eldavojohn writes "The BBC is reporting that many countries are dumping their e-Waste in poorer African nations. From the article, 'The world's richest nations are dumping hazardous electronic waste on poor African countries, says the head of the UN's Environment Programme (Unep).' The problem with e-Waste (versus other wastes) is that the gases and chemicals that make up a lot of electronics are particularly harmful for the environment. I suppose nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."
nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."
Yep, case in point - I gave someone a quote of £175 to fix their laptop. They preferred instead to spend £339 on a new one. Even if the cost is lower for repairs people still prefer to buy new (which doesn't make much sense to me).
I gave someone a quote of £175 to fix their laptop. They preferred instead to spend £339 on a new one. Even if the cost is lower for repairs people still prefer to buy new (which doesn't make much sense to me).
£339 - £175 = £164. £164 for an upgraded laptop starts to sound ok, doesn't it. Now take broken'ish laptop and put on ebay and you reduce that £164 figure still further, depending on age and how broken it really is. Suddenly the choice is obvious - unless this laptop is a current model, you're as well geting rid and buying something more up to date.
Laptops always were pretty much disposable; when was the last time you upgraded your laptop? It's too much hassle/cost/risk. We just deal with slow outdated laptops untill they're too slow and outdated, then we bin them or give them away. What's changed?
I like your eco-friendly remark. There'll be a market for wooden laptops and hemp carry cases soon. (cue futurama references: wooden bender).
I've had mine for over two years now and I don't think I'll be upgrading until either the battery or the screen completely dies. It's a 1.5Ghz Pentium M with 2 gig of RAM. Linux/GNOME runs like a dream and the only time I need more speed is when I want to compile something... more of a FSB issue than anything else. This just means that I'll stick with pre-compiled binaries as opposed to a gentoo solution for the moment.
We just deal with slow outdated laptops untill they're too slow and outdated, then we bin them or give them away. What's changed?
Hardware has become cheaper. China has happened. Then there is Linux. Linux is now mature enough as a desktop environment. Very little extra bloat is needed for the Linux desktop... it only needs cleaning around the edges with a standardised interface. Historically the driving force behind increasing PC power usage has been bloatware (the old wintel alliance). Linux has a different business model to MS and is forcing MS to slow down its bloat process. If MS continues to force bloat, then it will open a door for Linux to be installed on smaller, cheaper, less powerful hardware, thus lowering the TCO for a Linux based network operating system.
Personally, I think we are about to see a rapid decline in new PC hardware sales, moving instead towards notebook style PCs. DIY PCs are about to become a thing of the past. Vista is likely to be the last MS operating system that requires a generational hardware upgrade, the maturity of Vista as an operating system is astounding. It appears that the relationship between MS-OS-revisions and maturity is "Maturity = ln(revision number)", where the function ln is the natural logarithm. After the upgrade to Vista, the only need to upgrade further (other than aesthetics) will be to reduce power consumption with efficient hardware, which itself will take on an exponential relationship.
The only place I still see bloat in the MS machine is in the active directory, and this isn't PC based, its network based...
Yeah, I use laptops till they become outdated...I will try to find something for them....some I've put in various places around the house (kitchen, bathroom...etc) just for simple web access, but, when they fry out...toss them.
I mean, until I'd seen a couple articles on/., the concept of doing anything with a laptop, or desktop and monitor other than tosssing out with the rest of the garbage out front to be picked up, never occured to me.
And I've never really seen any 'program' for recycling them, nor an
Buying new means starting over -- the keyboard is clean, nothing is broken, and you get to pick an new model, etc... You get a new warranty, and you (probably) get better system specs. Those are some pretty convincing arguments!
As a result, I get a lot of older laptops this way. I fix them up and give them to friends or use them for little servers. Until a laptop is a commodity like a toaster, where the new model won't have that much to offer over the old model, people will buy a new computer instead of rep
but you forgot to mention all the crap OEM's install on their computers... i've been wondering for months why anyone with half a brain would want to slow down the perfectly good new computers they're selling...
Two reasons:
First, to prevent returns. You would be amazed at how many people return computers because trialware isn't installed. Customers want DVD Playback/CD Writing/Anti-Virus software. OEMs don't want to pay for that software. So they install trialware. The funny part about the CD Writing so
Medion, the computers you buy at the Aldi [www.aldi.nl] stores. They come preinstalled with pretty much everything you need, but no trial versions. Great stuff.
