When I mention my 2012 laptop to other software engineers, I get looks. Concerned looks. The kind you'd give someone who showed up to a meeting in clothes from a dumpster. "You're still using that?" they ask, in tones reserved for intervention scenarios.

Yes. I'm still using that. And I plan to keep using it until it physically cannot be repaired, at which point I'll harvest the parts and find another old machine to resurrect.

This isn't poverty. This isn't even frugality, really. This is a deliberate choice about what kind of relationship I want to have with technology, consumption, and the planet.

The Moment I Decided

Three years ago, my laptop's hard drive started making ominous clicking sounds. I knew what that meant—mechanical failure, imminent death, time to buy a new computer.

I opened a tab to look at new laptops. Saw the prices. Saw the specs that were only marginally better than what I had. Saw the reviews complaining about non-replaceable batteries, soldered RAM, proprietary screws designed to prevent repair.

Bill found me on the porch, staring at my laptop like it was dying. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Hard drive's failing," I said. "So fix it," he said, with the casual certainty of someone who spent forty years as an engineer. "Everything's fixable if you're patient." —  Bill Thompson, stating facts

Fix it. The radical idea that instead of throwing away a whole computer because one component failed, I could just replace that component. Wild.

I ordered a solid-state drive for forty dollars. Bill lent me a screwdriver set. Emma held the YouTube tutorial on her phone while I swapped the drives at our Victorian kitchen table. It took ninety minutes and moderate swearing. When I powered it back on and it worked, I felt like I'd performed surgery and saved a life.

I've been hooked on repair ever since.

A Repair Culture

That first fix started something in our little community. Word spread that I'd successfully repaired my laptop without, as Jordan put it, "summoning the Apple Genius cult."

Maya brought me her phone with a cracked screen. "Can you fix this, or do I need to buy a new phone?" The screen replacement kit cost twenty-three dollars. We fixed it together at that same kitchen table, following a video tutorial, while drinking coffee and talking about her work. Her phone is fine. She saved six hundred dollars.

Tom's tablet had a battery that wouldn't hold a charge. Manufacturer said it was "not user-serviceable" and suggested buying a new model. We found the battery online for fifteen dollars and a YouTube video showing exactly how to disassemble that model. Tom now enthusiastically evangelizes right-to-repair legislation.

Jesse's e-reader broke—cracked screen, seemingly dead. "Trash it," they said, already mourning. But we ordered a replacement screen for thirty-five dollars, carefully followed disassembly instructions, and brought it back to life. Jesse cried a little. They'd had that e-reader for eight years. It held marginalia, bookmarks, the entire architecture of their reading life.

What We're Really Repairing

These repair sessions have become something bigger than fixing broken tech. They're community events. Knowledge-sharing. Skill-building. A middle finger to planned obsolescence and consumer culture.

Emma started documenting our repairs on a shared spreadsheet: what broke, what it cost to fix, how long the repair took, difficulty level. We're up to forty-three successful repairs. Total cost: about eight hundred dollars. Amount we would have spent replacing everything: over twelve thousand dollars. E-waste prevented: roughly eighty pounds of toxic materials that won't sit in a landfill.

But the real value isn't the money saved or waste prevented—though both matter. The real value is recovering the knowledge that things can be fixed, that we're capable of understanding and maintaining our tools, that breakage doesn't automatically mean replacement.

"My grandmother could fix anything," Bill said during one repair session. "Toaster broke, she fixed it. Radio died, she fixed it. Wasn't even a question. Throwing things away wasn't the default. When did we lose that?" —  Bill Thompson, asking the real questions

We lost it when corporations decided that repairability was bad for business. When products started being designed for obsolescence instead of longevity. When "user-serviceable parts" disappeared and warranties voided if you dared to open the case.

We're taking it back, one laptop at a time.

The Laptop Lives On

Since that first hard drive replacement, I've upgraded my laptop's RAM twice. Replaced the keyboard when coffee claimed three keys. Swapped the fan when it started sounding like a small helicopter. Fixed a loose display hinge with epoxy and hope. Replaced the WiFi card when the original one died.

