10 ms·

How and why I stopped buying new laptops

prosaic-hacker 6y ago
A couple of month Pre-pan our Computer Support vocational training department intercepted 2 dozen Dell E5420 with i5-2520M CPUs on the way to electronic recycling. We upgraded them to 1TB SSD and 16GB memory, half Win 10 half Debian 10.5. 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).
- Google234 6y ago
  Is you’d suppose to be a cautionary tale?
octygen 6y ago
Best computer I ever got was a used bottom spec Lenovo T-series I gave my sister. It's 8 years old. My new top-spec T-series had to be returned to Lenovo twice for factory faults.
m463 6y ago
Seems reasonable, but I wonder about the SD card. 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.
- swiley 6y ago
  idk about this guy but I always treat my machines like they could die tomorrow.
ncmncm 6y ago
This is a super-great article. I still have a bunch of old P60s and P61s I got for $100 each, a decade back, and (mostly) replaced the screen-backlight ballast. They did get unreliable after a while, freezing up at random times. 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.
- Google234 6y ago
  Just because you can technically run something on a device doesn’t mean it will be usable. A 12 year old Intel proc (even with 32 GB of ram) will feel extremely slow.
  - swiley 6y ago
    It really depends on what you run though.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    It didn't feel slow then. With an SSD, and lots of RAM (where that is possible), it will be faster than it was. 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.
paulcole 6y ago
The environmental impact of an individual person buying a new vs. used laptop isn’t even worth considering. If an individual can sway the actions of thousands or tens of thousands of people, then it’s worth considering, perhaps it is. 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.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  Some of those things you've listed at the end make life worth living. No, we need to make those things more environmentally friendly, not regress as a species.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    For a gamer the new laptop is make life worth living, so I guess it's all relative :) But sure, if a person doesn't care about getting a new computer, it's not totally fine as well.
  - paulcole 6y ago
    I never said they didn’t. I said don’t delude yourself that buying a used laptop has any real impact on the environment. 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.
    - pjerem 6y ago
      I think you underestimate network effect. 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.
awinter-py 6y ago
this is bazonkers '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
- gruez 6y ago
  >the best tools don't work at all on old hardware. your time isn't free 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.
  - awinter-py 6y ago
    I'm talking about every new commercial software offering. Anything for editing videos. Probably blender. Anything that uses a GPU will have limited legacy support. Every game. Anything for architecture or engineering (OSS here is not so good, possible exception of electronics CAD). 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.
- voltagex_ 6y ago
  also assumes you can physically lift a 2+kg laptop and have the dexterity+skill to do your own repairs.
jaimex2 6y ago
It's usually just Apple people cycling their macbooks every "new shiny" release. Most people on PCs run them into the ground over 6-8 years.
- killjoywashere 6y ago
  Haven't bought a new MacBook since the original rMBP (or any other new laptop), which I ordered before the keynote was finished.
  - smileysteve 6y ago
    I also have the 2012rmbp; it's not even showing its age.
  - secfirstmd 6y ago
    Yeh I've always found the opposite. Mac tends to last longer. I'm on a 2014/15 1TB SSD 16GB Pro Retina and it's still a rocket. I've found very little that would make me want to buy a new Mac at this stage.
    - photojosh 6y ago
      2013 with similar specs here. My battery life is now garbage, but I think it's worthwhile replacing it. I wasn't tempted at all until the M1...
- tptacek 6y ago
  That's a good thing. People who want to spend money on shiny machines (I'll probably get the next M1 iteration) pay a premium they're happy to pay, while a secondary market for previous iterations grows to satisfy price-conscious users.
  - idlewords 6y ago
    This is exactly the way the car market works, except you can't (yet) lease a new laptop for three years.
deathanatos 6y ago
> I grumpily ordered a replacement key for 15 euros. In the months after that, replacement keys became a recurring cost. After spending more than 100 euros on plastic keys, which would soon break again, I calculated that my keyboard had 90 keys and that replacing them all just once would cost me 1,350 euros. Am I missing something, or can an entire replacement keyboard not be had for ~32 EUR? https://www.amazon.com/Replacement-Keyboard-Lenovo-Thinkpad-Laptop/dp/B00IPXCA6Q 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?)
- esotericn 6y ago
  Potentially - but I think that part of the author's point is that this shouldn't be necessary. Binning an entire keyboard for the sake of a few keys breaking?
  - awinter-py 6y ago
    in a community of fellow used-product users, you could buy the replacement kb and part out the keys to fellow travelers
    - vram22 6y ago
      Innovative idea :) Could be extended to buying and sharing multiple sets of parts for multiple products.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- a9d34571 6y ago
  pro tip: go on-location to a laptop shop, that happens to repair (even for warranty) etc ringing and mailing usually isn't enough to bother, or gets 'pls pay 5-10€ for no reason' 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
smileysteve 6y ago
Anecdotal, but I made a used ibm t23 last from 2005-2009.i had to replace the motherboard once because of bad capacitors; and the ram eventually failed. 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.
esotericn 6y ago
The X60s is magnificent. I love mine and may also buy more in the future. 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.
- inawarminister 6y ago
  There's the X62 upgrade kit, which is basically refurbishment of X60/X61 with 2018-era hardware. Might be up to your alley. I would be interested in any Ryzen aftermarket kits as well too hehe..