So they bring their used laptop to you for a repair. You charge £175. As with virtually every other device and piece of machinery out there, it'll likely break down more frequently as it ages. Soon enough, they'll be paying you another £175 to repair it when some other part breaks. And finally something else will eventually go, perhaps costing another £175. So they've spent £525 repairing what is likely by now a slow, underperforming system. They'd be stupid not to spend £339 on
If every pre-used computer now stored in attic, garage, closet, or basement were added to the current junk pile, the world would have a REAL crisis. By holding on to our junk we help by keeping the problem non-localized. but that masks the real depth of the problem
if we could get everybody to take them to one place locally... then you'd have a serious amount of resources being recovered. There's some expensive stuff inside a PC... it's in too small of quantities in just 1 PC, but even 100 PCs it becomes profitable to recycle the components for the materials... monitors even more. I'm waiting for somebody to make an efficient "molecular disassembler" that can break down items.. particularly densely mixed resources like PC components and refine them efficiently to se
They are looking at the problem from the standpoint of, "If I fix this now and it breaks again in six months then it will cost me another £175 to fix it or I could just get a new one with Windows New and Better Edition that will last for at least a couple of years, plus I will get all of the new whiz bang features (and more frequent flier miles on my credit card to boot)". This is how the average consumer is trained to think from a very early age and you can blame our public education system, the grea
This is in contrast to the generally more intelligent free thinkers, such as ourselves, who like to understand the subtleties and nuances of a decision or at least be able to reason logically on the fly, but we are the ones that the government is watching because who needs those trouble makers anyway?
Tell me what your superiority over Joe Shmo has to do with buying electronics.
...people tend to fall back on their ingrained programming...and for most people that means the consumer program and not the hack
Ironically, the EU regulation RoHS (which is intended to cut down on hazardous materials in electronics) is likely to make the waste problem worse - since it bans solder with lead in it. Lead free solder is quite inferior to leaded solder - it tends to be more brittle, and tin whiskers are more likely to form. This means electronics using lead-free solder will fail more frequently and earlier, and therefore need to be replaced more frequently, increasing the volume of waste - and probably more than negating the intended effect of RoHS in the first place.
rubbish i've done 1000's of hours of soldering with both lead and lead free solder, and so long as your using a quality flux and solder there is zero advantage of lead over tin aside from price, and frankly the less lead contamination in our living environment the better.
Ironically, the EU regulation RoHS (which is intended to cut down on hazardous materials in electronics) is likely to make the waste problem worse - since it bans solder with lead in it. Lead free solder is quite inferior to leaded solder - it tends to be more brittle, and tin whiskers are more likely to form.
Having been through the RoHS transition for my company's consumer products, I can tell you it is really not that bad.
There were some pains - plastic in one connector that had very minor heat deformation issues, and tin whiskers in another connector, which were easily cleared with a blast of air. However, as soon as we pointed these out to the suppliers they were quickly fixed.
There were also some delays getting new lead-free ICs and hexavalent-chromium-free screws, but nothing disastrous.
Reliability in the field has been just as good with non-RoHS product.
And as an added bonus, since it is far more cost effective to produce _only_ RoHS compliant products, our US shipments will also be lead-free.
I suspect your experiences are not first-hand. I have yet to hear from anyone who is experiencing big problems with RoHS that can't be chalked up to simple bad planning.
The RoHS requirements may have been a transitional PITA for many, but now that everyone had made the switch, it is really no more difficult to design and build than it was before. Maybe the solder costs a few cents more.
> Will I get a replacement battery? Yes, for an old laptop, that could be a bad idea.:-)
My experience: I sourced a replacement battery for a 5 year old Fujitsu laptop direct from Fujitsu who had it stocked all these years. Even though the new battery was virgin, it had deteriorated in storage.
You got any sources to back-up your blanket assertions that tin is inferior?
