Louis Rossmann: A Conversation with Steve Lehto on Right to Repair [video]
Hope "Right to repair" keeps its momentum. Not for being cheap but for a lower downtime and re-use opportunities in developing countries and low-income houses.<p>My retina MacBook pro overheated and needed a paste replacement and fan cleaning. I live in a small city in Mexico, so no there is no local Apple Store. Results: 2 weeks without a computer while being in the shop.<p>Now I use an old Thinkpad T440p, it's older and cheaper than the MacBook, but faster because I was able to upgrade the CPU and RAM... and probably will support new versions of Linux and windows for another 5 years at least (I have no idea what will happen to Intel MacOS). Yeah, it's heavier, and the screen it's bad. But it's reliable and can be repaired everywhere, a lot of places don't accept Apple laptops because they are painful to repair, let alone upgrade.<p>Why the comparison of orange to apples? (no pun intended) even without covid and chip shortage, here in Mexico, it's really hard to get access to hardware for anything less than one or two months worth of salary for the average worker. And thanks to old laptops that are easy to repair like the Thinkpads, Dell precisions, or HP EliteBooks. A lot of people here were able to re-use 2nd hand corporate hardware with something like 70% of the capabilities of a modern computer (not top of the line) for a 1/3 of the price.<p>Those machines just require a little bit of care and time.  Something people in developing countries have, but people in a good position will probably prefer just to get something new for the convenience.<p>So yeah, the right to repair can help not only corporations reducing downtime, but the world reducing e-waste and adding real opportunities for developing countries repurposing old hardware that's still good.