Haven't we basically already built them? They're just slow and not supported by software vendors so nobody wants to use them. Other than replacing capacitors and realtime clock batteries on every 20 years or so, dusting and replacing fans when bearings go bad (assuming it's not a passively-cooled design), most computers should basically last beyond a human lifetime (I've read that those less than ~20nm will go bad over time as traces lose atoms and eventually fail, but older processes should be fine).
Yes, we have. I have a few computers that old or older, and they run just fine. Every so often a dried-up capacitor has to be replaced, but that's about it.
However the older solders have a much higher percentage of lead in their composition which makes whiskering less likely. I have two Zenith Z-120s made in about 1980 and thus coming up on 50 years old which don’t have any issues.
I know of a running TRS80 and a BBC Model-B, but the retro-heads who
own them jst pwer them up now and then, not in constant use so as not
to heat-stress them. TBH they smell a bit. My theory is the
transformer windings are on the way out.
Most modern MOS circuits are no longer designed to last 50 years, unlike most integrated circuits and discrete semiconductor devices of 50 years ago. There is no chance for any up-to-date CPU or memory module to work for 50 years.
Nevertheless, it is quite easy to be able to use a modern computer for 50 years, if you just get 10 computers that do not contain components that age even when they are not used, e.g. batteries or electrolytic capacitors, and you use one computer until it breaks, keeping the others in storage until you must replace the current work computer.
Such a set of modern computers would be faster, cheaper and smaller than a single computer in the style of PDP-11 or VAX, made by using low-density components that can work for 50 years.
> Lots of writers keep using [typewriters], they became trendy in the 2010s and, to escape surveillance, some secret services started to use them back. It’s a very niche but existing market.
At first blush, this sentiment appears to also be true of old computers. There is growing "trendy" interest in them, and they're otherwise still fit for purpose for some tasks, like gaming, writing, driving long-unsupported hardware or software. The community around it has been rather industrious in servicing old machines, particularly Macs.
But they cannot satisfy all the requirements we have of a modern computer, and neither can a typewriter. However, the length of time a computer has before being truly obsolete seems much longer now than it used to be. You could easily get a decade or more if you can control the itch for new and shiny and have modest performance needs.
Might need to replace the battery, if the device has one. There's some luck involved with getting the longest support window possible from MS or Apple. Google and co are famously a lot worse on this front, if we're talking phones.
I couldn't help thinking of the AlphaSmart[0] while reading this. The writer's primary need seems to be an offline, lasts-forever writing device, so no version of the AlphaSmart meets all the criteria. But it is (or was) an offline-only device that was limited to writing and a few educational applications. The keyboard was excellent, text could be transferred between device and computer via cable, and the AA-batteries would last for literally hundreds of hours.
E-ink maybe isn't it, anyway. A few years ago I built an e-ink clock/gimmick that refreshed every few seconds with some different text on a given part of the screen, and within 1.5 years the sides unto about 2cm in - but not the parts being constantly refreshed! - had more stuck/weak pixels than not. A halo of rot. 50 years is a long time, much longer than 1.5.
I think we have reached a point in tech where there isn't a huge benefit about changing computer every 3 years like in the past.
You can have a computer with 10 years that can run modern OSs and software without being incompatible or too slow, a thing totally impossible 20 years ago.
If you do AI related developement or play videogames, you would require at least a new GPU, but outside that, I think the only couple things (pretty major IMO) making those computers less useful are more complex video formats not available to decode by hardware, and the vast amount of code some web apps use (try using YouTube or Twitter in an old laptop)
Security issues are the driver now. I had to shut down some machines at work last month because their CPUs have a microcode flaw that the vendor is not releasing a fix for.
That heavily depends on your usage. Most microcode security issues are local-only, so if your use case doesn't require the local execution of arbitrary executable code, all you lost is one extra security layer, which would become relevant only if other security layers (the ones which prevent arbitrary local code execution in the first place) fail.
It is my understanding that due to the structure of modern web browsers it is by design that they execute arbitrary code from various sources, be it plugins or updates or whatever, and due to the microcode issue any flaw in any of those was equivalent to a full system compromise at the firmware level and could persist across a wipe/reimage of the machine. My management was not comfortable accepting that risk.
i like to think about thought experiments like this: what if electronics/large consumer goods were all bar-coded and, when they are disposed of, scanned in, and the original manufacturer is charged some fee for the recycling/disposal of them. Make "repairing with minimal waste" the recurring revenue that product companies shoot for, rather than the new new thing.
Whether it happens in tens, hundreds, thousands, or more years, every physical product has a finite lifespan.
So it might be simpler to charge a fee when a product is initially manufactured that is based on the current cost of disposing that product. Perhaps this could even replace things like consumer sales tax or VAT.
That would incentivize manufacturers to create products with minimal disposal costs, and it would incentivize consumers to hang on to products longer or buy used.
It's a fixed fee based on the category of the device though, so not really an incentive for companies to change their ways, other than moving the entire business line from making iPhones to light bulbs.
I guess the point of charging the company at the time of disposal would be that they'd be earning interest on that money in the meantime. So they'd be incented to make it last longer.
