Should the sale of second-hand electrical items be banned?

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121246032#Comment_121246032

You’re posting this like you’re an expert in

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121246771#Comment_121246771

You don’t need to be an expert to be informed. I’ve a lot of experience with electronics since I was a teenager.

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121246780#Comment_121246780

Accidentally posted before I finished writing. But I’m glad you still got my point.

Of course you need to be an expert before making absolute statements like “there’s no excuse. None. 0”. Because it’s a nonsense statement, and anyone who remotely know what they were talking about would never make it. The fact that you state that the RAM is “soldered to the logic board” is solid evidence of the laughable lack of knowledge you actually have.

The RAM in the modern Apple chips is not soldered to the logic board. It’s integrated into the CPU itself. If you don’t know the difference between that and being “soldered onto the logic board”, then you should probably go back to the basics, regardless of your teenage experience with “electronics” (whatever that’s supposed to mean exactly).

It’s done that way for the massive power and thermal savings the approach affords, which results in higher performance consuming lower power in a significantly smaller size. These are the very clear and obvious reasons for doing it. There is absolutely no way to have the RAM as a modular element in a SoC (System on a Chip) architecture. It would be like having your hippocampus as a separate organ to your brain.

For better or worse, once Apple decided to go down the route of SoC design (for the significant performance to power ratio it enjoys), then that decision was made for them. Yes, they could utilise an architecture that uses modular components - as they did in the past, and as other manufacturers do still. But they wouldn’t be SoC, and their computers would be bigger, more power hungry and more reliant on fans or active cooling than they are now.

The SoC design is not about saving money or making manufacturing easier (it’s more costly and more difficult to make). It’s simply a very specific and deliberate approach to performance.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121246868#Comment_121246868

I’m acutely aware of the thermal effects of non modular components. it was also done to slim down the designs and make them more compact.

However, it’s absolutely feasible to run them with good performance and thermal levels while maintaining an easy to repair machine.

Apple (and not just them but they’re the biggest ones) have spent millions on lobbying law makers to fight against right to repair.

I can sit and have a reasoned discussion with you about this if you like? I’m more than happy. I may have said there’s no excuses, I didn’t say there was purely no reason.

There is no excuse to render a €7,000 laptop ewaste because the ducking battery failed. A competent repair person could easily fix, but Apple won’t let them.

Granted they are better now about it I think in the states Apple will sell you parts, it’s still a major problem.

I just don’t think we should be sending expensive electronics to landfill for a few % more power and a few degrees cooler.

edit: for example I have a razer blade 15, modular battery, SSD & ram. It’s about as thick as a MacBook Pro and way better performance compared to the base model.

Mech1

My 1st thought on reducing ewaste is to remove the rule saying that someone can't pick something out of the ewaste skips outside of power city etc. Loads of stuff in there that is ripe for reuse as is or easy repair by people like myself with a little bit of knowledge.

Same as in the council recycling depots fridges dishwashers etc are full of unbroken drawers, shelves, clips, wheels etc that could save people loads of money on buying spares or scrapping there own. But no scavenging allowed is the rule.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121241396#Comment_121241396

In the real world one of the quickest ways to make a profit is to buy a company with a name for reliability, close the factories and replace what they make with cheap shoddy Chinese crap for as long as you can get away with it. Never assume a business is in the business of business. When they change hands too often it's asset stripping with a bit of transfer pricing. Compare the UK water companies payouts to shareholders to the amount they underinvested in their core business.

At best we live in a world where assets are being transformed into income streams. Brother sell printers. HP sell ink though they'd much rather you sign up for a subscription.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121246964#Comment_121246964

Wonder why that is? I presume just to stop people behaving like a murder of crows around recycling bins.

nachouser

I once saved a washing machine by buying a new belt for it and then watching a youtube video about how to use a cable-tie to fit the seemingly too damn small belt to the drum. I basically invented fire in that moment.

Andy From Sligo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121246964#Comment_121246964

so different to the old days - in the 90's there was a lovely fella run a (independent) at our local TV and electrical shop (RIP bless him) I used to go in there and say "you havent by any chance got a switch/motor /pump for my washing machine" - go up the back and work away he used to say , help yourself take what you want , and I would climb and clamber all over the ovens and washing machines and fridges all in the rain (so they would be all slippy) no mention about "oh my insurance does not cover you going through the stuff" or anything like that. Sometimes yep I would cut my finger on a sharp bit of metal on the edge of a washing machine cabinet, nothing a plaster wouldnt fix - blimey it was a different time altogether back then (better) and like the manufacturers near enough kept all the parts the same or similar - if i wanted a indesit or Hotpoint washing machine motor or a pump all the same across the range and very easy to find parts for

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121247230#Comment_121247230

How did you escape electrocution? Not only did you salvage parts from used electrical appliances, but you fitted them yourself.

Now you think buying something secondhand is a surefire way to find yourself laid out in a coffin.

Andy From Sligo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121247053#Comment_121247053

takes me back kind of years ago - Mitsubishi made really good quality VHS video recorders and televisions in Ireland . a really good brand - then I think something happened and they were either sold or taken over but they started to be made in a Turkey (Turkish Delight the Electrical shops used to call them then) ... the name stayed (or they may have been Black Diamond , in the design of Mitsubishi , but the quality seem to go down with them - wasnt as well made. To un-known customers when they went to buy from the shop they had been buying Mitsubishi for years and non the wiser when they bought the next incarnation

Andy From Sligo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121247302#Comment_121247302

yeah because DIY public people these days do bodge up jobs on them , taping up bits of wire with insulation tape and not wiring stuff right