How and why I stopped buying new laptops
lowtechmagazine.com
lowtechmagazine.com
Am I missing something, or can an entire replacement keyboard not be had for ~32 EUR? https://www.amazon.com/Replacement-Keyboard-Lenovo-Thinkpad-...
Also… I have a T460p, bought in 2016. Perhaps I've gotten lucky, but it's well out of warranty at this point and we've only cracked the S key. (But the key functions, so I've not bothered to replace it.) The TrackPoint™ nub needs replacing, though, the original power supply failed and was replaced, and my battery is pretty close to dead after ~4.5 years (I think I get ~an hour of life?)
source: worked at one, we had a full size box (1m x .5m x .5m) full of dead or half-dead keyboards, exactly for this purpose; most of them being lenovo (also lenovo has like 30 different kbds, keys are NOT interchangable)
if you're a respecting person, might as well give you one of the 50 i feel bad to say, but saying you're a past customer of them will almost gurantee a free key
'use low energy software' isn't that simple
me just being a person in the zoom era uses a combination of a windows gaming rig, an old mac for video conferencing, a new mac for xcode, and a linux laptop so I don't hate myself
the best tools don't work at all on old hardware. your time isn't free
we would need to legislate open APIs for every commercial service before it would be reasonable for tech professionals to use old stuff
only open source can work on old hardware
also 'replace old HDDs with SSDs' -- this tech only gets developed + exists because of the volume of laptops being produced. you can't benefit from a corrupt system and pretend to be outside it
What types of tools are you talking about? You're probably not going to be able to compile the linux kernel in 1 minute flat using an old laptop, but your average webdev workload will work just fine
>also 'replace old HDDs with SSDs' -- this tech only gets developed + exists because of the volume of laptops being produced. you can't benefit from a corrupt system and pretend to be outside it
Strange, I distinctly remember SSDs being common as an aftermarket upgrade way before it became a standard option on consumer laptops.
I used 2 copies of the same phone for 4 years with open + closed source android -- the open source worked perfectly but had no commercial apps, the google android degraded on an upgrade cadence but had commercial offerings
I say this as someone who uses linux as my primary desktop, hates every moment on a commercial OS, and interacts with OSS for ethical reasons -- the economy is not building for it. Many hands make light work, and there are more hands in commercial software.
that said, i'm still using an amd phenom II x4 bought in 2010 and manage hacking on clojure, golang, and odds and ends fairly well as a software consultant. arch, xmonad, emacs, and firefox are my "stack". similar to you, i also have a macbook air from 2013 for meet and zoom (and non cloud iphone backup :) ), so not quite as old as this person but certainly don't need a new one any time soon.
love the blog btw
IMO the web stack is best on old hardware -- it's designed to handle massive load at scale and has the most attention to pure build tool performance
when I was pure web dev, I could use just the linux laptop too.
I got my now-high school kid an old Macbook Air (made sure to get 8GB RAM) for US$300. He's been experimenting with Blender and video editing (FCPX, make sure to render proxy files!) Sure, that's "only" 7 years old, but it's fine?
I'm typing this comment on a Thinkpad X230 - not quite as old as the X60s, but still the better part of a decade old. It can perform most tasks quite adequately.
The real problem is getting spare parts for it; replacing the battery, for instance, was quite the fishing expedition, and I eventually had to settle for a bulky 9-cell instead of the smaller 6-cell I had previously enjoyed. So there are some downsides to be sure.
So, if I do nothing then I'll have had the machine for ten years before no longer receiving patches. If I upgrade to Catalina, which I probably won't, then I'll get 11. I don't think getting 10 years out of a laptop that's been my daily driver is a bad deal.
Yeah, I can't upgrade to Big Sur. So what? I'm still running on an OS that's supported and getting patched.
Other than software updates, repair and parts replacement options for those older models (which are easier to repair compared to the newer ones) may also dry up soon. Apple marks Macs as obsolete when they’re about seven years from the original release date. So Apple paid service is not an option.
Buck the "major operating systems."
Run Linux.
How people (not necessarily the author) will scrutinize the environmental consequences of inconsequential decisions while willfully ignoring the big picture never ceases to amaze me.
Kids, meat/dairy, housing, travel. If you want to make environmentally sound decisions, that’s all you can do. Don’t have kids, don’t eat meat/dairy, live in as small a home/dense housing as possible, and don’t get on planes. No amount of buying used laptops can make a dent compared to those things.
