Hardware makers should offer trade in credit on old hardware!!!

[dual-class]

Hi all, It seems like hardware makers are slowly drifting too far from the shore...

I think maybe offering trade in credit for old tech would be a great way use their MASSIVE global influence to turn it all around.

selfish benefits are many:
remove old tech from the secondary market, force ppl to buy new
impress investors with a green model... 'good for the kids too'
recover precious metals
create an interval based incentivized upgrade path, making sales numbers more predictable
lure in new customers with a more complete future proof solution...
(eventually im sure they would love it if we all just paid a monthly fee and got a new machine every 2 years)
and on and on

selfless benefits are also many:
keep the stuff out of the landfill and the groundwater
push people faster towards newer more energy efficient tech
reward their loyal return customers
help newbies to not get swindled buying overpriced old tech
encourage people to think about the EOL of pretty much everything, and ask... hey why arent they willing to buy this 'xxxxx' back when im done with it like the hardware makers do.
encourage these companies to come together on an anti pollution platform that everyone can look up to
make the consumer feel good about themselves and their purchasing decisions
and on and on

have widely distributed subsidiary tech recycling companies handle the details.

negative impacts are there as well:
use your imagination here. (my tinkering hobby would suffer as old cheap parts might be harder to come by)


my impetus for this idea is:
tech has, within my lifetime, transformed pretty much all the markets. sadly this has enabled automated mass production of everything from bottled water to clothes to "you name it" to skyrocket.... and then it ends up as trash

basically im saying big tech may not be fully aware that they are holding the reins at this point and what they do and how they go about doing it pretty much the whole world is going to copycat.

so maybe instead of the glitsy window-shopping arms race, pandering to the OCD in all of us... they might try to take a leap of faith towards common sense?

thanks for reading, best wishes, happy hardware-ing!
please feel free to forward this 'to whom it may concern' as you see fit.

oh and if for some reason this is in the wrong section, or discussing the ways and means of the makers is not considered valid post material... just let me know, my bad!!

 

[LukeTbk]

remove old tech from the secondary market, force ppl to buy new
impress investors with a green model... 'good for the kids too'

That sound counter intuitive, at least at first especially considering that part may have some small watt-performance gain over generation but total watt for something like computer exploded over time, old computer had 70-130 watt power supply after all.

It would take a very long time before a working 1080ti go to a landfill and at first it seem the greenest option for it is a secondary market instead of forcing the production of a new card. Same goes for the conclusion:
(eventually im sure they would love it if we all just paid a monthly fee and got a new machine every 2 years)

That all in tension with the idea of being any green

 

[kirbyrj]

Doesn't this already happen when you resell your old parts on ebay or a forum or something similar? You're essentially getting money with which to purchase a new part. Why reinvent the wheel?

Furthermore, if the EVGA step up is any indication how this would go, it's a disaster. They have little to no incentive to trade in old parts for their new parts when they can sell everything they make as fast as they can make it. The step up queue movement shows how little they think of stepping up. Other manufacturers will follow suit.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

most of us already do this, without involving any manufacturers. I don’t think in the enthusiast market, much goes wasted or trashed. In fact sometimes people offer old hardware here free with shipping!

I am not thinking this would ever become a thing.

 

[slavie]

You seem to think that if this was forced on the manufacturers through laws, the manufacturers would eat the cost.
One big problem here - the costs would be pushed into new cards driving up their prices, so the consumer will end up paying, not the manufacturer. Just look at what happened with taxes, a very similar situation - it just gave the manufacturers a reason to jack up prices even beyond what they would need to cover tariffs.
Value of raw materials in old hardware is hardly worth the cost to recycle it. If the manufacturers had to pay for old hardware they'd be loosing money.

Being "green" is expensive. Everyone likes the idea of it, nobody wants to pay for it. I'm all for being green and personally do everything in my power to make "greener" decisions. But, I'm in a tiny minority of computer enthusiasts.

In order for "green" to be adopted on mass scales, everyone has to agree that they want it and are prepared to pay the price. However, people are not rational and that won't work. Instead, the govt will pass laws pretending to be green and everyone will pay the price anyway. Just like what happened with cars - cars are greener and safer, but twice as expensive or whatever (adjusted for inflation) compared to older cars. The manufacturers are just as profitable as before, the consumer foots the bill.