Solder always has had tin in it (it's traditionally tin/lead alloy). But you can always http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/ [justfuckinggoogleit.com]
Here's a handy link, off the first page of Google results: http://www.rohsusa.com/ [rohsusa.com]
Quote:
It is widely accepted in the Engineering community that the recent ban of lead in solders for use in electronics in Europe is not only erroneous, but will actually lead to a worsening situation on the environment with the replace
It's somewhat ironic at a time when governments such as Britain's are pressuring their citizens to be ecologically responsible and do their part, when at the same time they are just taking their issues and hiding them 'under the carpet to say'. Especially when MEDC countries are pressuring the developing countries in order to lower their economical aspirations in order to be environmentally aware ("Meanwhile the British leader is likely to raise the issue of global warming, and what developing countries like India can do to help tackle it." at the BBC [bbc.co.uk]). Seems to me as when the developed world is pushing on one front in order to gain public support and more education towards global warming, behind the backs of this they are just doing the same as usual in order to get rid of problems that would require investment, something we should be ashamed of.
I don't remember the last time I threw away anything electronic. I've still got a Vectrex from 1982 sitting in my basement (still works, tried it earlier this week), still have a working NES and Sega Master System. SNES, Genesis/CD/32X, and Saturn are still hooked up. My old computer (K6) is also still working...when I quit using it as my main system (when I got the Athlon-XP), the K6 got relegated to storage and various network tasks. Of course, this means my house (especially my room) is pretty badly cluttered, lots of stuff lying around...but that's not bad considering how much old electronic stuff I have.
You do realize that most of the world isn't interested in starting an antique electronics museum. Besides, you're just procrastinating. Someday, someone will want to dump the stuff.
You do realize that most of the world isn't interested in starting an antique electronics museum. Besides, you're just procrastinating. Someday, someone will want to dump the stuff.
A couple of weeks ago I helped a local antique computer museam [digibarn.com] put its exhibit in storage for the winter. Even the owner was trying to get rid of some parts; he offered me a 600lb component for a Cray power supply.
Apparently you've never been to New Jersey, where there are many landfills several orders of magnitude larger than this. It's easy to get karma by saying "if you calculate it [out, sic]." However, pretending to run the numbers isn't good enough. If what you were saying was true, then one enterprising owner of strip-mined land could take up every refuse contract in the nation, and become an exceptionally rich individual overnight. New York City produces 12,000 tons of garbage per day [earth-policy.org]. If you honestly beli
Anyone have an opinion on mandatory recycling? I think it would be a good idea, with fines and fees imposed for throwing recyclable things into the trash, namely electronic items. However, to offset any harshness of the law, recycling must be made free, and by free, I mean paid for by taxes (as long as it's not a property tax, sales tax increase, or income tax increase).
A hidden tax on the electronic items that need to be recycled. Not to be visable at the time of purchase. Basically, the tax, perhaps a flat amount per type of item regardless of price, would be placed on the item at the first instance of sale. So if a monitor is manufactured and is sold to a Best Buy, then the fee would then have to be paid at that moment. If it is being sold wholesale to someone, then that fee would be collected then.
The fee wouldn't be based on the value of the item, but the type of item
It's not just e-waste. As this piece notes, the toxic byproducts of manufacturing are being dumped as raw materials too: The Global Village's Septic Tank [foreignpolicy.com]
"I suppose nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."
Or because you can't actually get them fixed. The insides of even a semi-modern TV are surface-mounted, machine-soldered ICs and small components, not servicable by most humans, particularly since many individual parts aren't available to repair companies. So, you have to buy an entire "module", only available as a "spare part" that costs roughly 75% of the price of the latest model.
Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.
For a long time I would have agreed with you completely, but since an example [makezine.com] of someone fixing their TV turned up on Make today, I'm not so sure.
Yes, TVs and other consumer electrics may be getting more proprietary in their construction, but people are also less inclined to fix them, although examples exist that demonstrate that it is possible.
I think you're in danger of harking back to some "good old day" that never existed whilst also ignoring the fact that most people these days don't want to fix a T
It'd just create more waste. 99% of the people would either not see them and throw them away with the box, or leave them to rot for all eternity in a drawer in the shed or guest room. A better idea is to have everything marked with a part number that you could just order or find out what it is and buy.
