As a freelance journalist – or an office worker if you wish – I have always believed that I should regularly buy a new laptop. But older machines offer more quality for much less money.
Yes, of course you can do this work up to a certain point on an old laptop, if it has a half decent graphics card, if you work with 3D Ray-tracing, you can die while it’s rendering, if not.
I think the main discussion here is: what added value does something like 3D Ray-tracing (or any new flashy tech) brings to the table? is it worth the human and environmental cost of upgrading your GPU or is it just a nice gimmick.
What I am referring to is that for personal use an old PC or laptop can naturally be used, depending on what you intend to do with it, but in the professional field things change. A professional needs a device to match to be able to do their job well.
Naturally, for most people a PC or laptop will suffice and they will use it until it stops working or where they replace the necessary components.
I think the biggest problem is fewer laptops or PCs, which are normally used for a long time, before replacing them, the plague for the environment is the people who buy a new smartphone of the latest model every six months, despite the fact that the old one can still work for many years offering the same services as the new ones, which are mostly used the same for WhatsApp, CandyCrush and taking selfies.
Professional work don’t necessarily means having the new shiny gadget. Computer have been used for creative works in all fields since decades.
Smartphones are also fashion goods, so there are indeed other logics at play.
Imo the issues with smartphones are their limited reparability and general fragility. Also if your phone is not supported by a custom os you’re quickly stuck update wise.
I have just bought a new low-end smartphone, because the previous one has stopped working after almost 6 years, also low-end. Of course they are more fragile devices and more prone to theft, but having a little care can last several years.
Naturally, a Professional can also work for many years with the PC or laptop he uses, but it would certainly not be a low-end one and surely at the end of the device’s life, he will not buy a used one.
It’s like in all professions, to do a good job you need good tools. For an individual, it does not matter how much your PC needs to render an image, but for a designer, who has to deliver the work to a fixed term, quality and time can be decisive.
I think there are a small group of professionals that need to run intensive software. I think the article is getting at longevity and modularity. If you buy a computer you should expect a decade of use out of it. If it was able to do the job when you bought it it should still be able to do the same work. Core software becomes so bloated that it creates arricificial obsolescence. Hardware is poorly made so that it takes a similar social cost as something that would have lasted a decade but breaks within the year. Manufactures needlessly change compatibility like intel having a new chipset every year. For what?
The major thesis of the article is that everything’s shit; stop buying shiney shit, or something along those lines. The author isn’t necessarily condemning professionals who make the exception. He’s condemning poor manufacturing and software engineering, and the predatory consumerist trap imposed on the end-user.
@lxvi@Zerush I think only very few professional categories really need an high-profile laptop to do their job… I’m thinking about designers, graphic and video-editing professionals, (some kind of) musicians and some kind of programmers. I can’t think other categories
Agree, yes there is a lot of programmed obsolence in the software and OS. A lot of current soft not longer work on 32bit systems or in OS which do so. That means that some old PC don’t work anymore with current soft, leaving the choice of doing the job with outdated software that has neither the functionality nor the quality of the results. You cannot get the same results with a graphics program from 15 years ago, as with the current version.
In other words, an individual can use even an old Pentium with some light Linux distro, if he uses it exclusively for some office or study work, but he can forget about the device if he needs something more complete and better, or he need to search the internet safely, when even current web pages already exceed the resources offered by the PC.
It is certainly not necessary for the PC to be one of NASA to do a good job, but only up to a certain limit and always depending on what it is used for. It cannot be globalized that a used laptop is enough, for some it can work, for others it cannot.
Ho yes. My phone is almost 9 year old. But I feel it significantly more than my laptop. The only reason it’s usable is because I don’t have google services and the only resource heavy app I run are two messaging apps. (5 years ago google maps was already struggling)
I wonder the difference in environmental impact between a 300€ laptop and a 2500€ one. Btw, the only time I’ve worked with a graphic designer, she had a 9yo thinkpad and was running open source software.
even that i’m not surz it’s true. You can do creative work on an old laptop.
