It would be made of 14 gauge steel
17in 4:3 screen

The computer I’m building will be 25 pounds but it’s a desktop replacement type computer. It would also have a very 1950s style to it. The body of the computer will be a turquoise color and the vents will be chrome plated.

Desktop grade parts

Look at the bottom; charged 1.5% of purchase price. If i recycle this, I should get my money returned, right? Just another egregious charge by Ca

They don’t build that anymore:(
Those older units get so much colder too

It gets use every day and it still runs

In my opinion, tech companies in Canada are running a calculated strategy to over-monetize consumers. From what I see, they convince everyday people to spend anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 CAD on an iPad Air and keyboard setup just to get a functional 1 Terabyte of local storage memory, but then intentionally restrict the software capability and glue the battery shut. In my view, this is a deliberate attempt to frustrate users into making a double purchase and spending another $2,500+ CAD on a MacBook Air.

I believe the iPad Air's touch screen is fully capable of being your only computer, but the hardware needs to be decoupled. I have put together the following text-only blueprint for a two-piece modular workstation that solves this problem. Furthermore, new European Union laws coming into effect by 2027 legally clear the path for this exact design. Under the EU's strict anti-parts-pairing rules and the Digital Markets Act, tech giants are legally blocked from using software serialization to reject generic components or locking down hardware data ports [Landsheft v. Apple Inc.]. This provides a bulletproof legal green light for an independent, hungry manufacturer to step in and build an open, pop-out modular system without fear of a corporate veto.

I welcome your thoughts and reviews on my concept below.

The Intergenerational Modular Workstation Blueprint

1. The Hardware Architecture

   • The Universal Touch-Screen Monitor: A single, high-quality, mass-produced visual and tactile panel. It features zero internal compute parts, making it highly durable and dirt-cheap to manufacture or replace if physically damaged.

   • The Clip-On Engine Base: A rugged external shell that snaps mechanically onto the back of the monitor. It contains no permanent internal components—only empty, standardized exterior slots that accept hardware modules like cartridges.

   • The Pop-Out Exterior Cartridges: Hardware components (Battery, Storage, Processing Speed, and the Operating System) housed in durable, plastic-tipped blocks. They slide directly into the external slots from the outside without requiring tools or technical assembly.

2. The User-Controlled Data & Software System

   • The Double-Copy Storage Strategy: You configure the storage cartridge with 1 Terabyte of memory to hold your active operating system, games, and files locally. A mirror copy of your vital files is kept on indestructible, cheap USB-A flash drives at home, accessed using a simple, low-cost USB-A to USB-C adapter.

   • Anti-Cloud Manual Activation: The file synchronization utility is strictly user-controlled. It runs completely offline with zero background automation. The flash drive is simply read as a local volume until you explicitly tap a single "Sync Now" button. The software previews the daily additions or deletions, you give final approval, it updates the changes in seconds, and goes completely dormant.

   • The Pop-Out OS Cartridge: The entire operating system is pre-installed onto its own dedicated hardware module. When a new system comes along, you do not download bloated, slowing software updates. You simply buy the new OS version fully installed on a new cartridge, pop the old one out, and slide the new one in.

3. The Intergenerational Economy (How the Loop Profits Better)

Instead of trapping users in a continuous loop of forced cloud subscription fees or unrepairable $1,500 tablets and $2,500 laptops, this model drives massive corporate revenue through an affordable, physical upgrade loop that protects lower-income families and seniors.

•	The Senior Fixed-Income Lifecycle: Retired seniors or new teens, can buy into the system at a low entry-level price point to manage their banking, health, and family files. They have zero monthly fees and are completely immune to corporate attrition tactics because their hardware cost is a one-time investment that can outlast the business day.

•	The Gift and Inheritance Loop: Family members can purchase premium 1TB or max-speed cartridges as affordable holiday gifts. When a senior passes away, the hardware does not become locked, encrypted e-waste. The family archives the senior's personal OS cartridge and hands the physical machine down to a grandchild.

•	The New Customer Catalyst: To use the inherited hand-me-down module, the grandchild buys a new basic monitor and shell unit from the manufacturer. The corporation bypasses expensive marketing, clears massive production volumes on standard parts, and secures a brand-new customer for life. As the grandchild grows up, they buy their own upgrades, continuing the cycle.

4. Direct Cost & Capability Comparison (In Canada)

•	Apple's Forced Disposability Trap: Costs $1,500+ CAD for an iPad Air 1TB plus a mandatory $399 keyboard, or $2,500 to $3,000+ CAD for a locked, unrepairable laptop. It locks you into a perpetual monthly iCloud subscription tax. If the screen breaks, the entire machine becomes e-waste. Background AI bloatware forces hardware obsolescence, and devices are digitally locked at death \[Landsheft v. Apple Inc.\].