underseacables 6y ago
What frustrates me is that the continual push forward of major operating systems forces you to purchase a new laptop. I have a 2013 MacBook that works wonderfully but Apple no longer provides updates for it, and eventually the browsers will stop supporting it. It’s almost like there is a general movement towards forcing us to buy new technology by rendering older devices obsolete.
- RikNieu 6y ago
  Yes, this movement is called quarterly reports.
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    No. Apple is doing a wonderful job of making old hardware work for a long time. It's just that there is a limit to how far you can take this while also keep innovating and pushing the envelope.
    - taylodl 6y ago
      Exactly. I'm running a 2012 MacBook Pro with all the latest patches and I'll continue getting patched for another year - then I can decide whether I want to upgrade to Catalina. I'm running Mojave by choice - I could have upgraded to Catalina but chose not to. 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.
    - ChrisLTD 6y ago
      OTOH, MacOS today doesn't seem significantly more capable than it did in 2012.
    - viklove 6y ago
      Apple's entire business model is planned obsolescence
forgotmypw17 6y ago
This is one of the reasons I thoroughly test my websites on older hardware and browsers. Just got finished doing basic testing on an G4 Mac with Firefox 2.x and similar vintage Safari and IE. Internet+Web is amazing, almost miraculous technology, enabling even 25-year-old devices adequate access with a little bit of forethought.
- timw4mail 6y ago
  How do you deal with TLS?
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    I stick to plaintext http and don't use it for anything sensitive or private.
bpcpdx 6y ago
Big fan of older gen laptops. While I confess that for my personal pcs they have always been pretty expensive with high end parts I find that I prefer old cheap used laptops for work and other more serious things. They do everything you need and you don't need to be fussy with keeping it safe because it hardly cost anything. I took one to class when I went back to college and younger students kept poking at the screen expecting it to be a touch screen.
ohazi 6y ago
As with used cars, 1-3 year old Thinkpads seem to be a pretty good sweet spot. New enough to be reasonably powerful / efficient / light, but old enough to be cheap and accessible. 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.
- reasonabl_human 6y ago
  Still rocking my T430s bought used on eBay about 6 years ago... the hobby community around these devices alone is worth the cost of ownership, especially when it comes to repair and Linux support. 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!
  - ohazi 6y ago
    > replaced a cracked palm rest and odds and ends for a few bucks on eBay 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.
rektide 6y ago
Another article giving the general idea a bad name. If it works for him, fine, but "How and why I stopped buying new laptops", as an article, should not be about this idiotic level of self-flagelation. This author is promoting a likely-to-be harmful path, one unsuitable for almost everyone. 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.
D13Fd 6y ago
On the economic component, it all depends on how valuable money is to you. That sounds funny but it's different for everyone. For some people the $1-3k for a new laptop is a major investment, and for some it's not. If you're using the laptop to work and your employer is billing someone hundreds of dollars per hour for your work, having the best possible laptop is kind of a no brainer. 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.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  You would be impressed how many consultign sweet shops are billing someone hundreds of dollars per hour, while having their employees carrying around a cheap Dell/Thinkpad i5, 8GB, HDD. 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.
taylodl 6y ago
At home I'm still using a 2012 MacBook Pro as my daily driver. It has 16Gb RAM, a quad core i7 and a 512Gb SSD. It runs all my dev tools, multiple VMs, and I do music production on it. All without any problems. 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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- treesknees 6y ago
  My employer lets us upgrade our MacBook Pros every 3 years from our start date and I always do so regardless of whether I need it or not. 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.
bobbydreamer 6y ago
This been very informative. I have been using IBM Thinkpad for 9yrs(office laptop). I don't like the keyboard layout of newer ones, I may have gotten used to with the ThinkPad. 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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rootsudo 6y ago
I disagree with alot of this article - the person has no sense of ownership and just knows to buy parts, and take it to a shop. 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
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
dupe/domain change / (2020) lots of discussion previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486191
benibela 6y ago
Recently I bought an used laptop from 2013 for 160€ and updated the RAM to 16GB. It would have been perfect, except it was a thin laptop with a U-suffix CPU. I did not know U used to mean it is much slower than M :( Now I am stuck. Not bad enough to replace it immediately, but not good enough to work efficiently
rrss 6y ago
This certainly wins for lowest cost, but I don't think it wins for lowest environmental impact - the spares reduce much of the benefit 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).
jgalt212 6y ago
My next laptop will be an ARM laptop runs linux well at a good price. Until, I will be running my current model(s) into the ground.
Mildlypolite 6y ago
I think this topic is not very considered in the ambientalists field, so to speak. But it should be, we are talking about a mindset of continuous upgrades, be it a laptop, a smartphone, dresses, cars,bikes, etc This mindset has a huge environmental impact. 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.
cptnapalm 6y ago
I stopped buying new laptops because none of them lasted more than a couple of years anyway. The only laptop I've owned that lasted longer is an oddball Ultrasparc IIIi from Tadpole.