It wouldn't work for several reasons though, not least because the company could cease to exist before the product failed.
Canada charges a recycling fee when you purchase electronics. The claim is that it covers all costs of recycling at an audited/approved recycler.
When you are done with your electronics you can drop them off at any recycling center to be disposed.
It varies by province, but the cost is actually pretty minimal. I think the most expensive fee in my province is a large display at $7. The recycling fee for a laptop is less than a dollar.
It doesn't incentivize less consumption when you are paying the tax up front, but it does incentivize making sure that the electronics actually make it to the correct waste stream instead of the landfill.
Recycling, as is, means reducing something to its component materials. We need to incentivize manufacturers such that it means reducing something to its component parts. Testable parts, with standard interfaces.
Perhaps we should have that bar code link to a prepaid account which handles shipping it back to the manufacturer. Things will be more repairable if making the most of a broken one was the manufacturer's problem.
Only for consumer-grade stuff, which is basically disposable garbage that's obsolete the day you purchase it, which is about what you get for $350 at Walmart. For any actually decent laptop designed for enterprises/businesses, this is not true, they still have steel hinge pins and plastic-over-metal hinge bodies. Doesn't really matter if you buy Dell, Lenovo, Apple, business-quality laptops don't have these issues, but they do start at around $1000/unit.
The problem with any discussion around electronics longevity is that it's a bimodal market. You have the stuff that generates the bulk of revenue, which is generally meant to be purchased as a "fleet" by businesses or MSPs, and you have the stuff that generates the bulk of the actual devices, but at most lower BOM cost (meaning lower quality) which is targeted at "consumers". Anybody who is even a little bit technical has already noticed this simply due to the difference in experience between the laptop they're issued at work vs what they may have once had at home, and likely has opted to bite the bullet and pay for quality.
Once you are on the higher end of the bimodal distribution, longevity is a significantly different challenge. I have an X230 laptop I bought new in 2012 that is still in use weekly and functions completely fine. My much newer M3 Macbook Pro is significantly more powerful, but is completely unnecessary for what that laptop is for. That's 12 years of usage without any sign of slowing down, and since that X230 is my car laptop I use in my race car for tuning and data monitoring, I can guarantee it's had a lot worse than "3-4 drops" over the last 12 years, including surviving a crash in my old race car.
Laptops and also smartphones dont last in my experience.. Too much miniaturisation imo. I dont buy them 2nd hand, I only buy new ones as they only have a limited life. Desktops on the other hand, will last forever, I buy those 2nd hand and they are so cheap but they function perfectly.. Also if something does break they are modular and its trivial to replace the broken part.
It greatly depends on the laptop, even within the same manufacturer. I have lots of old Apple gear that still works but is just too old to get security updates:
- 2012 13" MBP, works great with an SSD upgrade, and the hinge is still solid, which was not the case with my 2009 15" MBP where the screen literally ripped off.
- 2013 15" retina MBP. Great laptop, still plenty fast to use today, but runs a little hot and the battery life was never amazing.
- 2015 12" retina Macbook. Survived two glasses of water spilled on it, but the speakers and bluetooth died. It was miserably slow to use anyway.
My daily driver is now a 15" M3 Macbook, which has been amazing in nearly every way. Only minor complaints is that the ram maxes out at 24GB and I wish I had 1 more USB port on the other side.
The web sure is convenient, but for the actual work I do, I could in fact work on a 30 to 35 year old computer. I mostly code, and occasionally I process words or spread sheets. All things I could do on a DOS machine, or even something like an Apple //e. I'd certainly be fine on an Amiga. I'd be on cloud nine with a NeXTCube. I don't know that I'm willing to go older than early 80s, though. I need my computer to at least handle both uppercase and lowercase.
So arguably we've already built computers that last 40 years. Another decade doesn't seem crazy.
This is also why when we eventually do have a breakthrough in AI or quantum computing, it wont change anything. We'll just use AI to serve ads on Quantum Facebook, or something equally useless. So many web frameworks have come out in the past 10 years and more then ever websites are spammy, bloated, and less intuitive than they were 10 years ago.
I love wikipedia because it's more performant than facebook or youtube, it doesn't track me, it doesn't have anything moving or sliding around the page to increase "engagement" ,, it just gives me info without making me fight for it. I wish every website was wikipedia. I don't need react or angular, I don't 60fps buttons with smooth gradients. I just want my info
Yeah, it's mostly about "last 50 years doing what?".
Someone else mentioned the Voyager space probes. I think there are cars from the 70s and 80s with some embedded computers and some of these are still on the road too. The computer electronics can be made robust if desired. The hard part is if you mean "general purpose" and you want to include purposes of the future that we haven't explored yet.
I've recently powered up some "portable" Toshiba computers from around 1990. Aside from the CMOS clock batteries being dead and resetting to the wrong time, they booted DOS and I was able to use their existing programs to inspect the existing data files, delete things, and run a disc scrubbing utility. The vacuum fluorescent display worked like new, the hard drive still worked, etc.
