Ten-Year Technology is Great for Everyone
Many of the high-tech products that I own are lasting longer than ever before. Even if they won’t last forever, I’m impressed by how long companies and volunteer users can keep them going. Long-lived tech is good for consumers, and better for the environment, even though there’s still room for improvement.
I have a Synology network-attached storage (NAS) device, a box about the size of a toaster, with a couple of hard drives inside. I mainly use it to back up my computers. I bought it nearly 10 years ago, in January 2015, and it’s been powered on for almost all that time. I’ve been really impressed by how reliable it is. The Western Digital “Red” hard drives inside, designed specifically for use in a NAS, haven’t failed in this time, and their mean time between failure is at least 1,000,000 hours, which is over 110 years. Synology has regularly patched my NAS’s operating system, delivering security and feature updates. Its current OS reaches end of life (EOL) in June 2025, so unless they extend that, I may have to retire my NAS after a remarkably reliable 10-year run. To be honest, I may not need to replace it with some other device that I own; storing tens of gigabytes of backups with a cloud storage provider costs me just a couple of dollars a month, and that data is available in multiple professionally operated data centers. I still have options to buy another hardware NAS, or I can build one, using open source software products that may last even longer than my Synology has.
When I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, personal computers were advancing so quickly, there was little chance that a ten-year-old computer would be of much use. Windows 3.1 was released in 1992; it was succeeded by Windows 95, 98, and 2000, each of which had significantly higher hardware requirements. Some of my schools in the ’80s still had Apple II computers, built in the late ’70s, and which were so expensive that the school effectively had no choice but to continue using them until they fell apart, which they rarely did. Internet connectivity changed everything. As schools bought new equipment to take learning online, they faced threats from viruses and worms. Updating computers and decommissioning EOL devices became ways to avoid a cyberattack. More recently, as systems on a chip let things as small as a wristwatch act like fully functional, network-connected computers, many more devices have a finite lifespan. My game consoles, my 5-year-old Garmin watch, and even my washing machine need regular updates to avoid becoming hacked and joined to “botnets”, fleets of computers that can be marshalled to attack targets simultaneously. Fortunately, many of these devices still work if I take them off the network when they reach EOL, but I generally don’t get notified when a device stops getting updates. I have a first-generation Surface Pro tablet, which I bought used in 2014, and it won’t officially support Windows 11; it came with Windows 8, and I upgraded to Windows 10, which reaches EOL next fall. Unless I try to shoehorn Windows 11 onto it through unsupported means, I’ll have to take it off the Internet by next October.
Today, smartphones are the most prominent example of electronics with a short lifespan, especially considering how much use they get. The oldest phone that I still actively use is an iPhone 11, which is 5 years old, and which runs iOS 18, the newest OS that Apple supports. It will likely reach EOL in another year or two, not even close to the decade mark that a new personal computer might reach while remaining supported. Inexpensive Android phones and other devices sometimes ship with OSes so old that they’re at EOL from day 1, making them risky to use with any personal data. Buying high-quality, latest-generation products, despite their higher prices up front, might end up costing less in the long run, and that might lead to less electronic waste.
Very little tech is repairable and modular anymore, even inside previously modular devices like desktop PCs, which is unfortunate. Our sleek, modern, sealed-shut devices are almost certainly going to become e-waste. There are a handful of modular smartphones available for purchase, but without the brand recognition of major manufacturers, I don’t expect them to gain much mainstream visibility. The same goes for modular laptops; getting a laptop from almost any brand repaired is a function of parts availability and labor costs, both of which make it uneconomical to repair a laptop. Back in late 2020, I had an Apple laptop worth about $400 that had an aging battery; replacing the battery would have cost as much as the laptop itself was worth, so I ended up trading it in towards the purchase of a new one, with a new battery sealed inside. Apple in 2021 announced a self-service repair program, to let savvy users repair their devices themselves, although an early review of its program involved 75 pounds of equipment and a destroyed iPhone. In late 2024, it promised that the iPhone 16 would be easier to repair than prior models were.
Keeping old tech running, or building high-quality tech with a longer lifespan, remains important. I’m often tempted by tech items that look very cheap, including those $20 smartphones at my local drugstore, but those aren’t going to last for very long before they hit EOL — if they’re not EOL right out of the box. Likewise, when I’m next in the market for a laptop, I know that I should probably buy something that’s either new or a one-year-old refurbished model, to get the longest life for my money.
Disclosure: At publication time, I worked at Amazon Web Services and I owned shares of Amazon. This article does not reflect the views of Amazon or its subsidiaries.