I edit -somewhat regularly- video or images on my 11 yo laptop.
4k editing doesn’t work of course and export takes a while. It’s just about accepting limitations and working with and around it.
Yes, of course you can do this work up to a certain point on an old laptop, if it has a half decent graphics card, if you work with 3D Ray-tracing, you can die while it’s rendering, if not.
I think the main discussion here is: what added value does something like 3D Ray-tracing (or any new flashy tech) brings to the table? is it worth the human and environmental cost of upgrading your GPU or is it just a nice gimmick.
What I am referring to is that for personal use an old PC or laptop can naturally be used, depending on what you intend to do with it, but in the professional field things change. A professional needs a device to match to be able to do their job well. Naturally, for most people a PC or laptop will suffice and they will use it until it stops working or where they replace the necessary components. I think the biggest problem is fewer laptops or PCs, which are normally used for a long time, before replacing them, the plague for the environment is the people who buy a new smartphone of the latest model every six months, despite the fact that the old one can still work for many years offering the same services as the new ones, which are mostly used the same for WhatsApp, CandyCrush and taking selfies.
Professional work don’t necessarily means having the new shiny gadget. Computer have been used for creative works in all fields since decades.
Smartphones are also fashion goods, so there are indeed other logics at play.
Imo the issues with smartphones are their limited reparability and general fragility. Also if your phone is not supported by a custom os you’re quickly stuck update wise.
I have just bought a new low-end smartphone, because the previous one has stopped working after almost 6 years, also low-end. Of course they are more fragile devices and more prone to theft, but having a little care can last several years.
Naturally, a Professional can also work for many years with the PC or laptop he uses, but it would certainly not be a low-end one and surely at the end of the device’s life, he will not buy a used one. It’s like in all professions, to do a good job you need good tools. For an individual, it does not matter how much your PC needs to render an image, but for a designer, who has to deliver the work to a fixed term, quality and time can be decisive.
I think there are a small group of professionals that need to run intensive software. I think the article is getting at longevity and modularity. If you buy a computer you should expect a decade of use out of it. If it was able to do the job when you bought it it should still be able to do the same work. Core software becomes so bloated that it creates arricificial obsolescence. Hardware is poorly made so that it takes a similar social cost as something that would have lasted a decade but breaks within the year. Manufactures needlessly change compatibility like intel having a new chipset every year. For what?
The major thesis of the article is that everything’s shit; stop buying shiney shit, or something along those lines. The author isn’t necessarily condemning professionals who make the exception. He’s condemning poor manufacturing and software engineering, and the predatory consumerist trap imposed on the end-user.
@lxvi @Zerush I think only very few professional categories really need an high-profile laptop to do their job… I’m thinking about designers, graphic and video-editing professionals, (some kind of) musicians and some kind of programmers. I can’t think other categories
Agree, yes there is a lot of programmed obsolence in the software and OS. A lot of current soft not longer work on 32bit systems or in OS which do so. That means that some old PC don’t work anymore with current soft, leaving the choice of doing the job with outdated software that has neither the functionality nor the quality of the results. You cannot get the same results with a graphics program from 15 years ago, as with the current version. In other words, an individual can use even an old Pentium with some light Linux distro, if he uses it exclusively for some office or study work, but he can forget about the device if he needs something more complete and better, or he need to search the internet safely, when even current web pages already exceed the resources offered by the PC. It is certainly not necessary for the PC to be one of NASA to do a good job, but only up to a certain limit and always depending on what it is used for. It cannot be globalized that a used laptop is enough, for some it can work, for others it cannot.
Ho yes. My phone is almost 9 year old. But I feel it significantly more than my laptop. The only reason it’s usable is because I don’t have google services and the only resource heavy app I run are two messaging apps. (5 years ago google maps was already struggling)
I wonder the difference in environmental impact between a 300€ laptop and a 2500€ one. Btw, the only time I’ve worked with a graphic designer, she had a 9yo thinkpad and was running open source software.