These would still work for word processing etc. But with their RAM, storage, and IO limitations, they wouldn't work for modern use cases with modern sized media payloads.
I recall my 386-class machine that supported my computer science course work in university. It was able to barely decode a short 320x240 ~10 fps MPEG video demo from a research group. Its entire disk space was only about 80 MB, whereas today I may have bigger files than that on my phone.
You could build some kind of Computer of Theseus that has sensible buses and modular pieces to allow it to be expanded over time to support new use cases. I think they are called "mainframes". But, economics aren't going to make this cheap and competitive enough for consumer use cases.
This is what desktop PCs were for us in recent decades. It's not going to make it 50 years, but we got a lot of mileage out of the various buses and power connectors to allow incremental upgrades of parts. Eventually, you wipe the slate to get rid of some of the most legacy parts, buses, and form factors. Nobody's PC power supply from 1990 was going to support a modern GPU, not to mention the changing power needs of CPUs and mainboards.
I kind of feel like we’re rapidly approaching an end of history point on computing. The joke in the late 90s/early 00s was that your computer became obsolete on the way home from the store. My computing upgrade cycles have been getting longer and longer. Same with phones. I last upgraded my iPhone in 2022 not because I needed to (it was three years old), but because I wanted some of the newer features. What used to be a 2-year cycle like clockwork has stretched to 3 or 4 years. My laptop cycle has gone from 3 years to 5 years and that last only because the display stopped working (it’s now running headless in my music studio). The limiting factor has become less one of functionality and one of durability, and while there’s work to be done there, right now the economic factors don’t make sense. As revenue shifts to services from hardware though, I expect to see a greater emphasis on long-lasting computers until the expectation is that a computer, phone or tablet is expected to have a 10–15 year lifespan.
I have a 2014 macbook that I still use pretty regularly.
The only longevity issue is the battery, which is a limited lifetime part no matter what, and no support for the newest Xcode, which is unfortunate, but not a real limitation on what I use it for. It's something that I could probably work around by using opencore.
Its kind of crazy TBH. A 2004 macbook (powerbook?) would have been genuinely outdated in 2014, but in 2024, my 10 year old laptop is... fine?
Same thing with my phones. I went from an iphone 4, to a 5, to a 6 to an 11. And there I have stayed. There are a few features that would be nice to have, but not enough for me to fork over the cash. And my old one still does everything fine.
The real limitations are the incompatibilities with new APIs. I fixed up an old macbook air I found at a recycling center for a friend's kid (2011?) and getting it setup took some time since the imaged version of Safari incompatible with modern HTTPS. Once I cleared that hump, though, it was a great machine for youtube, browsing, etc...
Except for the lack of security updates and it chokes when playing 1080p youtube videos and such.
Also, I doubt you've used any Apple Silicon systems. I had a MBP of similar vintage with a discreet GPU, with an upgraded SSD much faster than stock, and the M1 that replaced it was "holy shit" levels faster; now they're on the third gen with the fourth about to make it into portables and workstations.
It works fine pushing 1440 or 4k, last I checked. I don't have it hooked up to a 4k monitor anymore, but I have no reason to believe that it would have stopped doing it. It does have a discreet GPU, and quite a bit of ram. Its not like 1080p content was pushing the limits of what a macbook could accomplish in 2014, so why would it choke now?
The new apple silicon is undeniably faster and more efficient, but the point is that there is, for most intents and purposes, nothing that the old machine can't run that a new one can (unpatched MacOS excepted, but OpenCore or Linux solves for that).
Again, I'm not saying that things haven't improved, just saying that a 10 year old computer is still a good machine, in a way that has never been true in the past of personal computing.
Compare a consumer computer from 1984, 1994, 2004, 2014 and 2024. The delta between each step is pretty massive up until the last 10 years.
Yeah, YT is baaad. Got a linux laptop (more expensive than a MB at the time, for reference) a few years back, with a i7 quad/octo? core. Couldn't decode youtube at 1080p without max rpm on all fans >_<
OSX Monterey continued to receive security updates until the release of Sequoia last month, which means a 10 year old mac mini would have continued to receive patches.
The speed bump is less noticeable to me thanks to software bloat than the battery efficiency. I can often go a day and a half on battery power and it’s a bit disconcerting how fast it charges.
> Same thing with my phones. I went from an iphone 4, to a 5, to a 6 to an 11. And there I have stayed. There are a few features that would be nice to have, but not enough for me to fork over the cash. And my old one still does everything fine.
My iPhone 7 (Plus? whatever the called the big one) still seems a totally serviceable phone from my limited use, although substantially slower than my 12.
It's not been supported for some years now, but I still boot it occasionally and it's far from useless and probably more performant than a low/mid tier Android phone from 3-4 years ago.
Yeah, my desktop computer is also from 2014. I changed nothing but the graphics card in 2022 and I can play games with pretty good performance, most of the time in 4K.