Every repair is a small victory. Every component I successfully swap out is a rejection of the idea that I need to buy new instead of maintaining what I have.

The laptop is Frankenstein's monster at this point—original parts mixed with replacements from three continents, held together with determination and quality thermal paste. It runs Linux now, because modern operating systems are designed for modern hardware and I've stopped apologizing for refusing that cycle.

It's not the fastest machine. It's not the thinnest or lightest. It can't run the latest games or handle 4K video editing. But it runs my development environment, handles video calls, plays music, and does everything I actually need a laptop to do. The rest is marketing.

Teaching Repair

Last month, we started hosting "Repair Café" sessions in Sarah's spacious Victorian living room. First Saturday of each month, bring your broken tech, we'll try to fix it together.

Jacob brings his software knowledge. Bill brings decades of electrical engineering wisdom. I bring enthusiasm and a growing collection of specialty screwdrivers. Maya brings occupational therapy perspective about adaptive equipment. Emma brings documentation skills and keeps us from losing tiny screws.

We've fixed laptops, phones, tablets, e-readers, gaming consoles, vintage radios, coffee makers, desk lamps. We've also failed at repairs—sometimes things are genuinely unfixable, or require tools we don't have, or replacement parts that no longer exist. But we try. Always, we try.

The community members who show up aren't just getting free repairs. They're learning that they're capable of understanding technology. That machines aren't magic—they're assemblies of components that can be disassembled, understood, and maintained.

What We Owe the Planet

The environmental cost of our electronics addiction is staggering. Mining rare earth minerals destroys landscapes and poisons water. Manufacturing requires massive energy and generates toxic waste. Shipping devices globally burns fossil fuels. And when we're done with them—after an average of just two to three years—most end up in landfills or shipped to developing nations where they're "recycled" in conditions that poison workers and environments.

The best way to reduce that harm isn't to buy "green" electronics or recycle properly—though both help. It's to stop buying new devices so frequently. To repair instead of replace. To use things until they're genuinely worn out, not just unfashionable or slightly obsolete.

Jordan once asked why I don't just buy a refurbished laptop instead of keeping this ancient machine alive. "Because someone had to manufacture and ship that refurbished laptop," I said. "The laptop I already have has zero additional environmental cost beyond the electricity to charge it." —  Sam Rivera, on embodied energy

Every year I keep this laptop running is a year I'm not contributing to the extraction, manufacturing, and waste stream of a replacement. That matters.

The Right to Repair

Our repair sessions are small-scale, but they're part of something bigger. The right-to-repair movement is fighting against corporate efforts to monopolize repair, void warranties for DIY fixes, and design products that can't be maintained by users.

Some states are passing right-to-repair legislation. Some companies are starting to provide repair manuals and parts. The culture is shifting, slowly, back toward valuing longevity over novelty.

Tom tracks this stuff obsessively now. He emails state representatives. He shares articles about repair victories. He's become radicalized by a tablet battery replacement, which is honestly beautiful.

The Tape and Glory

My laptop's case cracked last year—dropped it while carrying groceries, because I'm graceful like that. I could have ordered a replacement case. Instead, I reinforced the crack with electrical tape. Black tape on a black case. You can barely see it unless you're looking.

Emma suggested I was taking the aesthetic of "well-loved" a bit far. She's probably right. But I kind of love the tape. It's a visible marker of the choice to repair instead of replace, to accept imperfection instead of demanding pristine newness.

My laptop is scarred, taped, rebuilt, and utterly functional. It embodies a different relationship with technology—one based on maintenance and care instead of consumption and disposal.

When it finally dies—and someday it will—I'll salvage what I can and find another repairable machine to rebuild. I'm in this for the long haul.

In the meantime, this twelve-year-old laptop and I will keep working together from my converted Victorian parlor, held together by electrical tape, stubbornness, and the radical belief that things are worth fixing.

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