I’ve been stock-piling electronics that either people throw away, or things I bought 2nd-hand only to find they are broken.
Looks like the right to repair law is in very slow motion. Not yet enacted be the European Commission. And once it is, member states have like 2 years to actually enact it in their law. Probably even more time before consumers begin to see results.
(edit) I think some US states were the first to enact right to repair laws. So some consumers could perhaps pretend to be from one of those states to demand things like service manuals. But parts and repair is likely more out of reach ATM.
Not specifically waiting on right to repair, but older electronics have four things going for them:
Very well documented: or you can just ignore the pieces that aren’t documented after so many years. This means they tend to work forever with Debian / Slackware / OpenBSD.
Cheap / easy to find parts: the esoteric stuff falls by the wayside over time.
More reliable: by virtue of the stuff that was going to die due to defects, dying in the first 18 months of use; and
Generally easier to work on.
So all of my laptops all cost well over $1000 new (EDIT: I’ve never purchased a laptop new in 25 years of using laptops exclusively). But wait a couple of years and suddenly they’re the price of a couple nice meals. Wait a bit longer and you can do a curbside pickup. And when something breaks, I can fix it myself with cheap replacement parts instead of waiting on warranty repairs. Also, going back to the documented thing – used MacBooks used to be great for Linux, but then the butterfly keyboard and T2 chip became a thing and I know to avoid them because that keyboard was never solved and ended up being replaced after multiple class-action lawsuits.
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Not specifically waiting on right to repair, but older electronics have four things going for them:
So all of my laptops all cost well over $1000 new (EDIT: I’ve never purchased a laptop new in 25 years of using laptops exclusively). But wait a couple of years and suddenly they’re the price of a couple nice meals. Wait a bit longer and you can do a curbside pickup. And when something breaks, I can fix it myself with cheap replacement parts instead of waiting on warranty repairs. Also, going back to the documented thing – used MacBooks used to be great for Linux, but then the butterfly keyboard and T2 chip became a thing and I know to avoid them because that keyboard was never solved and ended up being replaced after multiple class-action lawsuits.
Time works to our advantage in many ways.