[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.