Quote from: Neenyah on March 25, 2024, 14:07:29Lenovo with their ThinkPad lineup. They give publicly available and very detailed HMM (Hardware Maintenance Manual) for each model and in most of them you can replace/repair almost all parts. You don't need to pay $2500 for a new whole laptop if you want to upgrade/replace your SSD, you need to pay $120 for a new SSD. Same with display panel for example. But we see above that people exist who will bin a perfectly working machine and buy a new one instead of fixing their existing one for 5-10% of a total cost (of a new laptop). They won't double the performance in two years but they will double ewaste and earnings of a manufacturer.

This is all nonsense. My old Thinkpad T series burned out for the stupidest reason - Lenovo at the factory covered almost the entire motherboard with a thick black plastic protective film, which created a thermal bath for all the power elements on the motherboard. I was hoping to use it for at least 15 years because it did the job I needed it to do well. For example, it had eSATA with the ability to test HDDs in HDAT2 directly upon purchase in offline stores, making it easy to weed out defective drives, which is no longer available in modern laptops.
Its case, keyboard, screen, power supply and all ports are in perfect condition, and even had a fresh battery (I replaced it after 7 years), despite the fact that it had been in use for about 10-11 years. But I cannot replace the motherboard with a new one, because they are no longer available in service centers. And there is not a single qualified repairman nearby (as in Asia, where there are a lot of them and high-quality services, for obvious reasons) who could easily find the problem and fix it, for adequate money.

From the point of view of the ecology of the planet, if the motherboard was fixed or it was easy to get a replacement for a new one from Lenovo after 10 years, I would continue to use it for the purposes I need. But instead, I'm being forced to buy a new one, and it won't even have the features I need in the new T series or any others like a native external (e)SATA port.

This was my camping, comfortable and durable test unit. RIP.

Imagine how many durable cases, screens, etc. there are. is thrown out simply because some part has failed and can no longer be replaced at an adequate price on the market. Because there are simply no new spare parts from the manufacturer.

Well, much like with smartphones - try to find a new original and high-quality battery for a 3-5 year old smartphone - especially from Chinese manufacturers like the popular Xiaomi. No chance. Despite the fact that smartphones had already reached such a level of performance and the presence of many functions by 2015-2016 that for the most part, if you are not a stupid gamer, you do not need a new smartphone. At best, only if the video/photo part is improved. But there is also a physical limit.

And remember how last year they wrote about hundreds of millions of HDD workers who are destroying large corporations when, from their point of view, they become morally obsolete. They could be sold on the secondary market, but managers are so afraid of losing data from them that they order them to be put under pressure. Because reliable erasing of a capacious HDD takes tens of hours of time and requires a lot of parallel operating equipment.

If all HDDs had reliable hardware encryption, there would be no need to erase anything, because anyone who doesn't know the key will only read garbage.

And now the same problem is especially acute with warranty SSDs - while it is under warranty for 3-5 years, you want to get your money back in case of failure. But if the disk suddenly failed, or even worse, went into read-only mode, and the data on it was not encrypted, your personal data may become available to people in service centers or further down the chain. And this massive problem is also deliberately not being solved.

The IT industry deliberately provokes a mass of electronic waste, because no one cares about the ecology of the planet in the future - all creatures live here and now. And after them at least a flood.

Yep, that is very true Hunter. Sadly true. I understand Microsoft's official reasons behind that decision and it is good, no issues there. But the execution of it... 🤢

Sure Linux is a great alternative but if one has to use Windows for this and that reason...

Tell this to stupid Microsoft who purposely make older hardware incompatible with their newer Windows version so you basically have to throw away still very good and functional PC's that otherwise cannot use today's software!!

Quote from: Julian M on March 25, 2024, 13:15:25Name me one major computer, smartphone or device manufacturer that actually makes repairable products -

Lenovo with their ThinkPad lineup. They give publicly available and very detailed HMM (Hardware Maintenance Manual) for each model and in most of them you can replace/repair almost all parts. You don't need to pay $2500 for a new whole laptop if you want to upgrade/replace your SSD, you need to pay $120 for a new SSD. Same with display panel for example. But we see above that people exist who will bin a perfectly working machine and buy a new one instead of fixing their existing one for 5-10% of a total cost (of a new laptop). They won't double the performance in two years but they will double ewaste and earnings of a manufacturer.

Same goes with printers; you want repairability? Go with Lexmark or Canon. You want to be limited in everything and even in type of ink you want to use? Go with HP.

You want to play games and work at home? Build a good desktop PC instead of prebuilt crap + console.

You want... You name it. The choice is there.

Quote from: Neenyah on March 25, 2024, 01:00:32

QuoteReaders who want to save the planet should consider...

...stop buying products which are designed to be ewaste from the very start, like those where repairability does not exist and those where everything is soldered.

Name me one major computer, smartphone or device manufacturer that actually makes repairable products - motherboards are not repaired when you send them in, they're replaced. What matters is what manufacturers and repairers do with the broken pieces, and there's really too little enforced policies to make them recycle their stuff in an acceptable way.

It's surprisingly tough, if not impossible, to have more responsible personal devices these days, I know for one that I cannot get a decent computer or smartphone that isn't future e-waste.

No, I wouldnt, I have the money to replace them when those are obsolete and I prefer thinner and lighter devices. This is my consumer choice, the same is true for the majority of other users, otherwise manufacturers wont be doing this.

I hate the look of framework and fairphone, I also dont want to waste my time and energy on dissasembling my devices.

QuoteReaders who want to save the planet should consider...

...stop buying products which are designed to be ewaste from the very start, like those where repairability does not exist and those where everything is soldered.

"Readers who want to save the planet" which is a minority, otherwise the article wouldn't exist.