A couple of month Pre-pan our Computer Support vocational training department intercepted 2 dozen Dell E5420 with i5-2520M CPUs on the way to electronic recycling. We upgraded them to 1TB SSD and 16GB memory, half Win 10 half Debian 10.5. 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).

Google234 6y ago
Is you’d suppose to be a cautionary tale?

octygen 6y ago

Best computer I ever got was a used bottom spec Lenovo T-series I gave my sister. It's 8 years old. My new top-spec T-series had to be returned to Lenovo twice for factory faults.

m463 6y ago

Seems reasonable, but I wonder about the SD card. 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.

swiley 6y ago
idk about this guy but I always treat my machines like they could die tomorrow.

ncmncm 6y ago

This is a super-great article. I still have a bunch of old P60s and P61s I got for $100 each, a decade back, and (mostly) replaced the screen-backlight ballast. They did get unreliable after a while, freezing up at random times. 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.

Google234 6y ago
Just because you can technically run something on a device doesn’t mean it will be usable. A 12 year old Intel proc (even with 32 GB of ram) will feel extremely slow.
- swiley 6y ago
  It really depends on what you run though.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  It didn't feel slow then. With an SSD, and lots of RAM (where that is possible), it will be faster than it was. 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.

paulcole 6y ago

The environmental impact of an individual person buying a new vs. used laptop isn’t even worth considering. If an individual can sway the actions of thousands or tens of thousands of people, then it’s worth considering, perhaps it is. 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.

throwaway3699 6y ago
Some of those things you've listed at the end make life worth living. No, we need to make those things more environmentally friendly, not regress as a species.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  For a gamer the new laptop is make life worth living, so I guess it's all relative :) But sure, if a person doesn't care about getting a new computer, it's not totally fine as well.
- paulcole 6y ago
  I never said they didn’t. I said don’t delude yourself that buying a used laptop has any real impact on the environment. 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.
  - pjerem 6y ago
    I think you underestimate network effect. 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.