Or because you can't actually get them fixed. The insides of even a semi-modern TV are surface-mounted, machine-soldered ICs and small components, not servicable by most humans, particularly since many individual parts aren't available to repair companies. So, you have to buy an entire "module", only available as a "spare part" that costs roughly 75% of the price of the latest model. Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.
and seen countries come and go regarding taking it on the chin for the US consumer byproduct/waste. First it was indeed our own backyard landfills, then we got 'smart' and taxed heavy or disallowed it in the mid to late 90s. Then it went off to Mexico, in the form of used crap being sold to uneducated folks in Mexico for top dollar when the markets began to collapse in the 99-01 timeframe. Then it started to head off (monitors in particular) to China. Then they got wise, and also stopped allowing big electronic trash ships to dock at all and unload, basically causing a huge bottleneck at their ports and off the coasts. Now it is Africa, doesn't suprise me at all if next it is Antartica when folks realize what this stuff does to the ground waters. Its hilarious that folks are so shocked at this capitalism at its worst with monitors and heavy metals from electronic consumerism. Steve Jobs, you should be ashamed of yourself.:)
My early career involved traineeships at a few electronics repair shops whilst attaining a trade certificate. Even 15 years ago, it was becoming impractical to service many consumer electronics items, with the cost of spare parts being inflated by manufacturers to encourage purchase of new goods.
A small repair shop must often gamble on which parts to purchase, and deal with incessant customer grumbling over repair costs. Here are some stories [siliconchip.com.au].
When you don't have enough money to eat every day, the prospect that some point removed from your house has, egads, gasses and metals at it doesn't seem quite as frightening. The nations of Africa, like many before them, will start caring about environmentalism when they have a high enough standard of living for it to be a pressing concern. China is starting to get greener as their economy improves (note "greener": they're still dirty, but if you were there 15 years ago you would be amazed people could live in their cities), and many late industrializing countries (Japan, Taiwan, etc) have high levels of environmental consciousness (I hate that word, incidentally) after decades of less-than-Greenpeace-approved actions taken to bolster their economies.
Incidentally, the other reason the whole "We'll take your junk if you pay us for it" works is that NIMBY-ites in rich Western democracies don't want the stuff anywhere near them, so they pay to have it dumped somewhere far out of sight. Then the same folks cluck-cluck about how we're exploiting the Third World.
Just think about the impact MS Vista and Office-2007 are going to have on e-waste. If you want the new MS bloat code with the almost as good as MAC interface, then you are going to need (minimum) a 64-bit processor, liquid cooled video card, and 2GB of RAM. Africa needs to brace for the boat load of PIII's and low-end P4's about to show up.
It's really sick that modern computers have such extreme processing power relative to 20-years ago, yet we must continue to upgrade.
It's really sick that modern computers have such extreme processing power relative to 20-years ago, yet we must continue to upgrade.
Not only that. It's sick that most of this processing power is sucked up to run bloat, in order to make transparent or shiny windows, etc. How fast does a CPU need to be to act as an internet terminal, or run a word processor, etc? The only REALLY demanding applications are games (besides the very few specialist people who run demanding science or business
..in rich nations...and costs very little in poor nations that manufacture them. That's the real reason why it's cheaper to buy a new one. Face it, globalization is basically a system invented by rich countries to replace colonialism and slavery. Ignoring the transfer of money, and just looking at the work and goods that people make and receive, the poor countries are basically slaves to the rich countries. The poor countries would be better off forming their own economic bloc and trading amongst themselv
Since the fucking tools in Redmond are shoving ever more bloated crap at us requiring us to replace our hardware ever more frequently why the hell don't governments charge Microsoft that recycling tax instead of pushing the problem down on the consumer who has no other choice. I for one am sick as shit listening to people tell me it's my problem.
The technology I think has been stabilizing, each new processor/component doesn't introduce the user visible performance leap its predecessor did. The changes are more incremental now, and older machines have longer lives before they are outpaced by the demands of software (and I have a feeling a lot of those demands aren't really necessary, but that's another issue). Rather than making cheap disposable boxes, I would advocate a return to engineering for durability, robustness, and future proofing (many older machines are built like tanks - I prefer that durable approach to computers personally. My IBM PS/2 keyboard is probably 20 years old, but still works like a champ. There is no excuse for keyboards that don't last - it is a solved problem and the evidence is out there.) Start to make a big deal about 5 or 10 year warranties on computers, and convince the public that they SHOULD be able to use this machine for that period of time. (First of course you must design and build a machine that is actually a reasonable machine to use for such a period, but I doubt that is an insurmountable obstacle - open hardware projects might help.)
