image manipulation on a 7 1/2 year old MacBook Air with 8GB RAM [I've even done the occasional bit of video editing] and I've never felt that it was struggling.

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#249

Post by Normille »

_nalply wrote: post #243
Normille wrote: post #242

I had to play, after reading this. So I've just searched my emails for the receipt from when I bought my current laptop: > Delivery: 23 Jul, 2013 - 25 Jul, 2013 by Standard Shipping > 11-inch MacBook Air > £1,159.00 > With the following configuration: > 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz > 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM > 512GB Flash Storage Which according to this site [0] means I've had it => 2708 d…

> He abandoned his first fully functional laptop to land-fill and bought a new one just because the adaptor died. Perhaps the laptop-side of the adaptor died?

His writing suggests it was the adaptor itself which died:

  >...the charger started malfunctioning. When informed of the price for a new charger, I was so disgusted with Apple’s sales practices... that I refused to buy it. Instead, I managed to keep the charger working for a few more years... When the charger eventually died entirely in 2005, I decided to look for a new laptop...

Re: How and why I stopped buying new laptops

#250

Post by GoblinSlayer »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #90
open-source-ux wrote: post #25

What about desktop computers? They are arguably more long-lasting, adaptable (upgradable), more powerful and cheaper than laptops. But of course, their prinicpal disadvantage is their lack of portability. If portability isn't a consideration, them I still recommend desktops when buying a computer. My home desktop is 8 years old (bought in 2012) and running fine and fast. Of course, it has been upgraded e.g. it has mo…

Decisions in portable vs not may be a side effect of stability in lifestyle space. Desktop implies desk. And well, a chair I guess. :-) People living in various group houses, moving all the time etc see a laptop as making that all easy. Let alone those living from their car etc etc. Anecdotally, I am fortunate enough to be amazed at friends who want a "gaming laptop" but then have a "nest" on the couch hunched over t…

A permanently allocated desk. If you have other uses for the desk, the desktop will get in the way, while laptop can move to a shelf when not needed.
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