prefer fish and chips myself… had that the other day for lunch at a local French restaurant for our 48th wedding anniversary 
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Congratulations! And to Mrs. Graham for putting up with you (or any man) for 48 years…
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Felicitations! 
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Hi Geof,
Returning to your post after the more mundane, but more challenging task of installing a second bathroom.
One of my favourite maxims is that all technology is intermediate. Worked this out for myself, but many others must have reached a similar conclusion, long before.
However, rates of technological change vary spectacularly, so a new computer or cell phone is out of date as soon as it comes out of the box, By contrast, a superb Japanese santoku chef’s knife with a Damascene blade may have changed little during the past five centuries.
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New computers and smart phones aren’t “out of date as soon as they leave the box”, that’s just what the marketing droids want you to believe.
I built my gaming PC in 2011 and with a couple of new graphics gard upgrades over the years, it still plays AAA titles at great frame rates at 1080p. The only limitation I’m finding over the last year is that the latest and greatest PC games now require W10 and I’m still running W7, but I have a plan to fix that this winter.
Computer technology has very much stagnated of late with ever over-hyped Intel and AMD promising smaller and smaller performance increases. We won’t see the huge performance jumps of single core > dual core > quad core again until a new substrate medium is perfected.
My 2017 iPhone 7 is still running the latest version of iOS and is reporting 86% battery capacity. It will only be replaced when I break it.
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there’s truth in that.
Also have in mind that there is a chip shortage but the market wants you to keep on buying in order for them to survive.
My neighbour (who works in IT) told me earlier this evening that Volkswagon have just bought up 200,000 Whirlpool washing machines just to strip out the chips…
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It does make you wonder what the real longevity of tech could be. (I am by the way typing this on a laptop I bought secondhand before we moved to France 10 years ago - I wiped off Windows and installed Linux, and have just updated it ever since.)
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Please excuse my hyperbole. I should have written, ‘almost as soon as they leave the box.’
However, I no longer remember how many computers and phones I’ve had in the last thirty years. Whereas I only replace a knife when its blade is too concave to be resharpened.
The two points I made were that all technology is intermediate - ie. it’s never an absolute solution and at some point any technological solution will be replaced by another one, but the timelines may vary enormously.
It’s true of course that some ‘technologies’ are very ancient - especially hand tools - the basic form of the hand axe goes way back into the stone age.
It’s constrained, I suppose, by the relatively unchanging form of the hand that uses it…
The hand is only at one end of the tool!
And even then there’s the handle…
Thus a modern long axe is probably far more comfortable and and efficient than a traditional one - better design - better handle, steel quality and blade profile
It would be a bit of a bastard when you’re hacking down the autoroute and your GTi decides to go into a spin cycle 
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And in tests, VW would probably have faked the spin speed.
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Agree - in terms of “being useful”.
Being a nerd, and something of a hoarder I have computer hardware of all sorts of vintages - some now rather old!
The oldest is a Pentium MMX - that one probably won’t power up as I can see several motherboard capacitors need to be replaced, probably has Windows 95 on it’s IDE hard drive, eek!
My laptop has a Intel T7200 Core 2 Duo CPU - it boots but neither Fedora nor Windows 7 are entirely comfortable with the ancient nvidia graphics - I really need to retire that computer.
I have a T7400 in (or maybe a T7600, I forget without getting it out) in an industrial LV-677 which booted the last time I got it out (off a compact flash drive no less) but it’s really too mind bendingly slow for any serious use.
After that I have intel core systems back to 3rd generation which are doing useful work though we have just added a 12th gen laptop for N°1 son to go to university with - I think I have 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th maybe 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th gen systems kicking about and all perfectly usable.
But, apart from the last, these are definitely “out of date” and even the 12th gen system will soon be eclipsed by Intel’s 13th gen systems which have already been announced.
My phone is two years old as well, and wasn’t cutting edge when I bought it.
Odd, not sure that adds up.
CPUs which go into commercial products are not usually reprogrammable, and chips which go into washing machines are not usually very powerful.
It’s possible some other chip - such as a synchronous DC motor controller could be harvested but the auto industry works to strict safety standards and I doubt that stripped parts would meet those, even in non safety critical parts of the car. Also, I believe that US consumer protection laws would forbid selling a “new” car with 2nd hand parts.
So, even though I have seen a couple of references to this story online I’m inclined to think it is 100% horse manure until I see better evidence.
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good for them if tbey faked it the test was probably rubbish and didn’t test the right things anyway
Until we run out of spare parts and/or people that know how to repair them.
Unless it’s smartphones. While the OS supplier provides updates for your model, it’s all good. However, once your smartphone (or tablet) is no longer on the current OS release, you’re gradually going to have 3rd apps stop working as their developers will be modifying or overhauling them to work with the latest OS release which will eventually snap the ethereal knicker elastic that is “backwards compatibility”.
This can be mitigated by disabling app updates once your smartphone is not longer receiving OS updates but sooner or later any app that speaks with a server somewhere is going to stop working as server side development for the app will also be tracking OS development.
The other problem with smartphones is that those pesky network operators keep updating their networks to support New Shiny Thing and switching frequency bands from Old Shiny Thing or even Very Old Rusty Thing to New Shiny Thing.
For example, who has an old GSM handset in their Drawer Of Old Crap That You Think Might Be Useful Again One Day?
Even if you can find a live SIM card of the correct size, it won’t find any GSM/2G service as those frequencies were switched to first WCDMA/3G and later LTE/4G.
“Pesky network operators keep updating their networks to support New Shiny Thing and switching frequency bands from Old Shiny Thing or even Very Old Rusty Thing to New Shiny Thing.”
Love it 
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Yea - good post @NotALot (I didn’t ‘like’ it though because it’s a shame they operate in this way.)
Wasn’t Fairphone supposed to be coming with a Linux option?
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with a consequential risk of being attacked by a virus?
That is certainly the case with old OSs connected to the internet that have not been updated (Win 95 a case in point).
I’m not (otherwise) a big Apple fan but they do, at least, support older hardware for a considerable time - you are lucky to get 12-18 months updates on Android.
If you have a popular model some life can be obtained by installing LineageOS but it can be a daunting task even if you are tech savvy and peripherals, especially cameras, sometimes do not work.