[germinalphrase]

How much does a modular design really extend the life of a computer? Very few people (my father aside) are actively trying to keep computers from the 90’s orearly 2000’s alive. That my 10-year-old MacBook is still kicking is kind of a miracle (and only because I have harvested the guts from two others).

[denton-scratch]

I once set up a computer workshop using PCs discarded by university labs. I assembled about a dozen PCs from about 20 discards. One of them served as a DSL router.

In retrospect, I regret it; I saved those PCs from going to the dump, but:

- They were not power-efficient

- Because the hardware was a decade old, they had poor connectivity options

I used to seek out computers that were maximally upgradeable. But in practice, the only thing I ever upgraded was disk and memory. I still have a box of obsolete memory cards. Stuff gets obsolete very quickly these days.

[jjav]

> Stuff gets obsolete very quickly these days.

What do you mean these days? Computers used to obsolete within months in the 90s as ever-faster CPUs kept coming out.

No longer true, with the death of Moore's Law. Computers from 2010 are still quite usable (I have several, servers & laptop) since speed increases over the last decade are incremental at best.

I've been buying computers since the 80s and now is the golden age of longevity for equipment.

[0ldskool]

Well longevity in terms of "not much performance increases per generation" but the quality of goods isn't necessarily there. My middle mouse button of my thinkpad just randomly fell a day ago. I don't think I've ever even used the middle button... My laptop is about 3years old and for the first 2years was barely used because I used a different machine... My old pixel 3 phone had a few issues with it too. The USB-C port stopped working perfectly after a software update and wasn't being rma'd at the time. Battery bulge popped off the back.

I wish devices were made to last for at least 10years, only my modular desktop with haswell gen CPU has lasted that long. I downgraded it from daily to something else.

[robonerd]

The only reason a 10 year old macbook seems like a miracle is because expectations are low for the Apple brand particularly. For other brands of laptop, 10 years old isn't terribly unusual. And for diy PC builds, I dare say 10 years old is actually typical (albeit usually in a 'Ship of Theseus' sense, but that's the point isn't it?)

[germinalphrase]

Is that really the case for anyone but dedicated hobbyists? I would be honestly shocked to learn that the average life of any laptop brand runs higher than 5-6 years on average before being discarded.

[robonerd]

In my experience, the average PC gamer upgrades their PC with a few new parts every few years, and even that isn't certain. Replacing the whole thing every 5 years seems atypical, that's a lot of money to be throwing around (particularly when many PC gamers are in it for the long-term economy.)

[germinalphrase]

The average PC gamer is, of course, not the average computer user which is far more likely to be using a generic laptop or smartphone.

Which is all to say, I understand why we want modularity, but - for most computer users - a much more necessary path forward is a reimagining omaterials recyclability.

[robonerd]

I think the average computer user is even more likely to be using old hardware than a gamer. The average Joe browsing facebook could be perfectly content with a 15 year old computer. Gamers at least are pressured to periodically update their hardware by the appeal of games that demand more than their old computer can provide.