Simplicity.

I enjoy writing on my Lenovo ThinkPad T460s. The ThinkPad series, even in its IBM days, had some of the best keyboards I’ve ever used and this particular laptop continues the tradition.

I bought this laptop a couple of years ago on a whim; it was on sale at a refurbished computer place online, had decent specs, and I thought it would make a great second computer to have in the lab. It runs Debian Linux and has done so for quite a while. To avoid distractions in my home office during work hours, this laptop sits on the other desk in my office, away from my way work area, and is the only computer allowed in the room (other than my work laptop). I find if I have my Mac or iPad at hand I tend to be a little distracted, especially when the news is blowing up.

The news has been blowing up a lot the last month or so.

I decided to look up the age of this computer and was delighted to learn it’s eight years old. When the computer arrived a few years ago it was running Windows 10, which of course is no longer supported by Microsoft. The processor is decent; it has an i7-6600u CPU with 16GB RAM. For web browsing, writing with Obsidian, and doing stuff on the terminal, it does its job very well and I don’t see this machine being retired anytime soon.

As society moves further and further away from sustainability by following the lead of corporations and their planned obsolescence (I’m looking at you Microsoft and Apple), it’s good to breathe new life into these older computers. There’s no reason to fill landfills prematurely.

I know a few folks with Chromebooks lying around that have probably been dumped in the support department by Google. Again, here’s another opportunity to put a lightweight Linux on these machines and keep these older computers out of the landfill.

When Apple stops supporting the M2 chip in my MacBook Air, I’ll probably either convert it to a Linux box or donate it to someone. Aside from my multimedia production work, I don’t have a reliance on the Apple ecosystem anymore, and that’s a great feeling.

I know I’ve been rather “anti-Apple” for the past month, which has been in concert with the explosion of ridiculous news. I’ve come to the realisation that Apple is doing what they have to do in this new economical mindset. It’s the economical mindset that the most unfortunate, but it’s also unfortunate that the FAANG¹ bros are perpetuating a legitimacy of this mindset by playing along.

I just want to keep things out of our landfills for as long as possible.

¹ Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google

Tags: applecomputerslinuxobsolescence