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A recent story on the BBC posed a question to its readers. If it ain't broke: You share your oldest working gadgets. Folks wrote in with their favorite, longest-lasting devices.
Besides being curious about the latest tech devices and advancements, I've noticed our community also seems to have a number of thrifty folk who thrive on getting the most out of their gadgets.
I'll count myself among those in that category. I'll start with a Sharp EL-510S solar-powered, scientific calculator from the early 1980s. I also have a JVC stereo receiver from the mid 1980s that is still going strong. The computer I am currently using is a Dell Latitude Core 2 Duo from about 2009.
So how well has your stuff held up? What was been your best acquisition for long-term durability?
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday June 10 2020, @07:41AM (1 child)
Really?
I'd be hard pushed to name something flimsier now than before. Though my phones have had LCD etc. screens for 20 years, they've taken any number of tumbles and never cracked or broken. I don't have any kind of protection on them except maybe a thin rubber casing on the corners, I hate all those bulky boxes and screen layer junk. Electronics and plastics always used to be incredibly flimsy, now with toy-safety laws and more rugged-use devices, things that are far more vulnerable (e.g. large flat glass sheets) are far more durable.
Furniture. Cars (all expected to hit 100,000 miles or more now). I remember the days of anything plastic just being something like a toy out of a Christmas cracker, everything now appears to be quite substantial. I'm looking at a bunch of PSUs, a room of computers, a bank of office chairs, air con units, etc.
Sure, if you paid through the nose back then and bought something high-quality, of course it was better than the cheap Ikea junk that people buy just to have a bookshelf, but that's not a fair comparison. A dining table is now something you pick up in your lunch hour and pay less than a day's wages for. It can't compare to an oak table that took three months to make and cost a small fortune back in its day, and was so valuable that it was passed down from generation to generation rather than just binned.
And it also matters what you're buying: My ex spent £1000 on designer chairs made of plastic that looked nice but also highly impractical. I spend £50 on a set of cheap wooden chairs and have carried them through four relationships and 20 years.
The things that last, last. Sure there are lots of cheap/shoddy shite out there, but if you're buying for it to last, it will last. I have literally given away every smartphone I've had since about 2005 to someone else (and that's only 3 or 4) because I finished using them, upgraded, and handed off the previous one in perfect working order to someone else for them to use.
My laptop is coming up on a decade old, and I'm replacing it mainly because I want a faster model. I have IBM Thinkpads with floppy drives that are still in perfect working order (and I used them again only a few years ago because if you just need to type up a document and aren't demanding the latest OS, wifi, etc., they work just fine). I've literally never replaced a kitchen appliance (washing machine, tumble dryer, fridge, freezer, etc.). I've moved out, leaving mine behind, and bought new ones for my new place but never actually thrown one away in 20+ years.
The fact is that most people aren't buying for longevity at all. They're buying for cheapness and/or uniqueness. I don't really care if my £20 set of shelves falls apart after a decade. I'll buy another, it's cheap enough to do so every year. When it's more of a hassle, though, I'll pay to get a decent (but not stupendous) one.
If anything, I've been living on my own for the last few years and I've realised that most things are just... there and working. I buy cheap. If it keeps dying on me, I'll buy better, but it's not been worth it for anything I can think of.
It's a conscious choice. And there aren't millions of antique oak tables running around the country, or toolsets from the 20's still in working order. You're just cherry picking the good stuff that was taken care of and happened to survive.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday June 10 2020, @10:28AM
It can't compare, yet somehow most people today seem to prefer the fiberboard junk to the handcrafted oak--even quite a few Soylentils when this came up before.
Yes. I guess that's why they're dumping their grandparents' handcrafted oak table in favor of the fiberboard (and no, it's not even always cheap).
That's just because the sheeple threw them out because they were brainwashed into thinking old is bad, new and shiny good, if you keep the old you're called a hoarder.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?