Computers continue to work "forever" if you only use its own closed system, like writing Word documents on the harddrive. It's the complexity of the internet that makes hardware obsolete today. The internet consists of too many parts working together to make it profitable to focus on longevity and stability, the focus on the internet is instead flexibility and broad usage. And it's mostly the security standards that force us to buy new hardware in the end. From SSL to TLS, to TLS 1.2 & 1.3, almost all sites upgraded to the new standards and made old web browsers not work to browse the internet with anymore. And if the newest web browser your computer supports is one before 2014 (before TLS 1.2), your computer is dead, because it can't visit the internet. So it's mostly the software layer of the internet that makes us not get "forever computers", and therefore "we" software people maybe are the ones with the power to make a change here?
It's the misalignment of software developers' interests with those of end users that makes old systems unusable. Do we really need web pages that stream 4 video ads on loading and have another pop-up over top of the content the user requested asking us to subscribe? I miss the simplicity of the old days.
Yes when it comes to updates and new features and other stuff where the user does things for the developer and not the opposite (like when I have to login to Microsoft to play Minecraft, even though everything I need is on my local drive), that’s true. Developers think users want shiny buttons and the newest design, but the users probably rather want functional easy to use sites without forcing updates.
But when it comes to security standards users and devlopers seem to agree, they both seem fine with leaving HTTP behind, even for sites without sensitive information whatsoever, and the users even seem to accept replacing their phone every 2-5 years. Or maybe they’re just used to it and don’t know things could be better?
I have several computers that are 40 years old. I think the reason the old 80s microcomputers last so long is they don't have any moving parts like disk drives that go bad (I've had really bad success with the external disk drives I've purchased). Unfortunately, I think the reason why computers and phones don't last a long time now is because the companies designing the phones, computers, and operating systems WANT them to quit working.
The reason computers slow down and stop working worth a damn has nothing to do with the hardware, it's the operating system's receiving "updates" that make them quit working. I have a TRS-80 Color Computer running the Microsoft BASIC "operating system" that Bill Gates wrote himself and it still works great 40 years later.
And then the big issue with phones are the batteries. The phone manufacturers know that the batteries go bad, so they glue them into the phones so you can't replace them. Obviously if you wanted the phones to last a long time, you'd make it to where you can put a new battery in the damn thing. They also know that the screens break, so they'd make those easy to replace yourself as well if they cared.
That is nice you can take phones to those little repair places and they seem to do a nice job replacing screens and batteries, but they could probably design a phone where you can do it yourself.
One of the issues with user replaceable batteries is waterproofing (IP rating).
My first smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy S1. It had an easilly swappable battery which was great because time between recharges was much shorter in those days so I had 2, one in the phone and one in the charger.
But once I got the phone wet just using it outside in the rain. After that it refused to charge for several days until it dried out.
More recently I've dropped my phone in water and it was perfecty fine with no drying time at all...
Sounds like a great and interesting engineering problem to work on.
The corporations still will not work on it though, for the exact reasons your parent commenter outlined.
I for one I am not convinced that we have to choose between swappable batteries and water-proof devices. I say we can have both -- but nobody in the business wants to figure it out, for obvious reasons.
We have to choose between swappable batteries, waterproofness, and compactness. most people are more concerned with waterproofness and compactness, and are perfectly happy to have a phone where the battery is not field serviceable.
Resealable waterproof cases that don't require adhesives are less reliable and bulkier. Nobody really wants a waterproof phone, with a replaceable battery, that has an o-ring seal that can be defeated by a cat hair.
The phones do exist, but you have to go looking for them.
I wouldn't mind a Galaxy Xcover at all by the way, but here's one more war the corporations push people away from these devices: lack of software updates.
Waterproof phone* (excluding contacts for the battery and 3.5mm audio ports, which can be submerged without long term damage), and
Waterproofed battery* (safe to submerge, refuses to discharge unsafely).
I, personally, would also sacrifice compactness for robustness. I don't rock climb, but make a phone that can survive a tumble of multiple 10 meter drops and rolls and twists down a rock face. It must still be able to call EMS. That spec sounds bullet-proof enough to survive my relative's young kids worst antics.
The bottom line is you're not putting money where your mouth is. Real rugged devices can't have top notch performance because waterproofing and expanding wider operating temperature require insulation and therefore performance reduction but that's not important.
The very core of the problem is you - not personally but the vast majority would-be rugged phone buyers - just don't buy rugged phones, nor take it outdoors. People who'd demand rugged phones would just buy the latest and greatest iPhone, maybe with a case with reward points, and that covers almost every single use cases.
If there had been demand at all, the level of performance possible in a ruggedized phone will be the benchmark, and current high end will be considered over the top models with compromised ruggedness, but the reality isn't working that way at all.
And note that it comes down to what threat level it actually faces. I take my perfectly ordinary smartphone into the wilderness. It's never going to tumble down a rock face both because you'll never find me on one but because I have it lanyarded to me. It's fallen a few times, but the lanyard has kept it from hitting the ground.
You have to balance the cost of it being rugged vs the expected chance of the ruggedness keeping it from being damaged. And for most people the tradeoff isn't worth it.
There's another one on Verizon USA right now[1]. Same story: heavy, bulky, anyone who asks for it don't commit to it.