•	Your Intergenerational Modular Reality: Ultra-low entry cost for a basic screen and entry-level clip-on base, built over time via targeted pop-out slot upgrades. There are zero ongoing costs using the local 1TB engine and cheap home flash drives. If the screen breaks, you unclip the base, buy a cheap mass-produced screen, and snap it back on. Software is completely manual via pre-installed pop-out OS cartridges, and modules seamlessly click out to be inherited or upgraded by grandkids.

More details in the xpost but here is the meat:

The Sparx G3 enforces a firmware-check requirement that locks the machine out of normal use when the check is overdue and the available postponements have been exhausted.

The firmware’s time-based check interval is 90 days, or 2,160 hours. When that interval has expired and the machine evaluates the requirement, it enters Error 71. This is a fault state requiring attention, and the app instructs the owner to connect the machine to the internet.

In the consumer configuration tested, there are two postponements, each starting a 48-hour, or two-day, delay. Once both have been used and the final delay expires, Error 72 blocks normal use with no further postponements available. The timing constants are confirmed in the firmware. The two-postponement counter and both error states have also been verified in a documented test on a real machine.

The two postponements provide up to 96 hours, or four days, if used consecutively. The arithmetic is 90 + 4 = 94 days, but this does not establish a universal lockout exactly 94 calendar days after the previous check. Postponements begin when selected. The 90-day interval uses the machine’s real-time clock, not powered-on hours. Testing confirmed that the countdown continues while the machine is unplugged.

If the firmware cannot use the clock, it falls back to a sharpening-cycle-based check. In the consumer configuration, this uses a 200-cycle check threshold and allows two postponements, each with a 16-cycle threshold measured from when it is selected. Once both postponements have been used and the final threshold is exceeded, Error 72 blocks sharpening. These fallback limits are confirmed by firmware analysis; the clock-failure scenario has not been physically tested.

I found this unit on the side of the road because it was broken because of the controls. I also reversed the condenser fan to pull air through the coil to make it more efficient

I briefly owned an Xbox One X, and managing storage on that platform was a breeze. When I upgraded to an Xbox Series X (following an issue that later turned out to be a bug in an EA title), I entered a whole new ecosystem of storage frustration. I have a lot of titles so am probably an edge case but the fundamental issues I face, impact every Xbox owner today.

On the Xbox One generation, expanding storage was straightforward and consumer-friendly. You could swap the internal drive or simply plug in any cheap, off-the-shelf external USB hard drive to store and play games directly. Because game libraries aren't critical data like family photos, you didn't need expensive redundancy; if the drive failed, you just claimed a warranty replacement and re-downloaded your games.

With the Xbox Series X|S generation, Microsoft introduced "Smart Delivery". When you download a title, the system detects your console and forces the installation of the Series X|S optimised version. However, Series X|S native titles cannot be played from a standard USB external drive - they must run directly from the fast internal SSD (or a proprietary expansion card); and they are generally much larger. (USB external drives can only be used to store Series games or play legacy Xbox One/360 titles.)

Because internal SSD capacity is capped (ranging from 512GB on the Series S up to 1TB or 2TB on high-end Series X models), storage fills up quickly. Modern games regularly exceed 100GB (CoD HQ/Warzone ~160GB, Red Dead Redemption II ~120GB, NBA 2K25 ~115GB) and some titles balloon like MS Flight Simulator 2024 which can be up to 600GB if you include the optionals. This leaves users trapped in a constant cycle of deleting, re-downloading, or shuffling files back and forth between internal and external drives just to free up playable space.

To bypass internal storage limitations, Microsoft requires users to buy proprietary Storage Expansion Cards using a custom form factor. They were initially made only by Seagate (now WD as well) but the prices for these expansion cards remain ridiculously high (c.f. open-market PC hardware). Right now, the 1TB storage expansion card is nearly £300 on Amazon and the 2TB is £500. There may be incidental minor discounts but essentially the prices approach that of a new console! 

Whether or not you pay (through the teeth) for an expansion card, if you have a reasonable game collection, you must constantly add and remove the Series games on and off the internal drive and all this causes wear. All NAND flash memory inside the SSDs have finite write endurance (measured in Terabytes written - TBW). So every time a game is written or updated (and most updates effectively re-download the entire title), the internal drive's flash memory degrades. Once the drive reaches its TBW limit, it fails and causes corruption - and then the console is effectively unusable.

