From : https://techhub.social/@sawaba@infosec.exchange/115924627853343043 (mastodon)
The enshittification of computer repair is happening.
AI has amazingly managed to make repairable computers practically worthless.
The increase in memory and storage pricing is destroying the second-hand market for computing hardware and this makes me sad. I watched a video from someone that runs a repair shop, and this is what’s happening:
The memory/storage alone is worth more than the rest of the computer, so people are stripping them out to sell separately.
The second hand market is now flooded with computers that have no memory or storage. Buying new memory or storage to put in these used computers is now more expensive than buying a new computer.
So we now suddenly have a giant e-waste problem PLUS a giant problem for repair shops that want to stay in business.
In the video, he was basically saying that they have to pivot to the only computers that folks aren’t stripping RAM and storage out of - computers that have those things soldered on. The irony here is that repair shops now have to ignore the most repairable computers and focus on the least repairable computers instead.
Yes, I have a basement full of computers with no storage. The plan was to put 120 GB SSDs in there and sell them for $40 each. 1: That’s no longer possible. 2: nobody wants to buy them for that price.
$40 is now too much for an old but working laptop? That’s crazy
It’s a desktop tower. People are sad when I offer monitor KB and mouse for $20 more.
I’m thinking of bumping up to $50 so people can feel better about talking me down to $35. I don’t like to play games, but people seem to care more about getting a deal than a fair price.
I think the second point was to recoup the costs at least would make them too expensive for people to buy older hardware.