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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

#91

Post by pjmlp »

ponector wrote: post #83
eviks wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Compared with 8 bit home computers appliance nature, that wouldn't be a big problem if we had repair shops all over the place, which could nonetheless take over replacing/upgrading soldered items.

I do agree having back user upgradable ram, disk and GPUs on laptops would be much better alternatives.

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

#92

Post by pjc50 »

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 should have to bear the full cost of cleaning up, repairing, or disposing the products they unleash upon the world

Boy have I got a WEEE for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electroni...

More broadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dot_(symbol)

(however, both of those schemes don't put everything back directly - which would be inefficient. They allow delegation by paying recyclers. This can result in "carbon offset" like shenanigans.)

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

#93

Post by srean »

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?

New laptops, phones also last a lot less (borked storage, borked motherboard), forcing us to buy another - which I think is the point.

We have one refrigerator that's still going strong after 50 years whereas one of our 'newer' air-conditioners had to be replaced after 6 years.

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

#94

Post by vladms »

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.

The field exploded though, both in terms of complexity and of number of people involved. I know many engineers that can do from compiler optimizations to web apps. I also know "programmers" that don't want to learn a new library because it stresses them.

Lots of tech we currently rely on is built under FOSS model (thinking web stuff, mobile stuff, os stuff, data center stuff). Of course you must choose to use it, but I find nowadays using Linux daily on desktop as easy as using Windows or MacOS. 20 years ago you had to fight drivers, file formats, browser issues, media formats, lack of software (I mean we run many Windows video-games on Linux without issues, how cool is that?!)

I did not check piracy lately because I find FOSS alternatives (or I can afford to buy some stuff).

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

#95

Post by HPsquared »

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.

We (in the West, at least) live in an age of vendor lock-in. In the East, it's state lock-in but vendor freedom.

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

#97

Post by catlikesshrimp »

srean wrote: post #93
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?

New laptops, phones also last a lot less (borked storage, borked motherboard), forcing us to buy another - which I think is the point. We have one refrigerator that's still going strong after 50 years whereas one of our 'newer' air-conditioners had to be replaced after 6 years.

>> We have one refrigerator that's still going strong after 50 years

In that particular case, it might not meet energy efficiency standards anymore.

But I agree appliances breaking the day after the warranty expires is evil. Depending on the country, warranty may be meaningless, or close to that

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

#98

Post by intrasight »

HPsquared wrote: post #95
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.

We (in the West, at least) live in an age of vendor lock-in. In the East, it's state lock-in but vendor freedom.

There are plenty of places where both are locked in

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

#100

Post by linacica »

pjmlp wrote: post #81
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?

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.

I would like to point out 20 years old it's was in 2005, which isn't very old imo,
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