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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

#81

Post by pjmlp »

djrj477dhsnv wrote: post #67
zoobab wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

My Asus 1215B netbook from 2009 has served me well, until it died last year.

There was nothing in 2025 laptops that I would have replaced it for, the use cases haven't changed from my 2009 requirements in computing on the go with a cheap laptop like device.

Its replacement is now Samsung tablet with DEX capabilities, which I will likewise use until it dies.

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

#82

Post by griffzhowl »

djrj477dhsnv wrote: post #67
zoobab wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

If it's two orders of magnitude cheaper then plenty of people could want one. It's handy to have a spare laptop or two around and with a lightweight linux on there old ones can be perfectly functional

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

#83

Post by ponector »

eviks wrote: post #74
djrj477dhsnv wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> would want one when a new one is an order of magnitude better It's not, you're just ignoring two obvious points: 1. a person with no laptop would prefer it 2. a repairable laptop can also have its parts upgraded, so a 20 year laptop could have 1-year old parts

Cheap laptop I've bought in 2011 went through several upgrades: replaced ram doubling amount of GB. Replaced HDD with SSD, added HDD instead of DVD reader. Even replaced CPU to get more cores!

Nowadays I can only replace m.2 stick to get more storage. Everything is soldered.

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

#84

Post by vladms »

gloxkiqcza wrote: post #31
saidinesh5 wrote: post #15

During my middle school days, we lived in a small town for a little while (read: A place where i was allowed to take my bicycle out onto the main road). After school, I used to spend a lot of time just hanging out around some TV and radio repair shops and just watched them work. They used to be friendly and gave me parts like spare motors, lights that were lying around from broken Walkmans they wouldn't repair. I too…

All tech is becoming more and more integrated and purposefully locked down. Everything from operating systems to cars. It’s truly a shame. I think many of us tinkerers/hackers have a similar story to yours - something grabs your attention when you’re a child and develops into an engineering knack later on.

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 not permitting in any shape rooting mobile devices).

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

#85

Post by HexDecOctBin »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #78
ggm wrote: post #2

If the thinkpad community gets behind this, there will be a market for upspecced thinkpads as long as supplies last. the reduce re-use re-cycle part here is nicely inserting itself into the recycle tail side.

Abhas Abhinav of Deeproot Linux runs "Mostly Harmless" which sells refurbished Thinkpads with binary blobs removed. https://mostlyharmless.io/computers/

This is amazing, I didn't know we had people doing this kind of stuff in India. Are there any other similar services that you know of, that are doing open source/Linux-friendly hardware, etc.?

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

#86

Post by DrNosferatu »

Want a real solution to electronic waste, with real international knock-on effects?

The EU should mandate 10-year warranties for higher-end consumer electronics and durable goods.

This could work on a sliding scale: less expensive items get shorter warranties (but never below the current 2-year minimum), while pricier products require longer coverage periods.

Such legislation would:

1. End the exploitation of workers in sweatshops producing deliberately short-lived products

2. Discourage planned obsolescence and reduce manufacturing waste

3. Significantly decrease the climate impact of consumer electronics

4. Create genuine incentives for a Circular Economy where durable products like quality ThinkPads become standard rather than exceptions

By requiring products to last, we'd not only protect consumers and the Environment, but also the vulnerable workers currently trapped and exploited in sweatshops designed to produce disposable goods.

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

#87

Post by coretx »

vladms wrote: post #84
gloxkiqcza wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All tech is becoming more and more integrated and purposefully locked down. Everything from operating systems to cars. It’s truly a shame. I think many of us tinkerers/hackers have a similar story to yours - something grabs your attention when you’re a child and develops into an engineering knack later on.

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.

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

#88

Post by _7acn »

It seems to me that one (of many) factors contributing to the fact that electronics are no longer repaired as often in Western countries is the wealth of these countries and the relatively low cost of electronics. If an hour of a technician's labor costs X, and a particular piece of equipment can be bought for, say, 3X, it doesn't make much sense for most people to repair it.

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

#89

Post by randunel »

midnightclubbed wrote: post #29
throw844849 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I know you are making a flippant and pointless comment, but I’m compelled to respond. Of all the laptops I’ve owned my 2020 MacBook Air is still my personal daily driver, my 2010 Mac mini still works fine for running my 3d printer, my 2014 Mac mini works great for crafting and my 2020 iPhone SE2 is still getting OS updates and is sending this message. Are they repairable? Not easily. Do they still work, absolutely. H…

I'm pretty sure you'll find individual Tesla owners who haven't yet had any issues, but their poor track record in terms of reliability and repairability remain.

Stop encouraging companies who lock you out, stop renting products you should fully own!

Locking things down is simply a hidden subscription in the shape of repairs and replacements. When you stop paying the subscription (stop repairing, stop upgrading), that's also approximately when the rental stops working (car, iphone, etc).

I'm sure the percentage of broken to working devices is a carefully monitored R&D output, to maximise profit and retain customer trust from renters such as yourself.

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

#90

Post by pjc50 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #57
saidinesh5 wrote: post #15

During my middle school days, we lived in a small town for a little while (read: A place where i was allowed to take my bicycle out onto the main road). After school, I used to spend a lot of time just hanging out around some TV and radio repair shops and just watched them work. They used to be friendly and gave me parts like spare motors, lights that were lying around from broken Walkmans they wouldn't repair. I too…

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;

This is exactly it, and it's a similar issue to what people talk about with clothing (Shein etc). Although clothing isn't automated, that really is just cheap labour.

We have all these electronic artefacts in the first place because of highly integrated processes (starting with the "integrated circuit" itself!), done on mostly-automated production lines. But the automated processes rely on rigid standardization: all the inputs must also be new and precisely in-spec. You can't easily "undo-redo" part of the manufacturing process to fix something.

As a society gets richer through automation, things which still require humans get relatively more expensive. This is known as "Baumol cost disease", the phenomenon that things like education and healthcare are much more expensive than consumer goods because the latter can be automated and outsourced while the former can't.

People will pick cheap-unrepairable over expensive-repairable almost all the time. The awkward corner is expensive-unrepairable, which is becoming an issue (see John Deere vs right to repair).

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