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Story of Stuff: 20 minute movie follows stuff from mine to landfill

December 6, 2007 7:07am

Great film, great message.

But to pick a nit, her example of computer upgrades being "planned obsolescence" is a stretch.

Technology is simply improving very quickly. The reason you don't just upgrade your CPU chip (the reason the sockets don't typically match) is because the motherboard and memory has also improved by leaps and bounds, and is incompatible with previous tech. They change the chip & socket design so you don't buy the wrong type for that motherboard. Not a conspiracy, just especially quick advancement of the state of the art.

It's true you can do a few upgrades by just replacing the "innards" (motherboard, CPU, memory), and keep the rest the same (hard drives, expansion cards, etc) without having to throw out too much. Many of us do just that, but you can only do that for so long, not because they break or it was somehow "planned" that way by evil corps, but because those techs also improve.

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