how corporations destroy humanitarian ideas..

Imagine a solar powered laptop for 100 bucks...
and the threat to the greedy this kind of thing could be..
A fascinating look into why corporations are not good for humanity.


http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4472654.ece

Its not in their nature to care about anything but their profit margins and market share.

if we do not stop them...

If you let corporations run things, you end up with things like American health care.

this involved disassembly to the motherboard which held the power jack. It occurred to me that nearly all laptops are similar in size and shape, though there are some generational size differences between laptops.

Had I needed a new motherboard, it would have cost near $400, unless I could find a used one that worked 100% (possibility). As a contrast, had this been a desktop system (this repair likely wouldn't have happened, but...), I could have bought a new motherboard and chip, possibly memory, for well less than $400, from a number of different manufacturers. Motherboard typically $60-80, CPU, typically $20-150+ depending upon its "newness". Memory is variable depending on type and amount. Anyway....

Why aren't laptops engineered with standardized motherboards and components sizes, just like desktops? Probably so that when you need parts for them, you have to pay more.

Anyway, I gave a poor neighborhood kid, (who prior to this had decided I'm okay for some reason) an old desktop recently, loaded Debian on it for him, but his mom won't let him connect to the Internet just yet. Her call.

While they may not be laptops, nearly everyone has some old desktop systems sitting around that probably only need minor repairs, if any. Those computers, loaded with Linux of some flavor, would sure make nice systems to give away to poor kids whose parents can't otherwise afford a computer.

It's an older laptop, but I'm in a financial bind and a new one just was not in the cards.

Ended up buying it for $35 on eBay, but only after I had lost several auctions to storeowners that buy parts dirt cheap and resell them at 2x or 3x the price. (I priced this specific board on various parts dealers, and the LOW end was $80. More commonly, it went for $110.) Who in the heck would buy a 6-year-old board except a person who needed that part and couldn't afford a new computer? Yet these dealers absolutely would rip us off, knowing full well who and what their customer base was. I'm all for profit, but reselling an old part for 300% of wholesale price is obscene. And that's small-scale business compared to Dell, HP, etc.

But with laptops, it's about the only way to insure a reasonable repair cost.

For another laptop I bought a used motherboard for about $35 (base cost +shipping and any other charges), the ad claimed 100% working. The one in the machine had refused to run on the battery, and determining which chip was bad was way beyond my skill level (more precisely, informational access), and even if I could have found the bad chip, I didn't have access to microscopic soldering equipment needed for replacing them. When I finally received the motherboard, it wasn't really 100% working, one USB port of three was mangled (physically broken), and whoever had removed the motherboard from its case had been in too much of a hurry, some metal attachments were bent up (like they 'ripped' it out instead of being slow and gentle). I fixed it by swapping the same bracket off the original motherboard being replaced, but the USB port attachment was too difficult to unsolder and replace with the equipment I had. I installed this used motherboard anyway, and it seems to work, one USB port of three is buggered, but it does run on the battery now.

With a PC-compatible desktop system, since standards were created regarding the size and shapes of various components, if a motherboard needs replacement, one could always upgrade to a newer motherboard and CPU, increasing the speed and usefulness of the machine (since software seems to require faster and more powerful hardware with each evolving generation). With laptops, that doesn't seem to be the case, you seem locked in to the design of the factory-engineered specifications. In my mind, this means that Laptops are much closer to "disposable" computers than desktops (yet they're generally more costly? WTF?).

In the early days of the One-Child Laptop, I remember reading about how there were problems getting the costs of the LCD display down, and a small screen was part of the answer. Well, what about all those used LCD screens on the disposed-of laptops that some people have replaced with newer models?

If there was such a thing as open-engineered "hardware" standards with laptops (similar to IBM-compatible desktop systems), one theoretically could just buy a new motherboard and chip and have a newer, faster machine, and still use the same old LCD screen, keyboard, battery, charge adapters, etc. But it seems from reading this OP's article, that the big companies, Intel and Microsoft in particular, consider laptops "premium" value added products that cater to a market of wealthier folks who either don't NEED to save a working LCD screen from one laptop to the next, or don't WANT to. All those parts of differing design mean more money to manufacturers when a laptop reaches the end of its usable life and needs replacement (since they can't be "upgraded").

So where do all those working LCD screens go? I guess they end up on Ebay and other places, likely including electronic-waste dumps.

These types of closed-source engineering techniques are by no means limited to laptops. They seem to be common biz tactics to increase dependence upon a particular manufacturer and to limit competition.

How many software companies has he literally destroyed to get where he is? And tossing off the odd *gift* to assuage his guilt doesn't wipe away the sins of his past. Not by a long shot.

deeds are nothing compared to his obscene wealth. I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that, as a percentage of income, his charitable donations are less than the average middle-class worker bee's. I wish someone would point me to some stats.