By the way, I was really surprised to learn that US Army special operations guys just procure whatever latest models of Galaxy S2x in a marginally special plastic case that clips onto a flip-down chest mount. If that's all they need for parachute jumping and covert operations as far as physical reliability is concerned, surely I am not going to need any more hardening for my daily uses.
On the other hand, I sometimes see these seriously rugged phones seriously beaten up appearing in used markets with warehouse or heavy industrial factory style damages. Clearly that's where IP56 protection is actually required and proven.
The corporate excuse before was “no one would buy a brick”, now the excuse is “no one would buy a non-waterproof phone”. We have the technology to make a user-replaceable phone with modern parts, just look at the Fairphone.
I suspect the excuse is more like "it'll be nice if we had to warranty replace fewer water damaged phones" than it being a major selling point. Some places rain a lot, and not everyone sort trousers and purses by rain resistance.
You don't have to look at obscure stuff like that either; just look at the highly popular Samsung Galaxy S5. It was waterproof, had a headphone jack, and an easily replaced battery. And this came out 10 years ago, in 2014.
How in the world did "waterproof" become a must-have feature for phones? What the hell are y'all doing with your phones? I've never once dropped my phone in the ocean or a pool, or the toilet, or anything like that. The thing is very expensive, and I treat it carefully and delicately. Who are these people constantly submerging their phones to the point where manufacturers all decided to pay the engineering costs and tradeoffs needed to make their phones waterproof!?
You've misidentified the trade-off - it's not a choice between swappable batteries or waterproof devices - obviously either swappable or non-swappable devices can be designed to be waterproof.
The trade-off is usually size and complexity. You need more space for the seals (gaskets, O-rings etc.), and then latching mechanisms to hold covers on while applying the correct amount of pressure (and uniform pressure) on the gaskets.
That's not an especially hard an engineering problem, it just necessarily takes up more space so you end up with a bulkier device, which people tend not to like as much unless they really value being able to swap the battery.
It becomes an engineering problem when you are trying to make it small and light.
I recently replaced the battery in my chest strap heart rate monitor. And I found I was lucky--turns out the seal had slipped and it hadn't been waterproof since the last battery change.
And I think the sealing mechanism probably increases the device volume by 50%. As a chest strap that's not a big deal.
> I am not convinced that we have to choose between swappable batteries and water-proof devices. I say we can have both
Of course we can have both. They used to exist and were reasonably common. The reason for nonswappable batteries now has exactly nothing to do with waterproofing and everything to do with cost-cutting.
1) Power. It's no great technical challenge to build electronics that would last a lifetime--but using anything resembling normal current semiconductors means that to get that life your system must run cool. Put your finger on the hottest point in the system type cool. But note that this is the enemy of computing power. Your lifetime computer is going to be a total wimp. (Yes, I realize that many of the old devices don't actually run that cool--but note that neither do they run 24/7.)
Remember the claims that the light bulb makers were conspiring to sell bulbs that would wear out when they could make ones that lasted longer? Especially since there are some pretty long-lived examples out there. Yes, they could--but you make an incandescent light last longer by running it cooler. But that means more of the energy in the infrared rather than the visible spectrum. Long life bulbs produce less light for a given amount of power.
2) Weight. Yes, we had replaceable batteries--but that meant extra material required to make it easy to change the battery. Batteries always have housings. While lithium secondary batteries without housings exist they must be treated with a certain amount of respect and are incapable of self-defense against sloppy electronics. Your phone with an easily replaced battery is inherently bulkier and heavier than one without. Likewise, building something so it can be taken apart makes it bigger and heavier than the glued-together equivalent.
3) Waterproofing. I am not aware of any way of making an efficient waterproof, easily replaceable battery. And waterproof seals that you can open are troublesome, especially if you want to make them small and light.
4) Efficiency. My understanding is that in most cases the optimal design devotes enough to reliability/lifespan that half of the specimens will wear out before something bad happens to them.
The market wants light, powerful, as close to waterproof as possible phones. That means sealed units that are typically uneconomic to repair.
> meant extra material required to make it easy to change the battery.
it doesn't need to be easy, nor user-replacible. It just needs to be _replacible_ by a professional, with readily available equipment that you'd expect a repair shop to have. Make the parts available for purchase, or have the specs be open for third-party production.
But companies, such as apple, deliberately make their parts incompatible, even if salvaged from a different phone. It's to thwart repairs specifically, and they cite theft prevention as the reason (which i claim is bs - they could allow repairs by having the owner authorize secondary sale of old phones as parts, which still prevents thefts).
Perhaps if there was a delayed authentication system. As it stands, their system isn't good enough because it lets the mugger demand you sign off so the phone is unlocked.
