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India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

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Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

#61

Post by catmanjan »

ryandrake wrote: post #21
blackoil wrote: post #13

It's simple, the labour cost for repair is lower than the replacement cost, we also have people scavenging for valuables in landfills. As/When India will become rich enough, this will become uneconomical. Long term solution is to force companies to build products with repairability in mind.

Companies should have to bear the full cost of cleaning up, repairing, or disposing the products they unleash upon the world. If I have to throw away my laptop because it broke, Lenovo should pay the cost of disposing (or repairing) it and bringing the environment back to the condition it was in before the product existed. When my car dies, Toyota should have to tow it away, part it out and reuse what it can. We've s…

Companies never bear any costs, their customers do

Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

#63

Post by h4ck_th3_pl4n3t »

There was this famous guy, which sold custom old Thinkpads, but with newer mainboards and Intel 10th gen chips in it, with custom USB-C adapters and all.

At some point he kind of disappeared and rumors appeared that he is now in mandatory military service, but will come back afterwards. Well, that was pre-COVID.

He also knows a friend that backports coreboot to the new mainboards. No idea how they manage to do that in a 2 person project like this. So yeah, all of the laptops they sell run coreboot in it (including the Thunderbolt EC, which is insane amount of work to implement).

Nonetheless the build quality was insanely good, and lots of folks were amazed by what they essentially bet blindly on when they ordered it. The X2100 would be my dream laptop, but I didn't manage to get one in time.

[1] https://www.xyte.ch/shop/x2100-pricing/

Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

#65

Post by accurrent »

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote: post #63

There was this famous guy, which sold custom old Thinkpads, but with newer mainboards and Intel 10th gen chips in it, with custom USB-C adapters and all. At some point he kind of disappeared and rumors appeared that he is now in mandatory military service, but will come back afterwards. Well, that was pre-COVID. He also knows a friend that backports coreboot to the new mainboards. No idea how they manage to do that i…

His last post was in 2022. Singapore's national service is 2 years, he'd be out by now. Seems like he probably ran into issues. Also he mentions his university: you can't start university till you've finished your military service.

Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

#66

Post by magicalhippo »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #50
fakedang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The American way is to possibly put too few responsibilities on manufacturers. The European way seems to be to saddle them with just too many regulations -- possibly killing so much innovation Well that's what the European way is lol. Tax and regulate instead of focusing on the crux of the problem, which is overproduction and planned obsolescence. Any solution that uses taxes and extra charges will simply pass the…

A good way to penalize planned obsolescence would be to charge a decreasing penalty if the goods are recycled/disposed earlier. So if I return the fridge for recycling after a couple of years (bad fridge) then the company gets charged automatically 5% of the fridge cost. If I recycle after 10 years then the company gets charged zero (as an example). Maybe instead of a charge this could be a credit. If the recycling h…

> So if I return the fridge for recycling after a couple of years

Here in Norway consumers enjoy a 5 year warranty on products that are meant to last, and 2 years on other non-consumables.

So if my fridge dies due to a manufacturing flaw within 5 years, the store I purchased it on has to repair free of charge, replace it with an equal or better product, or give a full refund. If the product keeps breaking in the same way, the customer can demand a full refund.

And it's up to the store to convincingly argue it's not a manufacturing flaw if they don't want to do that.

This provides similar disincentive to import crappy goods.

Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

#67

Post by djrj477dhsnv »

zoobab wrote: post #53
pjmlp wrote: post #33

I remember up to the early 1990's we had repair shops all over Portugal, we would buy devices for life, and any kind of malfunction would be rescued at one of those repair shops, unless it was really a death sentence for the device. Now in a throw away society with planned obsolence devices, most of those shops are gone and the repair knowledge gone with them. Unless goverments fix the planned obsolence culture it is…

"The throw-away society is a human society strongly influenced by consumerism. The term describes a critical view of overconsumption and excessive production of short-lived or disposable items over durable goods that can be repaired." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throw-away_society

Isn't it also a natural consequence of rapidly improving technology.

Even if a laptop were built to last 20 years, who would want one when a new one is an order of magnitude better?

Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

#68

Post by magicalhippo »

robocat wrote: post #45
magicalhippo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Norway, electrical and electronic (EE) goods are taxed extra and that money goes to recycling and cleanup[1]. Importers and producers are required to be a member of a approved company handling returns, like RENAS[2]. Shops selling EE goods are required to accept returned EE goods from individuals of the type they sell. So if you sell fridges you have to take my old fridge and handle it in accordance with the…

> there's money to be made by skipping steps, and some do You must be joking. "Fifteen major car manufacturers have been fined almost €600 million by the European Commission and the British government after Mercedes-Benz blew the whistle on a cartel that fixed car recycling costs and processes." https://www.dw.com/en/eu-and-uk-fine-carmakers-millions-over...

> You must be joking.

Sarcasm was indeed intended...

Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

#69

Post by robin_reala »

Not the same thing as this article, but I was impressed with the Chinese trend of “fixing” 2015-era MacBook Pros with broken screens by deleting the screen and installing a blanking plate, leaving the machine as a sort of C64/Amiga/ST/Acorn style keyboard-and-CPU single unit that could be plugged into an HDMI screen. https://ioshacker.com/news/people-in-china-are-using-macbook...

Re: India's repair culture gives new life to dead laptops

#70

Post by rishav_sharan »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #58
ryandrake wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies should have to bear the full cost of cleaning up, repairing, or disposing the products they unleash upon the world. If I have to throw away my laptop because it broke, Lenovo should pay the cost of disposing (or repairing) it and bringing the environment back to the condition it was in before the product existed. When my car dies, Toyota should have to tow it away, part it out and reuse what it can. We've s…

> Companies should have to bear the full cost of cleaning up, repairing, or disposing the products they unleash upon the world. Where I live, you pay a "removal fee" when buying electronics or appliances for just that. If you're buying a new washing machine for example, the party delivering your device is obligated to take the old one with them. Of course, that's only part of it, your country also needs to have good…

That's an interesting law. which country is that? I would love to know more about it.
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