[KronisLV]

> Upgradeable hardware sounds great in theory but doesn’t work in real life, just like PCs you configure it once and it will be that HW until it is obsolete for your purpose.

This isn't really the case for many folks out there.

If I get a better CPU, the previous one might go to one of my homelab servers (consumer hardware). The same goes for motherboards, that's how I got a second homelab server (bought a mobo with more RAM slots for main PC). I occasionally swap out drives and now my homelab servers also have SSDs like my desktop. Once I bought faster RAM for my desktop, I moved some of the old sticks to the servers.

You can easily replace homelab servers with a family PC or another machine that you have (or just spare parts in case something fails) in the example and it will still make sense.

Actually a lot of that hardware is also second hand - since it was easier to just get affordable first gen Ryzens for my desktop, instead of saving up money for a while. Those homelab servers both also use 200GEs because of the low TDP, which others might consider obsolete, but which have a second life here.

[musicale]

I think you can often make a similar hand-me-down argument for non-upgradable (or minimally upgradable) hardware as well.

For example, obsolete thin client PCs can be repurposed as home servers or control systems. With a USB GPIO interface they can even do Raspberry Pi-like things.

Apple makes it harder since you may fall out of the 7-ish year macOS security patch window, but you can often install Linux or NetBSD if you plan to connect to the internet.

[KronisLV]

> I think you can often make a similar hand-me-down argument for non-upgradable (or minimally upgradable) hardware as well.

That's fair and I'd probably also make that argument as well: as long as the hardware/software isn't locked down and utterly unsupported, then even older pieces of kit can be utilized well, instead of being thrown in a landfill somewhere.

I do have a netbook with a N4000 CPU and 4 GB of RAM that is still good enough for web browsing, note taking, some light development and even using as a stream dashboard when I'm streaming on the main PC. As far as I'm concerned, that is only possible due to good drivers and support for Linux distros that are lightweight.

But at the same time, if it had more RAM slots, it'd last me years longer than a soldered offering - it's easy to imagine an old netbook being repurposed as a homelab node, for an internal Wiki, maybe some project management software, internal file repository, or some other simple goal like that.

That's also why I'm upset at some Android phones: that go out of support in a few years, with no way to easily install an up to date release, weird driver situation and locked down bootloaders and sometimes even batteries that cannot be replaced! It's like they're the ultimate form of planned obsolescence, even though the same hardware could last me close to a decade.