 

[LukeTbk]

Being "green" is expensive. Everyone likes the idea of it, nobody wants to pay for it. I'm all for being green and personally do everything in my power to make "greener" decisions. But, I'm in a tiny minority of computer enthusiasts.

Usually is it not the other way around ? Simply keeping your 2500K computer over a decade seem the greenest option by far for example here and a cheap one.

The greenest option seem to be by far just not having a new video card, greenest car is usually no car at all or a small used one and will also be the cheapest, green housing is small housing usually also the cheapest to make, greenest food tend to be the cheapest food.

There is a long list of exception, that usually start with if you have to build a big house for it to be a green one it will cost a lot, if you want green beef you want the type of production where they re-invigorate the grounds and plains that was counting of Buffalo hordes in the past that we eliminated and that will cost more than other type of production and so on.

In general the less entrant you need to produce something will tend to be correlated with greener and cheaper as well. And that was people usually do not like the idea of it, because privation is often the greenest option and the price is to not have it.

but twice as expensive or whatever (adjusted for inflation) compared to older cars.

That would depend of your market and it would not be fair to compare something like this:

Spoiler: 1975 Corolla

To a modern Corolla, but that 1975 Corolla would be $13,253 for the base model and $14,5-15K in today dollars for the deluxe model, it had a 55hp to 75hp engine, a incomparably better 2021 hyundai accent start at $16,000 and you have 120HP.

People buy much more often when they buy a new car, if you buy a corolla now versus the 90s, a Corolla of today if the Camry of the past same for a civic getting closer to an old Accord than an old Civic dimensions-power and everything wise, but for somewhat comparable product like the Mustang V8 coupe, the price over time do not move that much.

 

[Dan_D]

Naive. It's not cost effective. There is a simple Litmus test for this. If a company is willing to pay you for something that's recyclable, it's profitable. If you have to pay them or no one wants it, then it's not.

selfish benefits are many:
remove old tech from the secondary market, force ppl to buy new

With technology, this isn't a problem. At the rate it advances, the old technology becomes obsolete. People need to buy most things new. Sure, there is a secondary market but that has a built in expiration date.

impress investors with a green model... 'good for the kids too'

Investors do not give a shit about this. While it sounds like good PR, it isn't good for the bottom line. If it was, they would be doing this already.

recover precious metals

Again, it costs more to recycle this stuff than it does to simply build new parts.

create an interval based incentivized upgrade path, making sales numbers more predictable

They do not need this. It already exists. The rate of advancement alone guarantees it. The metrics and data are predictable enough as studies are done on their marketing and market position all the time.

lure in new customers with a more complete future proof solution...

Unfortunately, this isn't how it works. Future proofing doesn't really exist. Again, there is a built in obsolescence with technology that mitigates such a need. Some companies do try to market upgradability although its predominantly in the DIY PC market. It's a checkbox and a something of a hold over from the days when computers were bought for much higher prices and kept in service longer. It still matters to companies who depreciate hardware over a 3-5 year cycle.

(eventually im sure they would love it if we all just paid a monthly fee and got a new machine every 2 years)
and on and on

Unfortunately, this isn't as good an idea as you might think. For more expensive items like high end PC's and the like, the monthly fee would be staggering. There are also issues with non-payment without having collateral or the goods themselves. Being unable to repossess them, and so on. Also, this puts the disposal and storage of returned products on the manufacturers and their distributors. There is no upside to that. Only cost. Right now, they can charge whatever the market allows and disposal is up to the consumer. The way they ensure new sales is by making a better / faster product in a couple years time. With cheaper items like cell phones, costs can be hidden and many people do upgrade every two years. It's done where its profitable. Cell phones are about the only area where this is the case.

selfless benefits are also many:
keep the stuff out of the landfill and the groundwater

Electronics manufacturer's do not give two squirts of piss about landfills or groundwater.

push people faster towards newer more energy efficient tech

They already do this. It's called "planned obsolescence."

reward their loyal return customers

Again, loyalty programs only make sense in some industries. The DIY PC industry isn't one of them. Margins are too thin. Much thinner than is generally known. There isn't room in the margins for programs like that. Companies make money on volume and little else.

help newbies to not get swindled buying overpriced old tech

Again, they do not care. Yes, there is a used market but as I said when it comes to computers or most consumer electronics, this market effectively dies out after a generation or two due to the rate in which technology advances and how fast it generally breaks and stops working.

encourage people to think about the EOL of pretty much everything, and ask... hey why arent they willing to buy this 'xxxxx' back when im done with it like the hardware makers do.

