Refurbish to fight against planned obsolescence

2024-09-25T18:30:00Z

The planned obsolescence of computers and other IT electronic equipment is a well-known plague of our age. For years, I stopped buying new computers and prefer refurbished ones whenever possible. That includes all my personal ICT boxes, and even at work, I try to spin out the life cycle of the equipment in use under my direct management. Proprietary OSes often limit the lifespan of IT equipment, but in some cases, vendor-independent FOSS software can replace the original one at End of Life (EOL). This is beneficial because FOSS software is often more lightweight, customizable, and has a longer support life, thereby extending the usability of your equipment.

For instance, I'm writing these notes on a dual-processor Lenovo Thinkstation C30 refurbished workstation that left the factory 10 years ago with plenty of RAM I bought 4 years ago. Thanks to the use of SSD storage instead of the old HDDs, I hope to use it for at least another 4-5 years. My living room Thinkpad L540 refurbished laptop is the same age, again with a replaced SSD, and I bought it in the same period. My main office personal HPZ320 workstation has been around for almost the same number of years, while my office laptop is a damn new Thinkpad X1 Carbon 5th-Gen of 2017. Both of them were new at buying time.

Of course, all of them run Debian GNU/Linux and have been upgraded regularly during the years. This is essential. Otherwise, the well-known proprietary OSes will obsolete your boxes, and you will be screwed. Generally, this is an easy task because reasonably aged computers are better supported by FOSS kernels. It would be better to avoid well-known vendors with problematic or unsupported devices.

I have even run a couple of aged Seagate Personal NASes in EOL for years, thanks to installing a plain Debian for ARMv7 processors distribution instead of the original Seagate one. I think they have been around for almost ten years, and one is a used unit. Of course, HDDs changed in the meantime.

Some servers still in use are the rock-solid IBM xSeries.They were born with a Suse Linux ES 11 and are still around and doing their jobs under Debian. Of course, the trade-off between power consumption, budget, and goals must be rigorously considered.

Plan for the future in advance

In order to run computers for a long time, I found it essential to buy with more RAM than needed at the moment of buying (even in the case of new boxes). You will need more, and assume you still don't know. Possibly, the same is true for the number of cores. If you buy a refurbished computer, it is inevitably a professional/business unit you would never find in a shop for home users. That's better because they generally have superior quality and decent support in the Linux kernel. In the business market, note that many companies retain computers for an extended guaranteed time only (by internal policy), so you will always find 3-5 years-old equipment recycled by medium/big companies. For personal use, they are more than enough and exceptionally usable with a FOSS OS.

Even note that current computers (but for GPUs) are comparable to reasonably old computers (let's say the last 10-12 years) in terms of the number of cores, speed of RAM, and bus throughput. They are faster, but not so much. Their average power consumption should be lower, but Moore's law is dead, sorry. So, buying new computers is quite pointless in most cases, and even worse if you purchase a consumer low-end computer for a limited budget. A refurbished box is generally the best option because it is cleaned, incorporates ad hoc changes (e.g., a new SSD for old units), is tested, and includes a one-year warranty by its vendor (generally, but just check before buying). Even the refurbished computer was at least an SOHO one, not a home product, so it is a much better option.

Be redundant, be safe

I never base my daily activities on a single box. At home and at work, I always have forklifts and replacements for emergencies. You cannot trust old (or even new) units, and not for sure in the long term. The same goes for parts such as HDDs or SSDs. Ça va sans dire that you need to take care of your data and backup with required redundancy, too.

Missions impossible

As said, the refurbishing possibility is minimal for GPUs and in some application domains. I'm not a gamer, but there are rumors about forced obsolescence every few years for commercial reasons triggered by games and vendors. Even for high-performance computing, any GPU before late 2014 is not more truly supported or usable. Again, it is partially a matter of hardware, but proprietary software, including SDKs, renders old GPUs obsolete.

Nowadays, the 2016 generations of GPUs with 8GB of VRAM are basically to be retired for many applications: that was the standard size at the time, but now vendors have decided that 8GBs or less is too few for any practical use. Too bad.

Smartphones are another area where planned obsolescence is the rule. The most expensive ones have 7 years of software support, but most can only be upgraded to a pair of major versions. Basically, you should change your phone every 3-5 years because security support is limited in time. But the average replacement cycle seems less than 3 years, anyway. Often, an older phone can still be used, but it is at risk for security support. Too bad, again.

The same happens for many so-called smart electronic equipment: having a box permanently connected to the network and missing any security support is generally a bad idea, and only a small minority of them can be upgraded to FOSS firmware. Cameras, TVs, routers, access points, and many other objects in our homes have a sort of implicit counter for end-of-life that often stops before the end of the hardware parts. You need to be very selective in equipment vendors.

In many cases - guess what? - such devices now run an embedded version of GNU/Linux that could be community-supported after the end of vendor support if the vendor provided enough information appropriately, which is rarely a possibility. In most cases, the vendor only has a public archive of third-party FOSS source packages, not the entire build system, so community support is not practically viable. Even any development documentation is usually totally missing, just to discourage people from following that path. In many cases, the devices include totally proprietary chipsets and drivers, so there is no way. That's even the reason why Android is an almost-open mobile operating system. Too bad, take three.

Will it change in the future?

In general, this battle was lost years ago. Expanding or repairing a laptop could now be challenging due to the accurate practices of many vendors to discourage self-intervention. That's true for a lot of other equipment, too. They are always ready to obsolete your products more often than you are prepared. I'm a pessimist about the future of this war.

They're coming outta the goddamn walls

frankie-tales

Refurbish to fight against planned obsolescence

Plan for the future in advance

Be redundant, be safe

Missions impossible

Will it change in the future?