Thread: Designed for the Dump: Electronics was once bad for the environment.

In 2006, I had a used 1997 Toshiba Techra laptop I bought for $200 in 2005. The on/off swicth was broken and the Fry's Electonics Geek Squad in California wanted $200 to replace the stupid little switch. It was an obsolete Windows 98 PC anyway and I said the devil with that. I then bought, from Fry's, a new Toshiba Satellite Windows XP upgradable to Vista for about $700 new then and got about 11 years of service out of it with one memory upgrade and one hard drive replacement in between.

Nowadays, I bring as many old/unserviceable electronics as I can to Staples to be recycled hoping I am helping to save the planet by doing that.

Originally Posted by AmbroseJohnson

In 2006, I had a used 1997 Toshiba Techra laptop I bought for $200 in 2005. The on/off swicth was broken and the Fry's Electonics Geek Squad in California wanted $200 to replace the stupid little switch. It was an obsolete Windows 98 PC anyway and I said the devil with that. I then bought, from Fry's, a new Toshiba Satellite Windows XP upgradable to Vista for about $700 new then and got about 11 years of service out of it with one memory upgrade and one hard drive replacement in between.

Nowadays, I bring as many old/unserviceable electronics as I can to Staples to be recycled hoping I am helping to save the planet by doing that.

What point of science do you want to discuss?

Maybe that his electronics use is not doing anything to "save the planet"? (Given the resources needed for all his electronics/electrical things)

Originally Posted by exchemist

Originally Posted by AmbroseJohnson

In 2006, I had a used 1997 Toshiba Techra laptop I bought for $200 in 2005. The on/off swicth was broken and the Fry's Electonics Geek Squad in California wanted $200 to replace the stupid little switch. It was an obsolete Windows 98 PC anyway and I said the devil with that. I then bought, from Fry's, a new Toshiba Satellite Windows XP upgradable to Vista for about $700 new then and got about 11 years of service out of it with one memory upgrade and one hard drive replacement in between.

Nowadays, I bring as many old/unserviceable electronics as I can to Staples to be recycled hoping I am helping to save the planet by doing that.

What point of science do you want to discuss?

Ecology, maybe? It seems as this waste crosses many scientific disciplines.

Mecury, chemistry
Mercury poisoning, medicine

Electronics is not only a science but an industry.

Originally Posted by AmbroseJohnson

Originally Posted by exchemist

Originally Posted by AmbroseJohnson

In 2006, I had a used 1997 Toshiba Techra laptop I bought for $200 in 2005. The on/off swicth was broken and the Fry's Electonics Geek Squad in California wanted $200 to replace the stupid little switch. It was an obsolete Windows 98 PC anyway and I said the devil with that. I then bought, from Fry's, a new Toshiba Satellite Windows XP upgradable to Vista for about $700 new then and got about 11 years of service out of it with one memory upgrade and one hard drive replacement in between.

Nowadays, I bring as many old/unserviceable electronics as I can to Staples to be recycled hoping I am helping to save the planet by doing that.

What point of science do you want to discuss?

Ecology, maybe? It seems as this waste crosses many scientific disciplines.

Mecury, chemistry
Mercury poisoning, medicine

Electronics is not only a science but an industry.

OK.

Recycling of electronic devices, and related things such as batteries and lamps, seems to be standard these days in the UK. As for longevity of devices, that may still be an issue.

Laptops still seem to have a useful life of only 5-7 years, limited, so far as I can tell, mainly by the growth in the computing power required by the operating systems and apps. I had to get a new Mac after 7 years because the old one became incapable of running the latest versions of OS. I have however kept the old one in the piano room, where I use it to play YouTube music that I am learning. It is still running a very old version of OS and runs slow, but that doesn't really matter for that particular type of use.

The Mac I have now dates from 2017 and runs fine. In principle it ought to be more rugged, having no internal disc drive to fail mechanically. However I still fear that one day Apple will upgrade OS yet again, with even more bells and whistles I don't want or need, and that will mean having to buy another laptop. I begin to feel these companies ought to offer 2 sets of operating systems, one for those that want all the latest gizmos, run the latest interactive games etc, and another more basic version, for people like me that just want to use mail, word processors, spreadsheets and surf the internet.