Desktop PC hardware is sufficiently modular and easy to upgrade. It would be nice if upgrades were add-on rather than throwing away the replaced module(s) but HW changes so fast it's almost never worth it. Software could be improved to make things longer lasting such as make clean install trivial with good separation of user vs system data. I recently added an SSD and made my old HDD the G: drive but the new instance of Windows on the SSD did not consider the new SSD userid with the same name as the old HDD userid to be the same user and so accessing the old files became a file sharing nightmare. Also the old HDD drive started taking forever for reboot file system checks and I had to just disconnect it. So now I am wading through all my old backups trying to figure out what is what.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadYes, we have. I have a few computers that old or older, and they run just fine. Every so often a dried-up capacitor has to be replaced, but that's about it.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/mission-overview/
They do use laptops, but not for much longer than a year. The basics must endure longer.
Except for metal whiskering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)
I was quite impressed to learn about the 66 year-old computer that is still in use with the Japanese transit system.
Nevertheless, it is quite easy to be able to use a modern computer for 50 years, if you just get 10 computers that do not contain components that age even when they are not used, e.g. batteries or electrolytic capacitors, and you use one computer until it breaks, keeping the others in storage until you must replace the current work computer.
Such a set of modern computers would be faster, cheaper and smaller than a single computer in the style of PDP-11 or VAX, made by using low-density components that can work for 50 years.
At first blush, this sentiment appears to also be true of old computers. There is growing "trendy" interest in them, and they're otherwise still fit for purpose for some tasks, like gaming, writing, driving long-unsupported hardware or software. The community around it has been rather industrious in servicing old machines, particularly Macs.
But they cannot satisfy all the requirements we have of a modern computer, and neither can a typewriter. However, the length of time a computer has before being truly obsolete seems much longer now than it used to be. You could easily get a decade or more if you can control the itch for new and shiny and have modest performance needs.
Might need to replace the battery, if the device has one. There's some luck involved with getting the longest support window possible from MS or Apple. Google and co are famously a lot worse on this front, if we're talking phones.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart
You can have a computer with 10 years that can run modern OSs and software without being incompatible or too slow, a thing totally impossible 20 years ago.
If you do AI related developement or play videogames, you would require at least a new GPU, but outside that, I think the only couple things (pretty major IMO) making those computers less useful are more complex video formats not available to decode by hardware, and the vast amount of code some web apps use (try using YouTube or Twitter in an old laptop)
So it might be simpler to charge a fee when a product is initially manufactured that is based on the current cost of disposing that product. Perhaps this could even replace things like consumer sales tax or VAT.
That would incentivize manufacturers to create products with minimal disposal costs, and it would incentivize consumers to hang on to products longer or buy used.
It's a fixed fee based on the category of the device though, so not really an incentive for companies to change their ways, other than moving the entire business line from making iPhones to light bulbs.
It wouldn't work for several reasons though, not least because the company could cease to exist before the product failed.
When you are done with your electronics you can drop them off at any recycling center to be disposed.
It varies by province, but the cost is actually pretty minimal. I think the most expensive fee in my province is a large display at $7. The recycling fee for a laptop is less than a dollar.
It doesn't incentivize less consumption when you are paying the tax up front, but it does incentivize making sure that the electronics actually make it to the correct waste stream instead of the landfill.
Perhaps we should have that bar code link to a prepaid account which handles shipping it back to the manufacturer. Things will be more repairable if making the most of a broken one was the manufacturer's problem.
If average laptop lifetime is about 5 years (for all reasons), then about 0.1% will make it to 50 years and remain operational.
Apple led the way with the unibody aluminum case and now even midrange laptops are pretty sturdy.
The problem with any discussion around electronics longevity is that it's a bimodal market. You have the stuff that generates the bulk of revenue, which is generally meant to be purchased as a "fleet" by businesses or MSPs, and you have the stuff that generates the bulk of the actual devices, but at most lower BOM cost (meaning lower quality) which is targeted at "consumers". Anybody who is even a little bit technical has already noticed this simply due to the difference in experience between the laptop they're issued at work vs what they may have once had at home, and likely has opted to bite the bullet and pay for quality.
Once you are on the higher end of the bimodal distribution, longevity is a significantly different challenge. I have an X230 laptop I bought new in 2012 that is still in use weekly and functions completely fine. My much newer M3 Macbook Pro is significantly more powerful, but is completely unnecessary for what that laptop is for. That's 12 years of usage without any sign of slowing down, and since that X230 is my car laptop I use in my race car for tuning and data monitoring, I can guarantee it's had a lot worse than "3-4 drops" over the last 12 years, including surviving a crash in my old race car.
- 2012 13" MBP, works great with an SSD upgrade, and the hinge is still solid, which was not the case with my 2009 15" MBP where the screen literally ripped off.
- 2013 15" retina MBP. Great laptop, still plenty fast to use today, but runs a little hot and the battery life was never amazing.
- 2015 12" retina Macbook. Survived two glasses of water spilled on it, but the speakers and bluetooth died. It was miserably slow to use anyway.
My daily driver is now a 15" M3 Macbook, which has been amazing in nearly every way. Only minor complaints is that the ram maxes out at 24GB and I wish I had 1 more USB port on the other side.
So arguably we've already built computers that last 40 years. Another decade doesn't seem crazy.