The hardware makers don't do this because there is no money in it. They aren't willing to buy it back because the depreciation hits these items so hard that they have little to no value. They aren't repairable in a lot of cases, have little to no use given obsolescence and cost too much to recycle.

encourage these companies to come together on an anti pollution platform that everyone can look up to

Again, companies do not care about this. Most are publicly traded and the only thing they care about is appeasing shareholders and creating tangible financial dividends. Costly and unprofitable recycling and buy back programs will not help the bottom line.

make the consumer feel good about themselves and their purchasing decisions
and on and on

They do. They enlist influencers to give positive reviews of products so that you are either convinced to buy something or you get a warm and fuzzy feeling about some crap you just bought that you probably didn't need.

have widely distributed subsidiary tech recycling companies handle the details.

Again, there isn't profit in recycling certain things. And once more, the margins in the consumer electronics industry won't allow for things like this.

negative impacts are there as well:
use your imagination here. (my tinkering hobby would suffer as old cheap parts might be harder to come by)

I've already covered the negative impacts. It isn't profitable. Period.

my impetus for this idea is:
tech has, within my lifetime, transformed pretty much all the markets. sadly this has enabled automated mass production of everything from bottled water to clothes to "you name it" to skyrocket.... and then it ends up as trash

This isn't accurate. What enables automation is demand and overall consumerism. However, you'd be surprised how much gets done manually as labor overseas is often cheaper than automation to do the work. In the states, we are automating more and more because people want to make a living wage to raise a family on jobs that were transitional at best in the past. With all our laws and regulations, the U.S. factory worker has been priced out and the country has rendered itself unable to compete with the rest of the world in manufacturing. Companies either relocated to other countries or turned to automation to save money.

basically im saying big tech may not be fully aware that they are holding the reins at this point and what they do and how they go about doing it pretty much the whole world is going to copycat.

so maybe instead of the glitsy window-shopping arms race, pandering to the OCD in all of us... they might try to take a leap of faith towards common sense?

thanks for reading, best wishes, happy hardware-ing!

Sorry, but this is all wrong. If companies could make a profit on recycling their old products, they would do so. It isn't cost effective. Building something from scratch is cheaper than breaking something down to make something else. You see recycling industries surrounding the few things where it is profitable. Mostly, the metal industry. That's why scrap yards pay you for metal objects. Other types of recycling often costs the consumer because there would be zero money in it otherwise. It's not worth doing and all this save the world and other tree hugging stuff is something that isn't as pervasive outside the U.S. or by big companies. They only care about money and if there isn't a way to make more of it, they won't engage in the expenses of doing something.

Sure, sometimes they do engage in something that's not profitable in the traditional sense because it gives them good PR. That's the advertising budget essentially. Everything they do (even for PR) has a cost / benefit analysis tied to it and none of what you proposed has any benefit to manufacturers or they would have already done it.

You seem to think that if this was forced on the manufacturers through laws, the manufacturers would eat the cost.
One big problem here - the costs would be pushed into new cards driving up their prices, so the consumer will end up paying, not the manufacturer. Just look at what happened with taxes, a very similar situation - it just gave the manufacturers a reason to jack up prices even beyond what they would need to cover tariffs.
Value of raw materials in old hardware is hardly worth the cost to recycle it. If the manufacturers had to pay for old hardware they'd be loosing money.

Being "green" is expensive. Everyone likes the idea of it, nobody wants to pay for it. I'm all for being green and personally do everything in my power to make "greener" decisions. But, I'm in a tiny minority of computer enthusiasts.

