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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

This tends not to work with electronics which tend to be at least somewhat obsolete by the time you'd repair them--and, frankly, is less economical than it used to be for many items. That said, I do tend to fix or have fixed clothing with a relatively minor issue that is otherwise still good.

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I think this largely depends on the purpose of said electronic item. Laptops, especially within the last few years, can be considered fit for purpose despite the advancements made in computer technology and new releases.

There is of course a point at which a repair becomes more impractical than a replacement, but with a good bit of patience and a steady hand, even an amateur repair tech and breath new life into a broken computer.

The idea of "fit for purpose" is pretty important, especially with electronics, as it's easy to get lost in spec competitions when considering the repair or replace decision. When I did Tech Support for a University and would have students bring me broken machines, it was always a personal consultation to determine the best approach for the student. Often they had little or no money to put towards a new machine, and most of the time all they needed was something to write papers on and watch netflix/do facebook-ey things. A newer computer would certainly do all of the above better, but that doesn't mean that first machine couldn't also do it just fine. $80 and an hour of my time to replace a cracked screen beats the student having to spend $400+ on a new laptop.

It's a weird, fine line with modern consumer electronics depending on what is broken - if you can clearly tell what the damaged part is and a replacement less than 1/3rd the cost of a new machine, I'd suggest it's worth investigating the repair option.

Here in NYC we have a permanent "e-waste" collection center. Some items are patched up, tested, and sold: http://www.lesecologycenter.org/programs/ewaste/reuse-store/

A surprising amount of electronics can be fixed just by opening it up and looking for a blown fuse. Replace the fuse, turn the thing back on, and see what happens. About 20% of the time, the fuse will blow again (at which point you're in shopjimmy.com territory). But usually everything's good to go and you can chalk the blown fuse up to gremlins.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/user/shopjimmy

My wife has a Nexus 5 which is cheap to repair and replace parts. She's so happy with the phone she doesn't want a new one (Shame Google stopped makeing excellent, upgradeable, repairable and cheap smart phones).

I am a huge Nexus 5 fan, I own one, but it is not cheap or easy to repair.

Also, the Nexus 5X is out, almost identical, but based on the LG G4 instead of the G2, and has a small handful of niftier features, including better battery life.

Battery replacement $20, display cheap to repair also compared to all other phones I've owned.

im not expert in this, but is hardware able to be broken back down into the elements that they came from to be reused?

There is recycling for various electronics components and, in some locales, certain components are legally supposed to be recycled (CRTs, lithium batteries). I don't know the details of what happens in the recycling process however.

Sadly, the process is often to ship to Africa or China and just dump it. There might be some government paperwork that says this particular open-air debris garden is just the storage lot for a proper recycling operation, but often the closest thing to recycling is locals picking through the mounds of trash looking for anything of value.

There is a free to watch documentary about the problem in Ghana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUCoToorc9M

In China they'll recycle it and sell it back to you. And it's fine, most re-used components aren't worse than the new ones.

It can, and it is, but there's only few places on Earth where it makes sense on a larger scale. They do it in China, and I suspect that a lot of old components make their way into new phones, but haven't seen any numbers yet.

Electronic components generally don't wear much, there's nothing that makes them unsuitable for use in new devices except that ordering new parts is probably cheaper thanks to economies of scale.

Come to think of it, maybe it could be changed? Recycling electronic components is mostly about melting the elements off the PCB and then sorting them to correct bins; the latter part is what usually involves humans. With proper design and sufficient automation, maybe there could be a fully-automated recycler that takes random electronics junk as input, and gives out spools of components ready to be used by a pick&place machine?

I have a Macbook Pro that is 5 years old now. I've replaced and upgraded every single component as they failed (battery, SSD, RAM, trackpad and most recently the matte screen when a pixel went dead). It still benchmarks on par with current models. So I don't agree with your comment at all.

I've made repairs and upgrades to a five year old MacBook as well. However, I eventually replaced it primarily for reasons of weight and battery life. I've also repaired an old iPod although I honestly didn't have a lot of use for it after I repaired it because I had newer iPhones.

Certainly compared to clothing electronics do tend to become obsolete but it obviously depends a lot on the electronics and what they're being used for.

My X1 Carbon appears to be almost wholly unrepairable, but it's not like any of the similar alternatives I could buy are any better.

The X200 series is thicker, and a bit heavier, but shockingly repairable. :)

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