EA To Try and Profit From Used Game Sales.

Aliotroph? said:

I don't mind that idea. It's starting to appear with computers, though I don't think recycling them gives you a discount.

Very rarely, also because a 10yo computer is worth much less than a 10yo car in practical value. A 10yo used car can still be in good condition and still perfectly marketable and able to do its job, or the very least become useful scrap/spare parts. Even a 15yo and 20yo car may still be useful if bought used. Even a 10yo computer on the other hand...

Maes said:

Very rarely, also because a 10yo computer is worth much less than a 10yo car in practical value. A 10yo used car can still be in good condition and still perfectly marketable and able to do its job, or the very least become useful scrap/spare parts. Even a 15yo and 20yo car may still be useful if bought used. Even a 10yo computer on the other hand...

My 10 year old computer I recently bought works good, it's a Pentium III Dual Core with 1.5GBs.

Music should have been locked a LONG time ago!

Oh how's this for a mixed message... I walked into a Blockbuster to see them selling DVD-Rs and DVD-Burners.

GhostlyDeath said:

My 10 year old computer I recently bought works good, it's a Pentium III Dual Core with 1.5GBs.

You mean dual CPU ;-) I had seen such a mobo while working in the army, it was an enormous affair with on-board Adaptec SCSI controllers and dual slot-1 connectors (you could connect either PII-PIII or even a mixture of both at different frequencies, if you wanted).

If yours has Socket 370s instead, it could be pushed up to interesting boundaries if you fill it with dual Celerons > 1 GHz. Sadly this is not what springs to mind when I think of a "10 yo computer". A Lowly Pentium III@733 MHz with 128-256 MB is more down to ground.

I can use a 10yo car with modern gasoline, while it would be ill-advised to install Vista or 7 or use modern Java, JavaScript and .NET bloatware on a machine that can't be upgraded past 384 MB of RAM (many older VIA Apollo chipsets can't work very well with RAM > 384 MB). Let alone that you'd have trouble selling this to a Joe Consumer who wants to run Crysis on it...

Indeed. My 8yo computer is all but useless. Computers become worth less than the sum of their parts. That's why recycling them is nice. Companies with the resources to chew up the things in huge machines get to reclaim lots of different metals and the consumer gets to get rid of the thing without trashing it. I suppose that does mean they'll never get more than a few dollars for a recycled one, but it is a good service.

Now a really ancient computer might be worth more to a few people. This is because it might run some things that are near impossible to run efficiently on a new machine. An extreme example is the ancient hardware NASA uses to talk to space probes from the 70s. It's irreplaceable and somewhat tricky to repair for lack of spare parts.

Or they could just be put to good use with software proportionate to their hardware. E.g. if all that is needed is a secretary's typewriter kind of PC that only needs to work with MS Office, Windows XP and 256 MB of RAM are enough. The hardest problem in practice is not getting people to work with such machine (they do so just fine if you make them sit in front of them), it's avoiding sparking machine-envy if there's a guy with a Dual Core typewriter-PC nearby. Similarly, it's hard to avoid "thin screen envy" in an office where you have CRTs and LCDs nearby. And sometimes, things start mysteriously "breaking down" all of a sudden with a greater frequency around new equipment...

Maes said:
Or they could just be put to good use with software proportionate to their hardware. E.g. if all that is needed is a secretary's typewriter kind of PC that only needs to work with MS Office, Windows XP and 256 MB of RAM are enough.

And much more than just typing text, such as browsing practically any place on the Internet, playing tons of video games, watching most videos, and so on.

The typical customer you mention is at the mercy of a commercial environment trying really hard to plug the latest stuff on him. It happens a lot but it's also a stereotype. With enough incentive to avoid the "newer is better" spam, people are happy enough to use an older system that suits their needs.

myk said:

. With enough incentive to avoid the "newer is better" spam, people are happy enough to use an older system that suits their needs.

In that respect, budget constraints and an obligation to follow orders/work with whatever you're issued worked wonders in the Army.

Even there we still got the occasional smartass who was quick to raise the "damage" red flag in order to get a better replacement for his/her (admittedly junk) Pentium II or III or "dead" CRT monitor (when in reality it was a video card problem). A particular warrant officer in her late 40s was particularly harassing, and we had to file a written complain to her superiors for to make her stop faking damage/requesting replacements.