In order for "green" to be adopted on mass scales, everyone has to agree that they want it and are prepared to pay the price. However, people are not rational and that won't work. Instead, the govt will pass laws pretending to be green and everyone will pay the price anyway. Just like what happened with cars - cars are greener and safer, but twice as expensive or whatever (adjusted for inflation) compared to older cars. The manufacturers are just as profitable as before, the consumer foots the bill.

Well said. This goes back to the arguments people made about how awful Apple was for its demands on Foxconn and the way Foxconn treats its employees. Everyone whined about it but the fact of the matter is that making the same iPhone in the U.S. would triple or quadruple the cost of them. A high school janitor can afford an iPhone now so long as its produced in another country by workers who do not make enough in U.S. dollars to buy a complete fast food combo meal. Combine that with paying for the product over time as part of the monthly phone bill and anyone can have the latest phone or upgrade every couple of years.

If you want some ultra-green, U.S. made consumer electronics, get ready to pay upwards of 10x what we do now. Companies like Tesla, GM, Apple, Google, etc. aren't going to eat the costs of making products greener or recyclable. If they were mandated to do so by law, they would either pull sales from that country and sell only where people don't give a shit about going green or they'd jack up prices to cover the costs of such laws. In fact, they already do where U.S. laws raise costs as it is.

 

[slavie]

Usually is it not the other way around ? Simply keeping your 2500K computer over a decade seem the greenest option by far for example here and a cheap one.

The greenest option seem to be by far just not having a new video card, greenest car is usually no car at all or a small used one and will also be the cheapest, green housing is small housing usually also the cheapest to make, greenest food tend to be the cheapest food.

There is a long list of exception, that usually start with if you have to build a big house for it to be a green one it will cost a lot, if you want green beef you want the type of production where they re-invigorate the grounds and plains that was counting of Buffalo hordes in the past that we eliminated and that will cost more than other type of production and so on.

In general the less entrant you need to produce something will tend to be correlated with greener and cheaper as well. And that was people usually do not like the idea of it, because privation is often the greenest option and the price is to not have it.


That would depend of your market and it would not be fair to compare something like this:

Spoiler: 1975 Corolla

View attachment 346016

To a modern Corolla, but that 1975 Corolla would be $13,253 for the base model and $14,5-15K in today dollars for the deluxe model, it had a 55hp to 75hp engine, a incomparably better 2021 hyundai accent start at $16,000 and you have 120HP.

People buy much more often when they buy a new car, if you buy a corolla now versus the 90s, a Corolla of today if the Camry of the past same for a civic getting closer to an old Accord than an old Civic dimensions-power and everything wise, but for somewhat comparable product like the Mustang V8 coupe, the price over time do not move that much.

That's a nice 'rola. Nobody is saying stop the innovation. A 2020 Corolla should be better and more advanced than a 1975 one. However, if the new corolla didn't need to have catalytic converters and all other emissions stuff, it would be cheaper and lighter. If it were lighter, it wouldn't need as large brakes, and suspension arms and everything else could be smaller, making the car even lighter. Then it wouldn't need as much HP to be as fast, making it cheaper and more economical yet again. Get the idea?

Also, new cars are larger on the outside but not larger on the inside. The difference? Crash standards. In order for the car to pass crash testing, doors need to be thicker with more reinforcement, pillars need to be thicker and stronger. It needs more structural members in front and in back. The airbags have to be placed somewhere, too. Hence why the new Civic is the size of the old Accord but interior space is same as that of the old Civic. Not to mention the weight and the issues that come with it, as explained above.

I'm not advocating getting rid of catalytic converters - absolutely not. I cannot stand the stink of cat-less cars, and even put catalytic converter on my race car. But, there's no denying that "green" is more expensive.

 

[cjcox]

I'll give you $10USD for your 10900K old ancient Intel (poo poo) system. Maybe $20 if you act now.... Exclusive!! And because I believe in loyalty... Ultra-exclusive, I'll double that if you're a repeat customer.

(it's for the kids, I promise!)

You'll feel green and I'll have green.... green - green baby!! (it's like a win-win).

 

[jerry8169]

I think maybe offering trade in credit for old tech would be a great way use their MASSIVE global influence to turn it all around.