I love wikipedia because it's more performant than facebook or youtube, it doesn't track me, it doesn't have anything moving or sliding around the page to increase "engagement" ,, it just gives me info without making me fight for it. I wish every website was wikipedia. I don't need react or angular, I don't 60fps buttons with smooth gradients. I just want my info
Someone else mentioned the Voyager space probes. I think there are cars from the 70s and 80s with some embedded computers and some of these are still on the road too. The computer electronics can be made robust if desired. The hard part is if you mean "general purpose" and you want to include purposes of the future that we haven't explored yet.
I've recently powered up some "portable" Toshiba computers from around 1990. Aside from the CMOS clock batteries being dead and resetting to the wrong time, they booted DOS and I was able to use their existing programs to inspect the existing data files, delete things, and run a disc scrubbing utility. The vacuum fluorescent display worked like new, the hard drive still worked, etc.
These would still work for word processing etc. But with their RAM, storage, and IO limitations, they wouldn't work for modern use cases with modern sized media payloads.
I recall my 386-class machine that supported my computer science course work in university. It was able to barely decode a short 320x240 ~10 fps MPEG video demo from a research group. Its entire disk space was only about 80 MB, whereas today I may have bigger files than that on my phone.
You could build some kind of Computer of Theseus that has sensible buses and modular pieces to allow it to be expanded over time to support new use cases. I think they are called "mainframes". But, economics aren't going to make this cheap and competitive enough for consumer use cases.
This is what desktop PCs were for us in recent decades. It's not going to make it 50 years, but we got a lot of mileage out of the various buses and power connectors to allow incremental upgrades of parts. Eventually, you wipe the slate to get rid of some of the most legacy parts, buses, and form factors. Nobody's PC power supply from 1990 was going to support a modern GPU, not to mention the changing power needs of CPUs and mainboards.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_gun_fire-control_system...
The only longevity issue is the battery, which is a limited lifetime part no matter what, and no support for the newest Xcode, which is unfortunate, but not a real limitation on what I use it for. It's something that I could probably work around by using opencore.
Its kind of crazy TBH. A 2004 macbook (powerbook?) would have been genuinely outdated in 2014, but in 2024, my 10 year old laptop is... fine?
Same thing with my phones. I went from an iphone 4, to a 5, to a 6 to an 11. And there I have stayed. There are a few features that would be nice to have, but not enough for me to fork over the cash. And my old one still does everything fine.
The real limitations are the incompatibilities with new APIs. I fixed up an old macbook air I found at a recycling center for a friend's kid (2011?) and getting it setup took some time since the imaged version of Safari incompatible with modern HTTPS. Once I cleared that hump, though, it was a great machine for youtube, browsing, etc...
Except for the lack of security updates and it chokes when playing 1080p youtube videos and such.
Also, I doubt you've used any Apple Silicon systems. I had a MBP of similar vintage with a discreet GPU, with an upgraded SSD much faster than stock, and the M1 that replaced it was "holy shit" levels faster; now they're on the third gen with the fourth about to make it into portables and workstations.
The new apple silicon is undeniably faster and more efficient, but the point is that there is, for most intents and purposes, nothing that the old machine can't run that a new one can (unpatched MacOS excepted, but OpenCore or Linux solves for that).
Again, I'm not saying that things haven't improved, just saying that a 10 year old computer is still a good machine, in a way that has never been true in the past of personal computing.
Compare a consumer computer from 1984, 1994, 2004, 2014 and 2024. The delta between each step is pretty massive up until the last 10 years.
In theory any computer with a PCI slot can play 1080p with no frame drops.
Devices compatible with Monterey (mostly 2015 models, oldest is 2013 mac pro trashcan) https://support.apple.com/en-us/103260
My iPhone 7 (Plus? whatever the called the big one) still seems a totally serviceable phone from my limited use, although substantially slower than my 12.
It's not been supported for some years now, but I still boot it occasionally and it's far from useless and probably more performant than a low/mid tier Android phone from 3-4 years ago.
But when it comes to security standards users and devlopers seem to agree, they both seem fine with leaving HTTP behind, even for sites without sensitive information whatsoever, and the users even seem to accept replacing their phone every 2-5 years. Or maybe they’re just used to it and don’t know things could be better?
The reason computers slow down and stop working worth a damn has nothing to do with the hardware, it's the operating system's receiving "updates" that make them quit working. I have a TRS-80 Color Computer running the Microsoft BASIC "operating system" that Bill Gates wrote himself and it still works great 40 years later.
And then the big issue with phones are the batteries. The phone manufacturers know that the batteries go bad, so they glue them into the phones so you can't replace them. Obviously if you wanted the phones to last a long time, you'd make it to where you can put a new battery in the damn thing. They also know that the screens break, so they'd make those easy to replace yourself as well if they cared.
That is nice you can take phones to those little repair places and they seem to do a nice job replacing screens and batteries, but they could probably design a phone where you can do it yourself.
My first smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy S1. It had an easilly swappable battery which was great because time between recharges was much shorter in those days so I had 2, one in the phone and one in the charger.
But once I got the phone wet just using it outside in the rain. After that it refused to charge for several days until it dried out.
