Ask HN: How many of you are consciously downsizing your devices/going retro?
Although Sales and Marketing would have us believe that we should upgrade our devices on a regular basis, a growing number of us are pushing back and consciously not buying new and many cases going retro and using older machines with a modern OS. I eschewed desktops in favour of laptops and now I've progressed to an iPad Mini 6 and a 2018 Android Tablet with Termux and Debian 12 (non-GUI). How about you?
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadThen you realize how filthy the software stack is... and not for the good reasons.
For my laptop I have an M1 pro macbook. It was a huge upgrade over the previous intel mac, but I don't feel the need to upgrade to the M2 or M3 machines, the M1 still feels really fast to me.
The value I derive from using something increases over time as it ages. This works better with some things than others. For example, a house or older audio equipment which doesn't tend to degrade quickly over time.
As a result, I find myself spending more time enjoying those things which age better over time than new technology which does not.
Personally, I don't buy new devices every single year, but I'm not downsizing my phone or computer any time soon. I still keep my smartphone with me at all times, I'm not getting rid of my desktop, and I'm totally happy with how things are.
https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Debian
The simple fact for me is that all of these types of devices are thoroughly comoditised now, and almost perfected, so even old tech runs well, for my needs at least. I don't experience any issues not being "up to date" and it feels satisfying to not have blown thousands trying to keep up.
If someone is actively looking for a second-hand device on eBay, I recommend the T480 as it has a very good price/performance ratio. Pick one with a i5/i7 quad-core, 32 GB Ram, FHD or WQHD IPS display and you will be fine.
Or did you mean buy a T480 that has dual ram slots? 16x2
EDIT: I flag every post about gadgets I see here on HN, my contribution to a better society
Should be noted that I am italian so maybe there could be a cultural difference to explain myself
> I watch stuff with friends, go out with friends
To me this is consumption too.
You are defining it as consuming physical things (that are not food ) ?
I think most ppl would find that intolerable after a few days. I think you can't either based on your first response. You are resorting to consuming media, consuming food ect. I don't understand how consuming a movie is very different from consuming a new gadget. Surely gadget also gives you an "experience"?
I found it very strange and sad that after the lifting of lockdowns people went right back to the way things used to be. Did we learn nothing? Such a squandered opportunity.
What happened to just meeting up in a street or at someone's place and 'hanging out' informally? At what point did it become near-obligatory to have a sit-down dinner or 'go out' to enjoy the company of friends?
I ran Ubuntu for a while, but 23.10 broke LUKS and graphics support on my Nvidia GPU was limited.
I’ve just bought a 2.5 MacBook Pro 16” refurbished, and my iPhone is 3 years old and counting with no plans to upgrade.
I think getting as long as we can out of our devices is crucial, but the big wheel keeps on turning with technologies like Windows 11 and even Chrome.
It’s an honourable endeavour but certainly disincentivised by big tech.
Then I found: the thing is my solution to my Smartphone addiction. It has music, podcasts, a phone, I can fine tune notifications so I only get interrupted when I wish and I can have all my cards on it, just like the iPhone. But: no social media. No quick browsing. No reading. So now, I spend a lot of time just with the watch, especially when we go out.
It used to be that one could surf the Internet with a graphical user-interface using a 100 mhz cpu with 16 megabytes (not gigabytes) of memory.
That same machine would be fairly snappy for checking email, writing documents and programming. It would even run 3D games, and with an accelerator card at 24 mhz, it would run them fairly smoothly too.
For everyday use, I think the most retro I'm having some limited success using is not very retro, it's an imac running osx 10.6.8, a very capable machine, but still, no match for the bloat of modern websites. (HN excluded, that, and many of the articles it links too work well enouhg).
But when it comes to reducing my tech footprint, the only issue I found with going down this path were bank apps. It is basically a requirement to have either an iOS or Android modern device to do anything.
The only thing I've encountered that I truly can't use is the city bikeshare program.
Partly because I prefer the smaller screen but also because its still very fast and reliable. I had previous had a Gen 1 iPhone SE which I only gave up on due to accidental damage.
I don't normally wear a watch, but when I do I have a LED watch from the 1970's from Texas Instruments. Its a real battery hog but still fun.
https://digitalcollections.smu.edu/digital/collection/tir/id...