awinter-py 6y ago

this is bazonkers '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

gruez 6y ago
>the best tools don't work at all on old hardware. your time isn't free 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.
- awinter-py 6y ago
  I'm talking about every new commercial software offering. Anything for editing videos. Probably blender. Anything that uses a GPU will have limited legacy support. Every game. Anything for architecture or engineering (OSS here is not so good, possible exception of electronics CAD). 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.
voltagex_ 6y ago
also assumes you can physically lift a 2+kg laptop and have the dexterity+skill to do your own repairs.

jaimex2 6y ago

It's usually just Apple people cycling their macbooks every "new shiny" release. Most people on PCs run them into the ground over 6-8 years.

killjoywashere 6y ago
Haven't bought a new MacBook since the original rMBP (or any other new laptop), which I ordered before the keynote was finished.
- smileysteve 6y ago
  I also have the 2012rmbp; it's not even showing its age.
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  Yeh I've always found the opposite. Mac tends to last longer. I'm on a 2014/15 1TB SSD 16GB Pro Retina and it's still a rocket. I've found very little that would make me want to buy a new Mac at this stage.
  - photojosh 6y ago
    2013 with similar specs here. My battery life is now garbage, but I think it's worthwhile replacing it. I wasn't tempted at all until the M1...
tptacek 6y ago
That's a good thing. People who want to spend money on shiny machines (I'll probably get the next M1 iteration) pay a premium they're happy to pay, while a secondary market for previous iterations grows to satisfy price-conscious users.
- idlewords 6y ago
  This is exactly the way the car market works, except you can't (yet) lease a new laptop for three years.

deathanatos 6y ago

> I grumpily ordered a replacement key for 15 euros. In the months after that, replacement keys became a recurring cost. After spending more than 100 euros on plastic keys, which would soon break again, I calculated that my keyboard had 90 keys and that replacing them all just once would cost me 1,350 euros. Am I missing something, or can an entire replacement keyboard not be had for ~32 EUR? https://www.amazon.com/Replacement-Keyboard-Lenovo-Thinkpad-Laptop/dp/B00IPXCA6Q 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?)

esotericn 6y ago
Potentially - but I think that part of the author's point is that this shouldn't be necessary. Binning an entire keyboard for the sake of a few keys breaking?
- awinter-py 6y ago
  in a community of fellow used-product users, you could buy the replacement kb and part out the keys to fellow travelers
  - vram22 6y ago
    Innovative idea :) Could be extended to buying and sharing multiple sets of parts for multiple products.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
a9d34571 6y ago
pro tip: go on-location to a laptop shop, that happens to repair (even for warranty) etc ringing and mailing usually isn't enough to bother, or gets 'pls pay 5-10€ for no reason' 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

smileysteve 6y ago

Anecdotal, but I made a used ibm t23 last from 2005-2009.i had to replace the motherboard once because of bad capacitors; and the ram eventually failed. 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.

esotericn 6y ago

The X60s is magnificent. I love mine and may also buy more in the future. 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.

inawarminister 6y ago
There's the X62 upgrade kit, which is basically refurbishment of X60/X61 with 2018-era hardware. Might be up to your alley. I would be interested in any Ryzen aftermarket kits as well too hehe..

underseacables 6y ago

What frustrates me is that the continual push forward of major operating systems forces you to purchase a new laptop. I have a 2013 MacBook that works wonderfully but Apple no longer provides updates for it, and eventually the browsers will stop supporting it. It’s almost like there is a general movement towards forcing us to buy new technology by rendering older devices obsolete.

