Now in a throw away society with planned obsolence devices, most of those shops are gone and the repair knowledge gone with them.
Unless goverments fix the planned obsolence culture it is almost impossible to have the repair culture back.
I've fixed old electronics myself sometimes and quite often it's doable and the spare parts usually cost approximately nothing. However, paying someone 50 euros for half an hour worth of work to fix a thirty euro Christmas decoration doesn't feel like a good deal. Maybe for 10 or even 15 euros it would be.
Even if a laptop were built to last 20 years, who would want one when a new one is an order of magnitude better?
Doesn't mean you dump it after 2-3 years because a new fancy models comes along or the battery is not repairable because it's welded shut.
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.
Developers have become incredibly lazy.
I have a Centrino laptop from 2004, and it's single core, with 1.5GB RAM and, of course, spinning rust.
It works, but even playing a video on youtube can be taxing. I'm not arguing for "performance" tasks here, just sitting on the couch and surfing, and clicking random links.
Then again my home server is a 2013 i5 that does everything it needs to do (except be super power efficient). So I'd say ~10-14 years is the sweet spot, but 20 is historic and mostly useless, sadly
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.
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
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
Nowadays I can only replace m.2 stick to get more storage. Everything is soldered.
I do agree having back user upgradable ram, disk and GPUs on laptops would be much better alternatives.
Someone living in poverty whose life may be markedly improved by having one?
It makes it more expensive to be on the cutting edge and turning over your laptop once every couple of years, but it makes the used purchases cheaper.
In fact, no, because they will also become less accessible to the less poor, and less poor will start using them longer and will also buy used ones.
I repair my own stuff for fun, but there's absolutely no way I could make a living from fixing other people's stuff. The phone repair business in my area is dominated by illegal immigrants, because fixing iPhones is only marginally more lucrative than delivering pizzas.
Yeah Portugal is a great experience when visiting with tier 1 country salary.