And yet everyone bitches about how little someone like Gamestop gives on trade ins. If they give what someone thinks it's worth, there's no profit left, and if there's no profit, there's absolutely no way a company will do it. And, as for going green, the only thing that is scientifically proven to cause warming that is made by humans are solar panels. Since Mars is heating at the same percentage rate, according to the currently available data, and if you believe only the activity of people can drive that, we have only sent rovers to Mars, so the solar panels must be causing it.

 

[LukeTbk]

That's a nice 'rola. Nobody is saying stop the innovation. A 2020 Corolla should be better and more advanced than a 1975 one. However, if the new corolla didn't need to have catalytic converters and all other emissions stuff, it would be cheaper and lighter. If it were lighter, it wouldn't need as large brakes, and suspension arms and everything else could be smaller, making the car even lighter. Then it wouldn't need as much HP to be as fast, making it cheaper and more economical yet again. Get the idea?

Also, new cars are larger on the outside but not larger on the inside. The difference? Crash standards. In order for the car to pass crash testing, doors need to be thicker with more reinforcement, pillars need to be thicker and stronger. It needs more structural members in front and in back. The airbags have to be placed somewhere, too. Hence why the new Civic is the size of the old Accord but interior space is same as that of the old Civic. Not to mention the weight and the issues that come with it, as explained above.

I'm not advocating getting rid of catalytic converters - absolutely not. I cannot stand the stink of cat-less cars, and even put catalytic converter on my race car. But, there's no denying that "green" is more expensive.

My comment was much more about size than advancement level for when we compare over time, i.e. the smaller cars you can buy today is a better comparable for a 90s Corolla than current Corollas, same for civic and so on, a big like the price of a square feet of house do not move much over time in 1900s to now in the USA, car price when keeping the comparison somewhat reasonable do not move much adjusted for inflation since the 60s, while being much better, secure and so on.

The 2021 Civic seem quite similar interior size wise than a 1995 Accord inside:
https://www.honda.ca/civic_sedan/specs
https://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/1995/features-specs/

Both in passenger and even a bigger cargo volume (if they didn't find creative way to boost the numbers over time in how they measure them).

Yes if you are to have a car a car with a catalyser is greener and cost more than one without one, but a small cheap car should much greener than a expensive big car, the tension on the consumer level is not necessarily that much.

If you think about a computer, the greenest video card option will tend to be the cheapest (it will be hard to beat the one attach to your cpu in that regard I would imagine), same with cars the cheapest cars you can buy tend to be the greener and the more expensive you can buy tend to be least green and if society would start thinking that it would be a good think to have 70hp cars going at 80kmhours it will be both cheaper and greener and no car at all and take the bus obviously is even greener and even cheaper, those 2 things tend to be correlated into the same direction not in tension to each others.

If you think of most element of a car, take air conditioning a car without AC is greener and cheaper.
Size, a smaller car is greener and cheaper.
Power, a less powerful car is green and cheaper.
In the past, manual car were cheaper and greener than automatic car.
2 wheel drive cheaper and greener than 4 wheel drive

For most variable greener and cheaper are not in tension with each other but like I said there is a giant list of exception like for the catalyser, but in general the rules of thumb the cheaper the greener.

 

[jerry8169]

If you think of most element of a car, take air conditioning a car without AC is greener and cheaper.

Taking a car without AC is a death sentence in some areas. Heat kills.

 

[LukeTbk]

Taking a car without AC is a death sentence in some areas. Heat kills.

Car safety, car comfort are certainly in tension with greener and cheaper (and car performance, car size, car looks, etc...) those are different axis. Same goes for computer hardware that started this thread, performance is in full tension and in opposition with greener, not price.

 

[vegeta535]

Taking a car without AC is a death sentence in some areas. Heat kills.

Do they even make cars with out AC nowadays? Pretty sure the cheapest of the cheapest Kia and stuff even have AC.

 

[jerry8169]

Do they even make cars with out AC nowadays? Pretty sure the cheapest of the cheapest Kia and stuff even have AC.

When I was looking for a car about 7 or 8 years ago I looked at Kia's, among others, and the Kia could come without AC, adding AC was a 5k option. I haven't looked lately, but, even then I was amazed that was a thing.