More recently I've dropped my phone in water and it was perfecty fine with no drying time at all...
The corporations still will not work on it though, for the exact reasons your parent commenter outlined.
I for one I am not convinced that we have to choose between swappable batteries and water-proof devices. I say we can have both -- but nobody in the business wants to figure it out, for obvious reasons.
We have to choose between swappable batteries, waterproofness, and compactness. most people are more concerned with waterproofness and compactness, and are perfectly happy to have a phone where the battery is not field serviceable.
Resealable waterproof cases that don't require adhesives are less reliable and bulkier. Nobody really wants a waterproof phone, with a replaceable battery, that has an o-ring seal that can be defeated by a cat hair.
The phones do exist, but you have to go looking for them.
:(
Waterproof phone* (excluding contacts for the battery and 3.5mm audio ports, which can be submerged without long term damage), and
Waterproofed battery* (safe to submerge, refuses to discharge unsafely).
I, personally, would also sacrifice compactness for robustness. I don't rock climb, but make a phone that can survive a tumble of multiple 10 meter drops and rolls and twists down a rock face. It must still be able to call EMS. That spec sounds bullet-proof enough to survive my relative's young kids worst antics.
I already linked to one that comes pretty close to what you want.
That's the problem with these "niche" phones. Another example is Fairphone.
I don't necessarily have a problem with spending more, my problem is the fact that they compromise on things they could not compromise.
See Framework, they did it right.
Sadly seems to be only available through Verizon though.
The very core of the problem is you - not personally but the vast majority would-be rugged phone buyers - just don't buy rugged phones, nor take it outdoors. People who'd demand rugged phones would just buy the latest and greatest iPhone, maybe with a case with reward points, and that covers almost every single use cases.
If there had been demand at all, the level of performance possible in a ruggedized phone will be the benchmark, and current high end will be considered over the top models with compromised ruggedness, but the reality isn't working that way at all.
You have to balance the cost of it being rugged vs the expected chance of the ruggedness keeping it from being damaged. And for most people the tradeoff isn't worth it.
By the way, I was really surprised to learn that US Army special operations guys just procure whatever latest models of Galaxy S2x in a marginally special plastic case that clips onto a flip-down chest mount. If that's all they need for parachute jumping and covert operations as far as physical reliability is concerned, surely I am not going to need any more hardening for my daily uses.
On the other hand, I sometimes see these seriously rugged phones seriously beaten up appearing in used markets with warehouse or heavy industrial factory style damages. Clearly that's where IP56 protection is actually required and proven.
1: https://www.techradar.com/pro/phone-communications/kyocera-d...
I've literally never heard of that happening, and even those that are advertised as water-resistant usually don't cover water damage under warranty.
The trade-off is usually size and complexity. You need more space for the seals (gaskets, O-rings etc.), and then latching mechanisms to hold covers on while applying the correct amount of pressure (and uniform pressure) on the gaskets.
That's not an especially hard an engineering problem, it just necessarily takes up more space so you end up with a bulkier device, which people tend not to like as much unless they really value being able to swap the battery.
I recently replaced the battery in my chest strap heart rate monitor. And I found I was lucky--turns out the seal had slipped and it hadn't been waterproof since the last battery change.
And I think the sealing mechanism probably increases the device volume by 50%. As a chest strap that's not a big deal.
Of course we can have both. They used to exist and were reasonably common. The reason for nonswappable batteries now has exactly nothing to do with waterproofing and everything to do with cost-cutting.
Remember the claims that the light bulb makers were conspiring to sell bulbs that would wear out when they could make ones that lasted longer? Especially since there are some pretty long-lived examples out there. Yes, they could--but you make an incandescent light last longer by running it cooler. But that means more of the energy in the infrared rather than the visible spectrum. Long life bulbs produce less light for a given amount of power.
2) Weight. Yes, we had replaceable batteries--but that meant extra material required to make it easy to change the battery. Batteries always have housings. While lithium secondary batteries without housings exist they must be treated with a certain amount of respect and are incapable of self-defense against sloppy electronics. Your phone with an easily replaced battery is inherently bulkier and heavier than one without. Likewise, building something so it can be taken apart makes it bigger and heavier than the glued-together equivalent.
3) Waterproofing. I am not aware of any way of making an efficient waterproof, easily replaceable battery. And waterproof seals that you can open are troublesome, especially if you want to make them small and light.
4) Efficiency. My understanding is that in most cases the optimal design devotes enough to reliability/lifespan that half of the specimens will wear out before something bad happens to them.
The market wants light, powerful, as close to waterproof as possible phones. That means sealed units that are typically uneconomic to repair.
it doesn't need to be easy, nor user-replacible. It just needs to be _replacible_ by a professional, with readily available equipment that you'd expect a repair shop to have. Make the parts available for purchase, or have the specs be open for third-party production.
But companies, such as apple, deliberately make their parts incompatible, even if salvaged from a different phone. It's to thwart repairs specifically, and they cite theft prevention as the reason (which i claim is bs - they could allow repairs by having the owner authorize secondary sale of old phones as parts, which still prevents thefts).