In 2001 or 2002 I won an IBM Thinkpad laptop at the IBM stand at the "Zorg en ICT" trade fair. I also got a t-shirt with "IBM @On demand" on it. IBM was way ahead of its time, it seems, because nowadays doing stuff "in the cloud" is what all the hip kids are doing. IBM unfortunately did it on self-developed hardware (including CPU's), meaning, way too expensive, but I digress.
The IBM ThinkPad that I won, was a beast. With easy screws underneath I was able to switch the HDD for an SSD and also upgrade the 4GB RAM to 8GB RAM. I've upgraded Windows XP to the latest Service Pack 4 (remember those?) after some years as well. Then, after several years of happily using the ThinkPad I needed wanted a new laptop in 2007 or 2008.
Most of the 160-200 million laptops sold each year are replacement purchases. The average laptop is replaced every 3 years (in business) to five years (elsewhere). My 5.7 years per laptop experience is not exceptional.
This time I bought an Asus laptop with Windows Vista, because it was the only machine with a Blu-ray drive (remember those?) installed. I thought it would be the next-big-thing and I wanted if not a burner, then at least a drive for playing those tings. I think this is around the time Apple stopped putting DVD drives in their laptops. Maybe Steve Jobs was onto something. Disks were old tech, all the cool kids on the yard were now just downloading their 'stuff', or, using USB thumb drives.
The Asus was also a beast. Again, I was able to upgrade it as well to a bigger SSD but unfortunately it was maxed out on the 8GB ram (2 GB for the on-board GPU). Windows Vista got a lot of hate at the time, I don't remember why now, but this laptop got me through several years of playing Age Of Empires III, Rome Total War (the greatest video game of all time) and other study projects as well. But, how on earth was I still stuck at only 8/6GB or RAM?
The question is not how we can evolve towards a circular economy, but instead why we continue to evolve away from it.
Lenovo, a Chinese manufacturer that is now the largest computer maker in the world, bought IBM's PC business. Chinese companies don't have a reputation for building quality products, especially not at the time. However, since Lenovo was still selling Thinkpads that looked almost identical to those built by IBM, I decided to try my luck and bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T430 in April 2013. At a steep price, but I assumed that quality had to be paid for. My mistake was clear from the beginning. I had to send the new laptop back twice because its case was deformed.
After my lukewarm experience with the limited Asus laptop, I was rich enough interested enough in Apple's ecosystem because for years my iPhones (4, SE, 8) and iPads (2, Pro 1, Air 2) had served me so well that I trusted Cupertino with my money. Also, the M1 chip just launched and everyone kept telling me it was "alien tech." They were right, of course.
I know that this laptop can not be upgraded because it's one big glued and soldered block on the inside, so instead of being disappointed two or three years down the line, I opted for maxing out the specifications on this machine when I bought it. There was at the time a global wave of lockdowns in progress, so I had to wait for half a year before I got this model.
I know Apple gives upgrades of macOS to machines somewhere between 5 and 7 years. So now I've got another 3-5 years of usage on this machine ahead of me.
To make laptop use more sustainable, the software industry would need to start making every new version of its products lighter instead of heavier. The lighter the software, the longer our laptops will last, and we will need less energy to use and produce them.
Last week I helped out a friend who's not very handy with computers, by switch his old HDD for an SD drive and not re-installing Windows 10 but instead Google Chrome Flex OS. This operating system is chopped of at the knees mostly cloud based and has no way to install apps (other then chrome extensions), which means that no matter where he clicks he will no longer be able to archive every virus, worm and crypto locker know to humankind. A great archiver was lost that day, but a happy e-mail users was found.
Maybe in 5 years time I will have to switch to Flex? Or maybe I will give Linux Lite a try by that time? Or Linux Mint because I'll be addicted to the macOS feel by that time? In an attempt to whitewash their reputation become more eco friendly Apple will have allowed the installing of other operating systems on M1 machines by then, I hope 😇.
What I failed to mention is that during this time, I also bought several old PC's for almost no money at all. Maybe €150 or something like that? And making them very usable very fast by installing Linux Ubuntu or Mint.
I also recently got an old laptop from a friend, a Dell something-something. It had windows 10 on it, so I installed Umbrel to turn this laptop into an always-on-internet-server-with-build-in-UPS.
Maybe just using donated PCs and Laptops is the new way forward?