But sure, if a person doesn't care about getting a new computer, it's not totally fine as well.
There’s simply no way to have a biological child and be environmentally friendly. Can’t put it any more simply. I’ve got no issue with people who want biological kids. Just acknowledge that it’s a selfish choice and don’t pretend that you can buy a used laptop like that matters in the slightest.
What is important is not your direct impact on environment by using a old computer.
But what really is, is : - proving to the world around you that the same work can be done with a good old computer for 10x less money. - proving yourself that life can be lived without buying new things every once a while (computers, cars, furniture ...) - enabling basically everyone to have access to a decent computer, and to the internet - it forces you to understand how such a central concept of our era just works and how you, as a human being, have the power to make it work as long as possible
I know it can be difficult to understand this on HN, but the vast majority of humanity doesn't have any control over the computer they use. The industry just telled them that computers are complex and "sort of magic" objects that just works or get irremediably slow.
So, the real impact on the environment you have by using "old" computers, is proving to yourself, and to the world - including your kids - , that caring about what you already own is an enjoyable way to live full of real gratifications that are not just the dopamine peak you've got when you unbox a new computer.
For your point on the kids, I agree with you. But kids are just the number one reason we try to keep this planet livable. What's the point of preserving this planet if the humanity is going to die in the next 100 years ? We are talking about keeping our home livable, not a collective suicide.
It does no such thing.
Instead it tricks someone into thinking that buying a used laptop is impactful when it absolutely truly isn’t. It lets them feel good about the many truly awful decisions they make on a daily basis.
If a person thinks that buying a used anything is how we “make it work as long as possible” they are sorely mistaken. It’s like thinking a guy sticking an oar in the water is going to slow the Titanic. Yes, technically the Titanic has slowed down by a minute amount but the icebergs not going to notice the difference.
> What's the point of preserving this planet if the humanity is going to die in the next 100 years?
This is a great question and one we’re seeing play out right now.
I don’t think the timeline is as short as 100 years but life 250 years from now is going to be absolutely awful. Personally, I don’t care one bit. I’ll be dead and I’m not adding more people to the mess.
But if someone does care and they’re having kids, they need to do a helluva lot more than teach them to buy used laptops.
Also, there is the matter of being complicit, whether or not your choice makes a 'real' impact.
I eat a plant based diet, live in a tiny apartment, will never have children, and never fly (have never driven a car either). I’m complicit.
A person can buy a used laptop and they’re still complicit, too. Sure, they can say “I’m not part of the problem” and feel good about it but that’s what people do. Bury their heads in the sand and make themselves feel good.
It’s why we’re in the mess we’re in.
We’re all complicit.
In my mind, I sometimes get this visual of that scene from Full Metal Jacket, the one with the towel and bar of soap...
I get that sense that we're all taking turns thwacking our biome/biosphere/relatives a couple of times and then passing it...
I commend you on your efforts to reduce your complicity and sharing your successes for our inspiration. Thank you.
(I still think anything is better than brand new when it comes to electronics, but you're way ahead of the pack.)
If I found out tomorrow that the Earth was cooling too fast and I needed to start driving, flying, and running the heat constantly in my giant house for the good of everyone, I wouldn’t do it.
I like not driving, not flying, and living in a tiny apartment. It’s just fortunate that these things are also “good” for the planet.
But in the greater scheme of things, this is the big problem of environmental self-whataboutism. Do what you can, even smaller things. For example, if you do decide to have a kid, doing the other things will instill better values on them and will mitigate them getting angry with you for making their world unliveable when they develop thinking capabilities.
I completely disagree. We’re so close to 100% fucked that if you’re not willing to do the big things, just do whatever you want and enjoy the ride. If you’re alive now, you’re not going to be around when the bill really comes due anyway.
Corporate IT shops are often selling off batches of laptops that they've replaced, so selection is usually good. The repair ecosystem will have been running for a while, so it'll be easy to get model specific upgrade and replacement parts on eBay for ~1/3 of what Lenovo charges (hinges, LCD panels, keyboards, trackpads, batteries, outer shell, motherboards, etc.).
You can usually find anything from "this laptop sat on a shelf for two years and looks pristine," to "previous owner was a slob, please take this off our hands." So depending on your comfort level and interest, you can either start using it right away, or buy every possible replacement/upgrade part and essentially build yourself a new custom machine.