Vista's longevity has actually helped consumers I think, because it broke the whole "upgradeupgradeupgrade" mantra that had come before it and provided some real product stability. I doubt this was the original intent, but I'm glad it happened. Perhaps consumer expectations for stability and robustness can be increased, and we can start to engineer operating systems, standards, and APIs that are intended to be bulletproof and last for decades or even centuries.
repairs vs new (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, case in point - I gave someone a quote of £175 to fix their laptop. They preferred instead to spend £339 on a new one. Even if the cost is lower for repairs people still prefer to buy new (which doesn't make much sense to me).
Re:repairs vs new (Score:5, Insightful)
£339 - £175 = £164. £164 for an upgraded laptop starts to sound ok, doesn't it. Now take broken'ish laptop and put on ebay and you reduce that £164 figure still further, depending on age and how broken it really is. Suddenly the choice is obvious - unless this laptop is a current model, you're as well geting rid and buying something more up to date.
Cheers,
Ian
Parent
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I like your eco-friendly remark. There'll be a market for wooden laptops and hemp carry cases soon. (cue futurama references: wooden bender).
Re:repairs vs new (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had mine for over two years now and I don't think I'll be upgrading until either the battery or the screen completely dies. It's a 1.5Ghz Pentium M with 2 gig of RAM. Linux/GNOME runs like a dream and the only time I need more speed is when I want to compile something... more of a FSB issue than anything else. This just means that I'll stick with pre-compiled binaries as opposed to a gentoo solution for the moment.
Hardware has become cheaper. China has happened. Then there is Linux. Linux is now mature enough as a desktop environment. Very little extra bloat is needed for the Linux desktop... it only needs cleaning around the edges with a standardised interface. Historically the driving force behind increasing PC power usage has been bloatware (the old wintel alliance). Linux has a different business model to MS and is forcing MS to slow down its bloat process. If MS continues to force bloat, then it will open a door for Linux to be installed on smaller, cheaper, less powerful hardware, thus lowering the TCO for a Linux based network operating system.
Personally, I think we are about to see a rapid decline in new PC hardware sales, moving instead towards notebook style PCs. DIY PCs are about to become a thing of the past. Vista is likely to be the last MS operating system that requires a generational hardware upgrade, the maturity of Vista as an operating system is astounding. It appears that the relationship between MS-OS-revisions and maturity is "Maturity = ln(revision number)", where the function ln is the natural logarithm. After the upgrade to Vista, the only need to upgrade further (other than aesthetics) will be to reduce power consumption with efficient hardware, which itself will take on an exponential relationship.
The only place I still see bloat in the MS machine is in the active directory, and this isn't PC based, its network based...
Parent
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I mean, until I'd seen a couple articles on /., the concept of doing anything with a laptop, or desktop and monitor other than tosssing out with the rest of the garbage out front to be picked up, never occured to me.
And I've never really seen any 'program' for recycling them, nor an
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You get a new warranty, and you (probably) get better system specs.
Those are some pretty convincing arguments!
As a result, I get a lot of older laptops this way. I fix them up and give them to friends or use them for little servers. Until a laptop is a commodity like a toaster, where the new model won't have that much to offer over the old model, people will buy a new computer instead of rep
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Two reasons:
First, to prevent returns. You would be amazed at how many people return computers because trialware isn't installed. Customers want DVD Playback/CD Writing/Anti-Virus software. OEMs don't want to pay for that software. So they install trialware. The funny part about the CD Writing so
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I'll explain why they choose a new item. (Score:3, Insightful)
They'd be stupid not to spend £339 on
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Tell me what your superiority over Joe Shmo has to do with buying electronics.
Ironically (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Ironically (Score:4, Informative)
Having been through the RoHS transition for my company's consumer products, I can tell you it is really not that bad.
There were some pains - plastic in one connector that had very minor heat deformation issues, and tin whiskers in another connector, which were easily cleared with a blast of air. However, as soon as we pointed these out to the suppliers they were quickly fixed.
There were also some delays getting new lead-free ICs and hexavalent-chromium-free screws, but nothing disastrous.
Reliability in the field has been just as good with non-RoHS product.
And as an added bonus, since it is far more cost effective to produce _only_ RoHS compliant products, our US shipments will also be lead-free.