RikNieu 6y ago
Yes, this movement is called quarterly reports.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  No. Apple is doing a wonderful job of making old hardware work for a long time. It's just that there is a limit to how far you can take this while also keep innovating and pushing the envelope.
  - taylodl 6y ago
    Exactly. I'm running a 2012 MacBook Pro with all the latest patches and I'll continue getting patched for another year - then I can decide whether I want to upgrade to Catalina. I'm running Mojave by choice - I could have upgraded to Catalina but chose not to. 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.
  - ChrisLTD 6y ago
    OTOH, MacOS today doesn't seem significantly more capable than it did in 2012.
  - viklove 6y ago
    Apple's entire business model is planned obsolescence

forgotmypw17 6y ago

This is one of the reasons I thoroughly test my websites on older hardware and browsers. Just got finished doing basic testing on an G4 Mac with Firefox 2.x and similar vintage Safari and IE. Internet+Web is amazing, almost miraculous technology, enabling even 25-year-old devices adequate access with a little bit of forethought.

timw4mail 6y ago
How do you deal with TLS?
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I stick to plaintext http and don't use it for anything sensitive or private.

bpcpdx 6y ago

Big fan of older gen laptops. While I confess that for my personal pcs they have always been pretty expensive with high end parts I find that I prefer old cheap used laptops for work and other more serious things. They do everything you need and you don't need to be fussy with keeping it safe because it hardly cost anything. I took one to class when I went back to college and younger students kept poking at the screen expecting it to be a touch screen.

ohazi 6y ago

As with used cars, 1-3 year old Thinkpads seem to be a pretty good sweet spot. New enough to be reasonably powerful / efficient / light, but old enough to be cheap and accessible. 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.

reasonabl_human 6y ago
Still rocking my T430s bought used on eBay about 6 years ago... the hobby community around these devices alone is worth the cost of ownership, especially when it comes to repair and Linux support. 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!
- ohazi 6y ago
  > replaced a cracked palm rest and odds and ends for a few bucks on eBay 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.

rektide 6y ago

Another article giving the general idea a bad name. If it works for him, fine, but "How and why I stopped buying new laptops", as an article, should not be about this idiotic level of self-flagelation. This author is promoting a likely-to-be harmful path, one unsuitable for almost everyone. 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.

D13Fd 6y ago

On the economic component, it all depends on how valuable money is to you. That sounds funny but it's different for everyone. For some people the $1-3k for a new laptop is a major investment, and for some it's not. If you're using the laptop to work and your employer is billing someone hundreds of dollars per hour for your work, having the best possible laptop is kind of a no brainer. 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.

pjmlp 6y ago
You would be impressed how many consultign sweet shops are billing someone hundreds of dollars per hour, while having their employees carrying around a cheap Dell/Thinkpad i5, 8GB, HDD. 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.

taylodl 6y ago

At home I'm still using a 2012 MacBook Pro as my daily driver. It has 16Gb RAM, a quad core i7 and a 512Gb SSD. It runs all my dev tools, multiple VMs, and I do music production on it. All without any problems. 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.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
treesknees 6y ago
My employer lets us upgrade our MacBook Pros every 3 years from our start date and I always do so regardless of whether I need it or not. 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.

bobbydreamer 6y ago

This been very informative. I have been using IBM Thinkpad for 9yrs(office laptop). I don't like the keyboard layout of newer ones, I may have gotten used to with the ThinkPad. 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.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

rootsudo 6y ago

I disagree with alot of this article - the person has no sense of ownership and just knows to buy parts, and take it to a shop. 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

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

dupe/domain change / (2020) lots of discussion previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486191

benibela 6y ago

Recently I bought an used laptop from 2013 for 160€ and updated the RAM to 16GB. It would have been perfect, except it was a thin laptop with a U-suffix CPU. I did not know U used to mean it is much slower than M :( Now I am stuck. Not bad enough to replace it immediately, but not good enough to work efficiently

rrss 6y ago

This certainly wins for lowest cost, but I don't think it wins for lowest environmental impact - the spares reduce much of the benefit 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).

jgalt212 6y ago

My next laptop will be an ARM laptop runs linux well at a good price. Until, I will be running my current model(s) into the ground.

Mildlypolite 6y ago

I think this topic is not very considered in the ambientalists field, so to speak. But it should be, we are talking about a mindset of continuous upgrades, be it a laptop, a smartphone, dresses, cars,bikes, etc This mindset has a huge environmental impact. 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.

cptnapalm 6y ago

I stopped buying new laptops because none of them lasted more than a couple of years anyway. The only laptop I've owned that lasted longer is an oddball Ultrasparc IIIi from Tadpole.