

Stuff that lasts vs disposable junk - hernan7

Inspired by the "Year of living smaller" thread...<p>The other day I was reading this article about stuff that lasts vs disposable junk (my paraphrase): http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/4273660.html<p>Which got me thinking: what would it take to make a computer that is useful 25 years from now? Would it even be possible, or would such a machine become obsolete way before that?<p>Maybe some type of machine with a reduced capability set. A text editing-only, or a teach kids to read-only appliance (a souped-up Leapfrog perhaps).<p>But then, after some years, you would have the problem of communicating with the external world. Owners of some "vintage" music samplers have that problem: the instrument may sound and play fine, but if they want to load new samples they need to use Zip drives or SCSI.<p>Opinions?
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Tangurena
Most modern electronics have been using lead-free solder for the past few
years (to allow them to be sold in Europe and California). From my experience
in manufacturing, I'd say that the long-term reliability of lead-free solders
is still rather poor. I don't have much confidence that electronic devices
made after about 2005 will last 25 years. Maybe in a few years time, the
reliability of lead-free soldering will return to the levels of lead based
solders just before RoHS came out.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive)

When circuit boards heat up and cool down, they expand and contract. Ideally,
a designer tries to match the coefficients (as much as is practical) so that
all the components expand and contract at similar rates. Because they don't,
the solder joints get stressed, and over time can become brittle and fracture.
Then, they'll be intermittant connections that, depending on where they are
located, may or may not cause intermittant operation, or a computer that shuts
off/reboots when it is hot. A motherboard has on the order of 10^5 solder
joints.

Because of the speed of changing products, and the ease of doing so, and the
very thin margins for distribution, there is no money left in the system to
make repairing computers affordable or profitable. It has been cheaper for
more than the last decade to discard computers than to repair them. And to
change that would mean severely restricting models of computers and the parts
that go in them.

I used to work in the automotive industry, and keeping parts on the shelf to
repair 10-15 year old products was rather common.

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pg
Disposable doesn't necessarily equal junk. In some situations it may be better
to design things not to last. Perhaps not even to be physical-- to be a
service. If you want a computer that's useful 25 years from now, your best bet
is probably to sign up for AWS.

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grouchyOldGuy
I still have the first computer I bought: an Apple ][+. I haven't booted it up
in over fifteen years. If it still works it could be useful for some things,
but without a TCP/IP stack, it can never connect to the Internet or even a LAN
which severely limits its usefulness to me. Even if hardware lasts 25 years,
who can say what the needs of the user will be in that time and whether the
hardware will support the software needed to support those needs?

For simpler tools, such as knives, hammers and wrenches, I always buy top
quality and have many hand tools that are more than a quarter century old and
in perfect working condition. Some of the hand tools I have were my
grandfather's first, then my father's before coming to me.

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coryrc
It depends on what you mean by "computer". A lot of the older calculators
still work. I think many portable TRS-80's still work?

VIC-20, C64... the display is the weakest point. The above devices use VFDs or
7-segment LCDs.

RS-232-level 7&8-bit ASCII serial communications are probably the lingua
franca of computers and will continue to be, so if your devices can send text
across the serial port you should be able to find devices far into the future
to communicate with your old computer.

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noodle
the 25-year-old computers that are still actively being used nowadays are the
ruggedized ones that aren't affected by things like radiation and the more
extreme temperatures.

the disposability of the modern computer tends to be a byproduct of how fast
the industry and technology moves.

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rms
Surely there will be a distro of Linux or FreeBSD distributed 25 years from
now that can be run on the hardware of today. So you'll still be able to
browse Wikipedia, though perhaps not in full 4D VR. Obsolete is relative.

