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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

#191

Post by jjude »

InfinityByTen wrote: post #188
bubblethink wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end goal is progress and prosperity. Semiconductors are one of the few areas where there is rapid progress. Depriving your large working age population of the tools they need to improve their lives is counterproductive. The problem statement at hand is that you have a poor country plagued by graft and bureaucracy with the only sliver of hope being technology that can create upward mobility for your billion+ peopl…

> poor country plagued by graft and bureaucracy Tells me how little you know about the country. And that's okay. There are several "rich" countries that are also plagued by graft and bureaucracy. And no, they aren't as happy as Economist indices would tell you.

There are two parts in this comment - poor country ; plagued by graft & bureaucracy

Latest Indus valley report[1] states that about 1Bn people (India3) are in economic condition equal to sub-saharan countries condition. In that sense large part of the country is still poor.

In response to minister Piyush Goel's rant in the latest startup event, a startup founder posted this on reddit which details how the country is plagued by graft & bureaucracy [2] . This is just one rant. Twitter is flooded with actual experience of many.

[1]: https://blume.vc/reports/indus-valley-annual-report-2024 [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StartUpIndia/comments/1js2y1s/piyus...

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

#192

Post by NikkiA »

pjmlp wrote: post #140
ciupicri wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1366x768 resolution is small, there are websites which are hard to use at that resolution.

Not everything needs a retina screen to be usable.

My lenovo is 1400x900 and even the ubuntu installer is too tall for the screen.

Developers have become incredibly lazy.

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

#193

Post by iszomer »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #165
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad has set up a repair cafe near where he lives, and they're popping up in loads of places now. While some electronics are hard / impossible to repair, sure, there's still a lot that can be done with the rest. Household appliances, for example. The main issue of course is cost; these places are volunteer run, but to make a living out of anything you need to charge an X amount per hour, and if the repair is more e…

> The main issue of course is cost; these places are volunteer run There is cost, and there's also the companies/devices themselves. We are losing modularity. With almost no benefit to the user. I mean companies have the audacity to solder an SSD to the motherboards of laptops. And make the batteries - one of the biggest points of failure - non user replaceable. We had all that. It was cheap. It was user friendly. Wh…

Framework and Valve are brands for their end products but the meat of the argument really should be what occurs in the background, eg: formal contractual and agreement say, the integration of a Sony co-designed and manufactured camera component and its integration into an Apple iPhone for example, as well as all the intermediaries involved up and down the chain.

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

#194

Post by iszomer »

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…

I'd opt for an unconditional bootloader unlock on subsidized devices long EOL to save my electronics from obsolescence.

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

#195

Post by glouwbug »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #189
einpoklum wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, you mean the laptop refused to start after replacing the RAM? And - was the price quote you got for adding RAM, or for fixing the laptop so that it starts again (with the old RAM SODIMM)? I couldn't quite follow the example.

I never replaced the RAM. Switched off the laptop, opened it, removed the RAM, and then accidentally switched it on again without any RAM in the slot

It was the secret button: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932247

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

#196

Post by lproven »

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote: post #178
lproven wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try: https://www.tpart.net/

Holy shit. X210 with an Intel 7 Ultra 165H in it? Damn. I'm sold. Anyone got one of these already or are they still in pre-production?

Right? I am extremely tempted to take some cash from my savings account.

I spoke with a chap called Franck Deng and he seems to be taking orders right now.

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

#197

Post by NikkiA »

Saigonautica wrote: post #51
nxobject wrote: post #9

I’d love to learn some of the advanced rework skills they need to work on modern motherboards - especially BGA part replacement. And how to build a workshop on the cheap! I’m always in awe at the skills they need to learn that are nonexistent in the western world.

Here are some good "value for money" tool brands I use (I live in Asia): 1.Yihua combined hot air rework station + soldering station. 2.Pro's Kit multimeter, tweezers, and wire snips. 3.Uni-T hand-held oscillosope (quite optional). 4.Mechanic brand solder paste. Get the one in a plastic syringe. The tubs dry out. 5.TS100 soldering iron as a spare. Heats up so fast at 24V! I use them mainly for prototyping, but they a…

> Yihua combined hot air rework station + soldering station.

I personally wouldn't recommend this.

I have one, it cost just short of £100. But I much prefer my T12 based 'KSGER' soldering station that was $30 from banggood and has far better features, plus I don't have to worry about the heating element dying (since with T12 the element is part of the tip).

One day when I need hot air again, I'll probably think hard about finding a stand alone hot air station from banggood or aliexpress. I see they have some for $30.

Since the hot-air has all the critical parts in the hand unit, and the heating and fan often die randomly, having a 2-in-1 is just too much liability.

Btw, I recommend a butane soldering iron as a true 'backup' that doesn't even need a charged powertool battery.

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

#198

Post by foobarchu »

coretx wrote: post #87
vladms wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All tech or all physical tech? For now software managed to somehow go in the opposite direction. In the '90s many / lots of operating systems / tools / libraries were paid / hard to access, today we have lots of (open-source) stuff for people to tinker with. Tinkering with physical stuff is also good and should be encouraged / supported, but let's also be careful not to loose the software tinkering (for example by no…

No, most people are stuffing everything into the application layer, or worse, a web/mobile app these days and don't know how to fix anything below it. I know many "programmers" who can neither configure a SME/Enterprise firewall or switch nor build their own PC or server from parts. Also, during the 90's everything was easy to find and access. Piracy was the norm and FOSS was booming.

> I know many "programmers" who can neither configure a SME/Enterprise firewall or switch

This is a very weird baseline to use for qualifying a programmer. Firewall configuration is completely irrelevant for most programmers and has been for decades. It is objectively not a programming task, it's just something that might get foisted upon a programmer if there is nobody else to do it.

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

#200

Post by thenthenthen »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #186
thenthenthen wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVERYTHING gets recycled in China period.

That isn’t even close to true. But I get you are using hyperbole here.

Name me one thing that not gets recycled? I have seen ppl opening manholes to scope the oil off the sewer (gutter oil). Styrofoam is the hottest commodity amongst trash collectors (plus cardboard that gets soaked before sold).
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