(2020)
Yep, saw that too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36646791 374 points, 530 comments
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How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
21–30 of 149 posts
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#22Hmm... okay...
Why the SD Card thing when you can just use the built-in OS cloud syncing capabilities in Windows or MacOS?
Also you can take my M3 MacBook Air 15" from my cold dead hands. That laptop is ultra-lite, perfectly quiet, and ultra-fast. Wouldn't trade it for a 10 year old laptop.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#23Hmm... okay... Why the SD Card thing when you can just use the built-in OS cloud syncing capabilities in Windows or MacOS? Also you can take my M3 MacBook Air 15" from my cold dead hands. That laptop is ultra-lite, perfectly quiet, and ultra-fast. Wouldn't trade it for a 10 year old laptop.
Old article... 2020. Maybe cloud syncing wasn't suitable for that person back then, I'm guessing.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#24That's all fine when you use the laptop as a typewriter. I keep around a 2010 laptop that only has some text editing software on it for that exact reason. Unfortunately, with the advent of soldered ram and storage, this isn't feasible any more for more taxing uses. Most of the used devices will have the default ram and storage and you'll have to buy new so you can order the thing with enough resources.
You can just be an informed consumer and not buy laptops with non-replaceable components. Don't give bad products money and incentive to keep making more like them.
Before Framework there wasn't a good option if you did anything more than office work. Even Framework's offerings aren't powerful enough in many ways.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#25That's all fine when you use the laptop as a typewriter. I keep around a 2010 laptop that only has some text editing software on it for that exact reason. Unfortunately, with the advent of soldered ram and storage, this isn't feasible any more for more taxing uses. Most of the used devices will have the default ram and storage and you'll have to buy new so you can order the thing with enough resources.
You can just be an informed consumer and not buy laptops with non-replaceable components. Don't give bad products money and incentive to keep making more like them.
I don't think there is any middle ground left between thin and portable and all soldered and replaceable components and "transportable" instead of "portable".
Gaming like laptops are a no no for me, sorry. And I doubt there's anything just slightly larger than a macbook pro but with upgradeable components.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#26If it's someone local or friend-of-a-friend, fine.
But for rando ebay/web: is there some part of the supply chain where thousands or tens of thousands of machines hit a single point where it's scalable for, say, a software rootkit to efficiently be put on them?
E.g., I know universities typically buy a shit-ton of the same model. Where do they eventually unload them if they don't end up selling through their official used channel? Same for police/govt/etc.
I don't think the economics of, say, rooting a bunch of machines in the hopes of hacking a big Bitcoin wallet need to even make sense. There just needs to be an easy point of access to many machines, so that a confidence man can sell some poor schmuck on the idea that if they buy a rootkit and install it on all of them they'll make millions in Bitcoins (or whatever).
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#27You can get some really great laptop bargains on eBay if you dig around.
In 2023 I managed to get a barely used 2017 17" HP for $80 that runs Windows 11 fantastically and even happily runs some smaller LLMs.
A crappy laptop can be totally transformed by swapping out their spinning HDD for a super cheap SSD and adding another 8GB of cheap RAM.
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#28Off-topic, but I was far more intrigued by the fact that their server runs on solar power and may go offline. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power/
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#29> On the contrary, the only thing a consumer can do to improve their laptop’s ecological and economic sustainability is to use it for as long as possible. This is true for everything, not just laptops. Any purchasing that occurrs on a fashion cycle is largly a rip off...
I believe most people do not WANT a new device, as getting used to new ways and new quirks is a unproductive distraction.
For instance, I would pay a lot to get my BlackBerry back, screw all that app bloarware nonsense. Fast email, phone, a good keyboard and long battery life, that is a winning combination, from a user's perspective. (And I actually prefer devices with no camera or microphone in it, for security reasons.)
Re: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
#30Hmm... okay... Why the SD Card thing when you can just use the built-in OS cloud syncing capabilities in Windows or MacOS? Also you can take my M3 MacBook Air 15" from my cold dead hands. That laptop is ultra-lite, perfectly quiet, and ultra-fast. Wouldn't trade it for a 10 year old laptop.
Not that I concur with the author's choices but they discuss why they don't use cloud halfway through the SD card section.
I'd be willing to bet your use cases and goals don't align with the author's. Which is fine, but remember the article is about why they did not why you must also be the same.