Hardware price surge drives student demand for refurbished laptops

it’s true in the usa and it’s true in india, exact same response to the exact same stressors. that’s interesting.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ludhiana/hardware-price-surge-drives-student-demand-for-refurbished-laptops/articleshow/134679943.cms

My sister-in-law’s somewhat new laptop had water damage. She was surprised that I wanted to spend about $100 at a local repair shop to get it fixed.

It’s only 1-2 years old and had 16gb ddr5, a 512ssd and a 10 core intel processor. I forget what one, but it’s pretty modern.

She bought a MacBook Air to replace it so luckily she didn’t ask for any money for it.

The repair price might seem extra low because I’m not in the US.

The right-to-repair movement hopefully means we can keep doing this in the future with our ever increasingly expendable digital devices. Until 2026, my wife and I have daily driven two x30-series ThinkPads from 2012, repairing and upgrading along the way. Outright purchasing new laptops could easily have been a thousand dollars every five years or so for each of us.