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Comment by tyri_kai_psomi | Hacker News Reader

Mass market computers and components being described as a durable good...HN surprises again!

Computers are quite durable these days. You can easily run a useful, general-purpose OS on a computer from 10 years ago and perhaps more, even one with baseline specs. If that's not enough to be considered a 'durable good', I don't know what is.

Yep.

They were quite durable 20 years ago too. It's just back then clock speed and performance was increasing very rapidly and it had a huge effect on the usability of your machine (especially if you were a gamer). You would likely upgrade and retire a working machine for the sake of a drastic performance boost every 3ish years.

Nowadays you could happily be using a 5+ year old i5 for full time development and moderate gaming with no issues at all. I'm personally at 5+ years now and I don't see myself upgrading for quite some time because everything I do still feels very snappy.

But compare that to something like a Pentium I at 75mhz (1994) vs a Pentium III at 1ghz (1999) and the performance difference was crazy. Over 10x the clock rate, but it's not just a "paper" boost. They are so different in performance that you can't even compare them. They are in leagues of their own.

Tell that to my 9 year old iMac with the dead GPU that I can't replace, won't start up, and is going straight into the trash. Never again, Apple.

Well, he did say "computers," not "appliances." ;-)

Hey! Don't impugn the serviceability of appliances. When my toaster stopped staying down and heating on one side, I simply opened it up and crimped the broken connection.

Yes, my iMac has been flaking out for a while and only does Netflix now. Terrible design, especially for such an expensive machine.

If you can, take it back to Apple - they will recycle it.

I built a PC seven years ago (i7-3770K). It's lasted through multiple apartments and multiple jobs. I do all my dev work and gaming on it, and it's even able to run Slack. How much longer does something need to last before it's considered durable?

I have a food processor that my parents bought nearly fifty years ago. They had to replace the motor once, and then I replaced the wiring on the motor coil four years ago, but it's still ticking. Stainless steel, no plastic components.

(The buttons used to be plastic. Now they're wood.)

That's durable. It also does a much better job than any modern food processor, possibly because the motor is four times the size of what you'd get now.

The rate at which technology advances doesn't change whether a good is considered a durable good or not. That term has a specific meaning in economics.

There are 50-year-old cars still in service today. I wouldn't drive one, because I want to take advantage of the tech advancements of the past 50 years. But that doesn't mean cars aren't durable goods.

And even though computing is barely 50 years old, there are 50-year-old computers in service today. I wouldn't use one, because I want to take advantage of the tech advancements of the past 50 years. But that doesn't mean computers aren't durable goods.

This applies even if a 50-year-old car, which predates bluetooth, doesn't have built-in bluetooth. And it applies even if a 50-year-old computer, which predates HTTP, can't load websites.

I wouldn't consider that durable, just repairable. After all, that's like saying an old classic car is durable because it exists and only had its motor replaced once.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good

I'm still running an AMD cpu I bought around 2019 ( I think?) in a tower that is 10 years older than that. The PSU is a year old because I had to replace it. The video card is 2 years old. All that to say, I run my hardware for a long time.

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