Right now I'm using a T480 purchased new from Lenovo (for work), and another T480 that I bought on eBay for ~$600 and completely refurbished. I doubt I'll be buying a new personal laptop again -- rebuilding an old one is too much fun.
Installed a community made eDP converter for 1080p screen upgrade and flashed custom EC firmware for 3rd party battery support, replaced a cracked palm rest and odds and ends for a few bucks on eBay etc all pretty easily thanks to great hardware documentation. With an ssd and decent ram it runs arch + gnome as well as my modern desktop does, but costs next to nothing to repair, is built like a tank, well supported in Linux and has a great keyboard. 10/10!
Heh. I did exactly this with my previous T520 after half a decade. I've been meaning to dig it out to play with coreboot, but haven't had time or desk space lately.
Speaking of EC firmware -- one of the annoying aspects of the T480 dual-battery system is that the switchover point is fixed at 5%. It would be nice to be able to set this to something like 20% for better battery longevity. I don't really want to do firmware experiments on a system that I'm using as a daily driver, but at some point it would be nice to try and hack around this, assuming someone doesn't beat me to it.
On the environmental component, every little bit helps, but there is a huge energy efficiency difference between new and (very) old laptops. Plus, if you are spending time on the laptop trying to make things work right, you are burning energy. And there are many other ways to control your impact on the environment in more significant ways, including by decisions about how to heat/cool your home, where to live and how far to commute, what kind of car you drive, where and how you get your food, how many children you have, etc.
With luck they either get the customer's IT to also deliver a laptop for development, or some cheap cloud instance with similar specs to the laptop.
It's the same argument with new/old car.
Old things require more handling, care and general respect.
New things, last longer, because they're new.
Swapping in used parts is no guarantee, like his "6 months" repair of his fan.
NEW Old stock FRU for Lenovo/IBM are great.
I agree with the article in question, but, I just don't like how the author wrote it and has a dependence on "repair shops."
Repair shops are nothing more than a middle man, and if you run old equipment, you need to be redundant, ready to move systems and capable of repairing it yourself.
"This is a hack"
No it's not, it's a known finance topic called depreaction, and the risk/liability of deprecation assets.
Would I source, buy and deploy 10-40 macbook pro/air from the previous decade? Yes, a i7, 8gb/16gm model can be had refurb in great shape for $250-300, vs a comparative new model for $1000 each.
Having no policy/plan in place to swap out entirely, scary.
Would I do the same with Lenovo? Yes.
Macbook Air/Pro are great because the reduction of moving parts and great quality and metal fame really outlasts, and they can even run windows. So screw OSX if you don't want to be "reduced" to a latest OSX version.
It sounds silly, but a 10yr old macbook, you can max out to 16gb, even upgrade the CPU (you need a proper soldeing station, but I admit that's too much) and you can swap out everything and it's comparative to an average new machine.
When I mean average, new, I mean $300-600, comparing a new $1k+ mbp/air is no go, but even for a prev I7 to current i7, there is not "much" diff from 2014 to 2020.
etc etc etc
There is a place where you can get a completely new motherboard for a certain old Thinkpad model, that I think I will try.
My only problem with ancient laptops is that nowadays I need 32GB of RAM to run my VMs in.
Jevon's Law makes modern machines as slow as the old ones, by loading them down with crap animation. Don't run that, and they get as fast as ever, which was plenty fast enough. Many of us have got used to Chromebooks with pokey ARM chips, and have no complaints.
But, I had the thing optimized. Removable cd rom meant I could save the weight.
For it to last in 2009 against peers with quad cores and 4gb of ram, I had everything compiled as specifically as possible. It could run windows through virtual box "better" than peers that had windows with bloatware. Ultimately used it for a video processing project in 2009 because it would run python and qt better than the 4 other people in my group project.
My work machine is a 2015 MacBook Pro that's similarly configured to my home machine. Still runs great. They offered to replace it last year and I asked why? It's still able to do everything just fine.
I say this to back up something the author said - you don't need to be so extreme and buy a machine from 2006. Buying a machine that's 3-5 years old is still a good machine to run all but the most-demanding tasks. Even then I ask why are you running your most-demanding tasks on your laptop instead of a server or EC2 instance?
Bottom line - yes: you can save a lot of money buying older equipment.
The "use it or lose it" factor can be major in a large company. Similar to how departments use up budget at the end of the fiscal year, if people stop upgrading their laptop when it's offered, they'll stop offering it so often and it'll be harder to obtain an upgrade when I actually need it.
