Am I willing to pay the price to support ethical hardware?

crosscourt · 2017-11-22 22:42

A topic Ive been interested in for quite awhile and looking forward to hearing some of your comments,
www.lxer.com/module/newswire/ext_link.php?rid=249057

Last edited by crosscourt (2017-11-23 01:33)

JimW · 2017-11-22 23:52

They keep on and they will make cell phones that cannot be recharged. When the battery goes dead you throw it in the trash and go buy another. All contacts, photo's, games, etc. will be stored in the cloud. Which, to me, means someone else has control of it! Trash dumps will begin filling with dead cell phones and we will have yet another crisis!
Not a good scenario in my opinion.

crosscourt · 2017-11-23 00:11

When I saw Thinkpad t470 and Dell Latitude E5450 without the ability to replace batteries easily I was shocked. Intel began soldering cpus with Broadwell in 2014 which was a warning sign to me. Those trends have only gotten worse and its one of the reasons I still own a desktop pc as it may be the one place where you can maintain control of your own hardware.

For many years I wasnt a fan of Apple because they limited what you could do with their hardware and became far too proprietary for my taste. I was concerned this might move over to the pc side and it appears thats slowly happening.

Last edited by crosscourt (2017-11-23 00:13)

tlmiller76 · 2017-11-23 00:33

crosscourt wrote:

For many years I wasnt a fan of Apple because they limited what you could do with their hardware and became far too proprietary for my taste. I was concerned this might move over to the pc side and it appears thats slowly happening.

Entirely not true. It wasn't slow at all. Essentially EVERY SINGLE LAPTOP with a 5th generation or newer chip is soldered. MOST of them are difficult to replace the battery (not impossible, but a pain), and the majority of your smaller or less expensive systems have soldered ram AT LEAST, if not soldered ram AND a soldered hard drive (eMMC types typically in low end) and the ULTRA smalls will often also have a soldered wifi chip.

The change happened quite rapidly. It started with the 5th gen chips, and was nearly complete with that same generation. IF you find something with a Core M (5th generation ultra low voltage fanless), it will be EVERYTHING soldered except MAYBE a m.2 hard drive. Any of the entry level stuff (Baytrail, Cherry Trail, Braswell, Apollo Lake) will 95% of the time be soldered ram, wifi, hard drive, etc.

As far as the question of the article...will I? No, not as long as systems that are fully integrated work just as well with Linux as those that aren't. For instance, my 'el-cheapo Chromebook from 2015 that I just got supports faster networking (802.11ac) than the 13" laptop that costs $1400 mentioned in that article due to it using a wireless chip that uses technology that was out of date 6 YEARS ago. Sorry, I'll take modern, cheap and unupgradable over open, outdated, slow and insanely expensive. The only system I have in my home that doesn't support WIreless-AC is my T430, circa 2012. Even my Latitude E5430, circa 2012, has wireless-AC. Then that brand new system only supports wireless-n? Nope, I'd pay $200-$250 for that. Not a penny more than that for something that archaic.

Last edited by tlmiller76 (2017-11-23 00:40)

crosscourt · 2017-11-23 00:40

When I say slowly Im referring to the overall timeline that began a long time ago as Apple began their move initially by limiting what type of hardware you could use with their older systems. That eventually turned into soldering and closing units up and the pc side for a long time resisted those older initial moves, but yes now we see that happening as a common place action.

Sorry I wasnt more clear and please understand because of my age Im discussing history well before the Conroe C2D cpus were even launched.

tlmiller76 · 2017-11-23 00:42

Yeah, but Apple is their own thing. They have their entirely closed ecosystem. Sure, pc's often adopt things that Apple does, but they're not in any way part of that ecosystem. In the pc ecosystem, it didn't slowly happen. It was unheard of, then was the norm essentially in the course of 6 months.

crosscourt · 2017-11-23 00:50

Back in the earlier days Apple had already gone proprietary and many people avoided them to use pcs to maintain their freedom to change hardware. Everyone was afraid that down the road OEMs would move down the same path on the pc side and given sales of hardware, that really wasnt an issue back then but over time as more components became integrated onto boards that changed and it was possible to close systems.
I remember some of the Pentium M systems with soldered cpus(2004) was my first experience but it wasnt commonplace at that point.
Heres an article from 2012,
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11 … -desktops/
His comment that its impact wouldnt be as great as people thought was eventually the truth. I was over at Anandtech during that time when the rumors were first occuring as a moderator.

Correct, on the pc side when it happened it happened quickly but it took a long time to get to that point(rumoring around 2010,possible confirmation around 2012,confirmed source 2013). Apple had a huge influence over the market over time and still does, particularly in regards to closed systems as they began soldering components such as the cpu back in 2009-2010.

Ive been involved with Dell and HP over time{consumer/mainstream products) so Im well aware of the changes that have occured but do agree with you about the cost issues involved with open/ethical hardware.

Last edited by crosscourt (2017-11-23 02:19)

Q4OS Forum

#1 2017-11-22 22:42

Am I willing to pay the price to support ethical hardware?

#2 2017-11-22 23:52

Re: Am I willing to pay the price to support ethical hardware?

#3 2017-11-23 00:11

Re: Am I willing to pay the price to support ethical hardware?

#4 2017-11-23 00:33

Re: Am I willing to pay the price to support ethical hardware?

#5 2017-11-23 00:40

Re: Am I willing to pay the price to support ethical hardware?

#6 2017-11-23 00:42

Re: Am I willing to pay the price to support ethical hardware?

#7 2017-11-23 00:50

Re: Am I willing to pay the price to support ethical hardware?

Board footer