I suspect your experiences are not first-hand. I have yet to hear from anyone who is experiencing big problems with RoHS that can't be chalked up to simple bad planning.
The RoHS requirements may have been a transitional PITA for many, but now that everyone had made the switch, it is really no more difficult to design and build than it was before. Maybe the solder costs a few cents more.
Parent
Re:Ironically (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, for an old laptop, that could be a bad idea.
My experience: I sourced a replacement battery for a 5 year old Fujitsu laptop direct from Fujitsu who had it stocked all these years. Even though the new battery was virgin, it had deteriorated in storage.
Instead, repack your battery ( http://www.google.com/search?q=repack+laptop+batt
Parent
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Solder always has had tin in it (it's traditionally tin/lead alloy). But you can always http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/ [justfuckinggoogleit.com]
Here's a handy link, off the first page of Google results: http://www.rohsusa.com/ [rohsusa.com]
Quote:
Bad news (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, the old reverse 419 scam (Score:5, Funny)
I keep all my old electronics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I keep all my old electronics (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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A couple of weeks ago I helped a local antique computer museam [digibarn.com] put its exhibit in storage for the winter. Even the owner was trying to get rid of some parts; he offered me a 600lb component for a Cray power supply.
Re:I keep all my old electronics (Score:5, Funny)
You're not married, are you?
Parent
Is this really such a bad thing? (Score:3, Funny)
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New York City produces 12,000 tons of garbage per day [earth-policy.org]. If you honestly beli
E-Waste (Score:4, Funny)
I always wondered what happened to the spam emails after I deleted them. Now I finally know where they end up.
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--
I am going to hell for that one, ain't I?
Mandatory recycling (Score:4, Interesting)
How about deposits? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Basically, the tax, perhaps a flat amount per type of item regardless of price, would be placed on the item at the first instance of sale. So if a monitor is manufactured and is sold to a Best Buy, then the fee would then have to be paid at that moment. If it is being sold wholesale to someone, then that fee would be collected then.
The fee wouldn't be based on the value of the item, but the type of item
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Trick question: I would drink myself unconsious before driving a school bus.
The global village's septic tank (Score:3, Informative)
Not just price... (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.
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Yes, TVs and other consumer electrics may be getting more proprietary in their construction, but people are also less inclined to fix them, although examples exist that demonstrate that it is possible.
I think you're in danger of harking back to some "good old day" that never existed whilst also ignoring the fact that most people these days don't want to fix a T
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Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.
It's ironic, I act
Been in the shlock buying biz for 8 years now... (Score:3, Informative)
Sound advice (Score:2)
Yet another good reason not to let out the magic smoke.
Often impractical (Score:3, Interesting)
A small repair shop must often gamble on which parts to purchase, and deal with incessant customer grumbling over repair costs. Here are some stories [siliconchip.com.au].
I don't take my computers to the recycling place. (Score:3, Interesting)
Environmentalism is a luxury good (Score:3, Insightful)
Incidentally, the other reason the whole "We'll take your junk if you pay us for it" works is that NIMBY-ites in rich Western democracies don't want the stuff anywhere near them, so they pay to have it dumped somewhere far out of sight. Then the same folks cluck-cluck about how we're exploiting the Third World.
VISTA should greatly increase e-waste (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really sick that modern computers have such extreme processing power relative to 20-years ago, yet we must continue to upgrade.
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Not only that. It's sick that most of this processing power is sucked up to run bloat, in order to make transparent or shiny windows, etc. How fast does a CPU need to be to act as an internet terminal, or run a word processor, etc? The only REALLY demanding applications are games (besides the very few specialist people who run demanding science or business
Labor costs more than parts (Score:2)
The poor countries would be better off forming their own economic bloc and trading amongst themselv
Reverse Microsoft Recycle Tax? (Score:4, Insightful)
Making Computers Durable Goods (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista's longevity has actually helped consumers I think, because it broke the whole "upgradeupgradeupgrade" mantra that had come before it and provided some real product stability. I doubt this was the original intent, but I'm glad it happened. Perhaps consumer expectations for stability and robustness can be increased, and we can start to engineer operating systems, standards, and APIs that are intended to be bulletproof and last for decades or even centuries.
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It also explains why he seems to be obsessed with female undergarments.