Hello lovely llama 🦙

We had an old MacBook Pro laptop from 2015 that fell into disuse. It was top of the pops back in its day, which was only seven years ago but you'd have a hard time believing it if you'd tried to use it this year.

It's a little heartbreaking when our beloved devices wear out and slowly trudge their way to unusable-ness. But since reading How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops on Low Tech Magazine, I'm starting to wonder if that heartbreak comes sooner than it needs to. I do understand the concept of planned obsolescence but in the grind to afford my tech upgrades, I had little time to stop and think about its impacts beyond the superficial... until now.

Last month, after reading that article, I decided HEY I know how to install a PROGRAM on a COMPUTER. Let's see what happens if we try extending the life of this old, slow, dusty laptop. How hard could it be?

Two pissfarty days later, we somehow ended up with an astonishingly fast seven-year-old computer THAT STILL ACTUALLY WORKS. Yes, I almost bricked it. Yes, I almost bricked 2 USB sticks as well, but everything worked out fine in the end. All I had to do was utter the magical swear words, flip the bird a few times, and turn it off and on again.

So, what did we learn?

1. Installing the officially sanctioned software upgrades for this Big Tech laptop might have degraded its performance over time. (Is "upgrade" really the right word to use?)

2. Regardless of how we might defend or justify those "upgrades", the fact remains: the human's experience of the machine got poorer over time.

3. The machine itself still seems capable of performing very well, as long as the officially sanctioned software is not running on it.

This project was quick and dirty, and still needs a lot of tweaking to make it work the way I want to, but I'm heartened that there are things we can do to make our personal computers last awhile (hopefully a long while) longer.

I'm also concerned that this is still too "techie" an approach that's not fit for most computer users. Even if a non-technical person receives a properly configured Linux refurb, what are they chances they'll make the effort to adopt it while surrounded by shiny, big-budget marketed, current-gen devices?

While typing to you from my new old "low tech" laptop, I am pondering such things.

Now, I'm asking you: How much does sustainability matter when it comes to your technology choices? If "sustainable" meant cheaper but also slightly unusual, would you go for it? Why/why not?

Hit reply and tell me.

Sandy.
sanlive.com

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How to Put Faith in Design, interesting perspective on how frustrated designers might address the business models they disagree with.

The Website Obesity Crisis - The author has a bone to pick and offers an entertaining ride. Just be mindful that the language might be a bit dated/ableist.

Someone is pretending to be me is a wild account of a developer investigating an active hiring scam. What a world!

👩🏻‍💻

Finally, here's what I'm up to now.