As a freelance journalist – or an office worker if you wish – I have always believed that I should regularly buy a new laptop. But older machines offer more quality for much less money.
A classic article from the infamous solar powered LowTechMagazine; the author describes their journey and how they ended up on a laptop from 2006.
I enjoyed this article a lot, it was eye opening. I hadnt thought in terms of cost per annum.
I've been using a second-hand thinkpad T420 as my daily driver since January 2018. I bought it because i love its kind of keyboard. It works beautifully. It came with an i5 processor. I ugraded its RAM to 16GB , got two SSD and a slighter better screen. However this is its weak point, the resolution is only 1600x9000 and my eyes feel it. I run debian stable and fedora on it.
It is very sturdy, it has survived falls, several coffees, three cats... It is a beast.
cost per annum.
I once bought a $5k MacBook Pro.
It was very nice. But I like to get $1/day at a minimum from my devices.
So I did the math, and it would have been sometime in the mid 2030's before that device met my goals.
I couldn't imagine the keyboard lasting that long. Nor could I imagine the T2 chip being unlocked and everything working for Linux by then. And of course, absolutely nothing was upgradable.
Fortunately, Apple has a very nice return policy, and so that is what I did.
The X280 that replaced it for a fraction of the cost, has been used, abused, upgraded, and is still in use by my kids for school.
I don't upgrade devices until my cost/month comes down to a target I've set at ~$20/month
So if I spend $960 on a used macbook then I must utilize it for at least 48 months before I am 'eligible' to upgrade again
In reality I can get even more usage with some light maintenance
my secondary machine is a 2012 Macbook Air which is the device I drag around the house and it still works great for web browsing, video watching, and light programming tasks! Of course I have needed to replace the battery multiple times, and even the hard drive once
![[HN] How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops](https://lemmy.uhhoh.com/pictrs/image/764c2390-f2bb-42d5-bf19-40462f32a043.png?format=webp&thumbnail=196)