Commoditization and planned obsolescence

On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 01:04:52PM +0100, Didier Derny wrote:
>At that time the computer had some "genius", there was always something 
>new. It was a pleasure to use them, and program them, they had their 
>own soul
>
>It's not the case of the stupid PCs
>What's the use of a PC ? install a compiler to write a emulation for a 
>commodore :)

This commoditization started from personal computers in the 1990s, and 
now it is arriving to mobile phones. It is not necessarily a bad thing.  
The bad thing is the throw-away mentality. Nobody is expected to use an 
electronic gadget for more than a couple of years. This "planned 
obsolescence" really sucks. I refuse to pay for a mobile phone until 
someone makes a durable model where I can install whatever operating 
system version I please. I got my current 9-year-old handset for free a 
few years ago when the previous owner upgraded.

With Linux, you can easily achieve 5 or even 10 years of useful service 
life from a commodity PC. My living room PC is ugly but works, running 
Debian Linux and VDR (DVB-T set-top-box software) on 128MB of RAM and 
400GB hard disk. I bought it second-hand in 2003. I think that it is 
from 2001. I only have replaced faulty capacitors on the motherboard, 
installed a DVB-T tuner card and upgraded the hard disk a few times. If 
the hardware fails, I might consider replacing it with a cheap 
proprietary set-top-box that has a USB connector for storage. But it 
will be a hard choice.

	Marko

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