My Roku TV has wifi disabled and I rely on an older Apple TV for subscriptions (Netflix, PBS, Disney+). The main use-case for AppleTV though is the Infuse Pro app which I use to manage and play my media collection (backup of DVDs etc) from my NAS.
https://firecore.com/infuse
Will hold out for the next SE, whenever that is. Done buying the same phone over and over every 3 years.
The CPU in the weird cellular base station product I'm reverse engineering is significantly more powerful than my desktop PC, but c'est la vie...
As for my phone: I use an iPhone. At the end of the day it's a system I don't have to care and feed. It just works and does what I want it to and I don't need anything else.
When I bought a Raspberry Pi 5 recently (to run as a always-on local web-server) it did cross my mind that it was probably plenty powerful enough for 95% of what I do.
I’ll stick with my 64 core threadripper for now though :D
Phone: just gone from iPhone 12 to 15 Pro. Not noticed much difference, will stick for a while I reckon.
TV: recently did my once every ten years upgrade to a Sony A95, which was a mind blowing improvement.
iPad: mostly been buying reconditioned models, as they’re all plenty powerful enough.
So other than the iPads, not really downsizing yet, but it feels like most average tech is actually super powerful these days, so I can see myself doing more in the future.
One should use the machine while it enables an efficient workflow. As soon as it doesn't, and there are those that do for a reasonable price, one should switch. Anything else is equal to wasting time, which is obviously a bad thing.
This is highly contextual. I do drive 20 years old car but it is great, I almost never maintain it, it gets me from A to B in the same time as new cars and in given city landscape is equally safe. Buying a new car would be total waste of money AND time now. Contrary, I can replace phone or headphones within a year if there are annoying things that make me lose time.
For example;
1) Nexus 10 - battery replaced and being used a a ebook reader.
2) iPad (very old) - watch Youtube videos, surf and read iBooks.
3) Dell Inspiron laptop (2008) - Linux machine.
4) iPhone 4 - battery replaced, Stream music to a old Jawbone jambox bluetooth speaker. The sound is actually excellent, probably the iPhone4 DSP/DAC is very good.
5) Macbook Pro (2008) - Regularly used until a few years ago when it died. Needs to be repaired.
6) iMac 27-inch (mid-2010) - Was my main work machine until last year when it died. Needs to be repaired.
7) Surface Pro 1st gen (2012) - My only current usable machine.
8) Pixel 2 - My current phone.
As you can see any old device can be very well repurposed for some specific use. One should not get sucked into the "consumerist mindset" pushed by external forces but always think about needs/wants, financial burden and environmental effects.
This has always been my policy with everything be it cars/furniture/shoes/clothing/electronics/etc. i.e use everything to the fullest until they die/become unusable.
Who would actually even believe that in the first place? Maybe it's an American thing, but with our French spending power, I know of absolutely no one in my family or friend group who has a set schedule for upgrading their devices. It's either "use until it breaks, then replace" or "use until I absolutely need a replacement because it's too slow", the latter of which usually being after 3 years or so.
As for downsizing, once again everyone I know isn't really "downsizing", but buying refurbished devices a few generations old, as the price for brand new devices, even refurbished ones, has gotten pretty crazy.
for what are called computers:
1 desktop - a 2021 box that I built (this replaced a 2013 box)
1 laptop, 1 phone (a pixel 7), 1 camera (Leica Q2) (well and a Praktica MTL5 made in East Germany)
And one kindle. And an iPad, for work testing.
I'm a web developer. I love technology. I think what you have should be as good as you can make it for yourself. But it has to feel and serve very human purposes to be worthwhile. I don't think many gadgets do that. Many devices, especially modern ones, take the liberty of interrupting you often. I do not wish to be interrupted.
Don't you have to interrupt yourself to remember to water the garden?
If I hadn't plugged it in my wife would have been stranded tomorrow after she got where she was going.
Glad she didn't get stranded.
I've had a few issues with the Samsung we bought (not nearly as many as the other Samsung appliances we bought at the same time. So I wouldn't necessarily suggest that brand specifically and I don't remember the brand names I used in the UK before returning to the US.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_cooking