You also have to consider IT support and EoL. If 4k people hang onto their laptops until some required software/security update no longer works, now the company has to make a huge 4,000 laptop purchase instead of spreading that purchase across multiple quarters or years.
We also recycle our old laptops back into a rotation as spares for interns, loaner laptops during RMA, presentation or demo machines for customer sales opportunities, etc. It's nice to have a stock that's not 7-10 years old, and also not go out and buy a $2k laptop for an intern.
I wasn't tempted at all until the M1...
Over 20 years ago I joined a company as Director of IT. In the first 10 days I cancelled several thousands of dollar of monthly leases of equipment that siting unused from projects that were over but not returned. Nobody looked at the leases while the Directors position was being filled.
Random IT leasing article from google. https://www.costowl.com/rental/equipment-leasing-it-cost.htm...
The difference is... jaw dropping.
I'm under the impression they launched it primarily with the new macbook airs because they're entry level, lower priced, and wanted to test the waters with the new architecture.
I type this on a Mid-2015 Macbook Pro, still working well but Mac OS tells me I need the battery serviced. I'll probably buy a new Macbook Pro 16" when they bring one out with Apple Silicon and then do the battery replacement and keep this one going as a spare machine (and for the old Photoshop and other Adobe CS6 apps that won't work on a 64-bit only OS which is why this is still running Mojave).
My Windows-using friend is on their third laptop in the last decade, not including the Chromebook they inherited from work.
If you want to find the "new shiny every year" people, look for the ones buying gaming rigs. There are very few games that run on macOS so there's very little pressure to upgrade to the latest greatest every year.
They can't keep pretending to be aligned with the environment and then put on a big show every year for products that provide tiny incremental benefits. I'm thinking mostly of the iPhone, but even things like M1: yes it's a step forward but that doesn't mean I *need* one right now.
For the record, I'm using a 2012 MacBook Air (8GB) for everything. The fans will spin up sometimes when browsing, or when Docker becomes uncontrollable, but it does everything I ask and it doesn't feel at all slow.
The energy efficiency of an Intel Haswell (June 2013) is off the wall better than the rusty dusty antique this joker is suggesting as an ok workbook. There's so many incredible semi-modern used laptops to consider. You don't have to be a weird retro-compute freak who loves stupidly slow machines like this guy. You can buy really nice used laptops that perform wonderfully, & get great great deals on them.
Incredible what a dis-service this article does, how much of a turn off it would be, to most sane people considering whether to buy used. It ends up serving as propaganda for buying laptops. In no way do you have to sacrifice your quality of life, like this dude, if you buy used.
Internet+Web is amazing, almost miraculous technology, enabling even 25-year-old devices adequate access with a little bit of forethought.
If the author makes it to 10 years with these 3 laptops from 2006, it will add 3.3 years of lifespan to each laptop. Assuming the prior owners used them for 3-5 years, this endeavor extends the lifespan per laptop to 6.3 - 8.3 years, so I think buying new in 2017 and running with it until 2027 wins in terms of useful life per laptop.
I don't know if the energy usage of operation over 10 years is significant compared to the energy usage of manufacturing, but a 2017 laptop would be dramatically more efficient than a 2006 laptop (assuming the same software running on both).
It has also another outcome: you never put the commitment it is required to master a tool if that tool changes constantly, which is 90% of what matters. I really hate this outcome.
Just a fantastic piece of kit. If only the mainboard were upgradable...
The lack of webcam is a bonus as far as I'm concerned; "Zoom culture" can burn.
I would be interested in any Ryzen aftermarket kits as well too hehe..
Hopefully data is duplicated from the computer to the SD card, instead of living on the SD card. I'm not sure they're as reliable as other media.
Post-Pan, they became our workhorse remote training platform even running both Hyper-V or Virtual Box to teach virtual installations.
Admin had budgets for new laptops for remote teaching. Nothing offered had the specs to replace these upgraded 2012 vintage machines. (Budget was repurposed).
Now I am stuck. Not bad enough to replace it immediately, but not good enough to work efficiently
lots of discussion previously:
Next when I see a GoGreen or Climate change activist, I am going to ask what laptop they are using if answers Windows or Mac, I can say you are not a climate change activist.
One should make a comparison which programming language is greener. Definitely python isn't one when compare to java. My laptop starts screaming I run python and no sound effect on java same program tried switching.