A Lizard’s Love Letter to Dinosaur Laptops
Personal tech like computers and smartphones have gotten more and more disposable over the years. This is no secret to anyone who keeps up with this sort of thing, but it’s still a huge bummer. Tech has evolved to become less user-repairable and more focused on being a product that is consumed, and companies expect folks to toss them out to go buy the latest and greatest every half-decade or so. I don’t think it has to be that way.
For some added context, little lizard grew up in working-class rural America during the late 2000’s and the early 2010s. Basically, shitty jobs were aplenty and money was, well, not. Tech wasn’t really in abundance, and when it was available it was some pretty old stuff. My very first computer was in 2017, in high school. All I could score myself a beaten up 11-inch 2012 MacBook Air. From what I could remember, it had like 64 gigabytes of storage, an intel processor and 4 gigs of RAM.
Even still, I loved that thing to death. I remember using it to emulate old games, write stupid fan-fiction and procrastinate on school work as much as I possibly could. Actually, that system carried me all the way through my first two years of college, lasting as my daily-driver all the way up till 2022. Honestly, my dinosaur Mac wasn’t really the greatest example of user-upgradable, even back then. Apple dropped update support so I had to use a software called Open Core Legacy Patcher to update it, and the RAM was soldered on. Weird, but unsurprising, considering it was an Apple product. Still, I could replace the battery and upgrade the storage, which was fine for my use case of word-processing and web-based applications.
I think that the work that avid technical enthusiasts do to keep laptops supported and upgradable even after the manufacturer stops supporting them is seriously important work. Computers are a commodity for education nowadays. They’re not an optional thing to have for students, which sucks because they happen to be super expensive. Most of the time working class folks cannot afford to buy new stuff, and hand me downs and used laptops are the best that a lot of people can do.
Computers like those Dell Precision laptops and the universally beloved ThinkPad laptops (the computers with that little red laptop nipple pointer thing) are pretty awesome for user-repairability and an overall long lasting design, so we’re not doomed or anything, but lately there has been a strong trend of computers having soldered on parts and software that has an expiration date.
I’m very hopeful for a future where more consumers vote with their wallets and are savvy enough to repair their stuff. Right to repair policy, lasting designs and enthusiasts who keep this stuff alive are all contributing factors to the “dinosaur laptop” and I mean, shit dude! I love dinosaurs! Keep buying used stuff, folks, and keep supporting the little internet! Appreciate you all!!! :D