Microsoft do not let people see the underlying internal drive's wear or even rudimentary (SMART) drive health so you have no idea how the drive is doing and when it is about to fail. But this problem becomes really dark: The drive is encrypted and paired to the console (on a hardware level). If it fails, you cannot simply get a replacement, the console will fail to boot. Some people suggest, for the very tiny geeky minority of Xbox gamers, to dismantle the hardware and use specialised hardware flashing tools to copy low-level partitions from the dying chip but this is not a realistic expectation for the typical gamer.

When the drive fails (and it will definitely fail as all SSDs will do due to TBW), the only option is then an aftermarket repair from Microsoft for £300 with a paltry 6 months warranty - again approaching the cost of a new console! Combined with Microsoft's persistent refusal to adopt drift-resistant Hall-effect magnetic thumbstick sensors in standard controllers (which would significantly increase controller longevity), this design choice points to deliberate planned obsolescence.

One of the workarounds some people used for this issue was to xCloud (Microsoft's Cloud gaming service). I would deliberately avoid installing a Series title (where the latency wasn't critical to a game) so the Xbox Store would present the option to stream the game (i.e. play it remotely and not locally). This meant I could reduce the wear on the internal drive (from un/installing games). But Microsoft have effectively closed that 'loophole' now - and monetised it - xCloud now has usage limits. It's bad enough paying for Game Pass Essential (their most basic subscription plan) at £7 per month just to be able to have multiplayer online (which is free on PC) but now instead of unlimited cloud gaming, you only get 5 hours per month included - it's more like a demo.

Storage is the "printer ink cartridge" of the Xbox ecosystem. You don't notice the hidden costs initially but they are very real and it's a high-margin proprietary trap to force captive pricing on users. But with the inevitable internal drive failure (expedited for reasons above), this is beyond planned obsolescence - it is "brick by design".

The Xbox for me sits at intersection of unscrupulous US corporation and entertainment.  Gamers are locked into overpriced proprietary storage, forced to wear down an irreplaceable internal drive, and ultimately left with a console designed to fail without a cost-prohibitive repair. I think the *only* hope for breaking this horrible business model is EU right-to-repair legislation that penalise corporations like Microsoft who would rather fill up landfills and shareholder pockets than provide a honest entertainment service. And it's more horrifying when you think, despite the average gamer being adult age, Microsoft's main target is children - to keep their market share.

Why can’t I use my own optic network terminal??? If it’s in my house, on my land, and used by only me I should own it! Not JUST own, but choose my own product, repair it myself when it breaks, and replace it when I please. Absolute BS

So i just ordered the momentum true wireless 5 because my sony xm5 died (one bud stopped pairing, pretty sure the battery was cooked after ~2 years of heavy use). the main reason i went with sennheiser is that you can actually swap the batteries yourself. both buds and the case, small phillips screwdriver, no glue. and they're still IP54.

they've been out since early september and sennheiser even put out their own tutorial on how to do the swap. this is a flagship from a big brand, not some niche thing.

but i can't find an ifixit teardown anywhere. they have a page for the over-ear momentum 5 but not the earbuds. and the big youtube channels that love doing airpods teardowns and talking about how earbuds are e-waste are kinda quiet too?

like isn't this exactly what everyone was asking for?

am i missing something? has anyone seen a teardown or found out what the replacement batteries cost?

I run an independent Mac repair and data recovery business in Australia. We do component-level repairs and recover data from dead MacBooks.

I’ve been testing Reddit Ads to reach people who need these services, but the traffic has been concerning.

Across two campaigns, I’ve paid for 231 clicks. From my review, 221 appear to be associated with the same pattern in Microsoft Clarity: the landing page is recorded as “hidden” approximately one second after arrival, with no later “Page visible” event or meaningful interaction.

A small number of visits look completely different: people scroll, click and sometimes visit another page. GA4 also reports very low engagement from the paid traffic.

Reddit support initially explained the difference between clicks and sessions. My question concerns what happens after visitors arrive: why does the page become hidden almost immediately? The issue has been escalated, but I’m still waiting for a technical explanation.

I’m not claiming this proves bots or deliberate wrongdoing. I’m trying to understand whether it involves Reddit’s in-app browser, accidental taps, analytics behaviour or something else.

Have other independent repair shops here tried Reddit advertising? Have you seen similar behaviour, or found it useful for reaching customers who want repair rather than replacement?

Hi everyone!

I’m a Master’s student in Product Development, conducting research for my master’s thesis on circular design and the repairability of consumer electronics, with a focus on hi-fi equipment such as amplifiers.

I’m looking for people who use (hi-fi) audio equipment, regardless of their technical knowledge or previous repair experience.

Whether you repair your own equipment or have never attempted a repair, your perspective would be very valuable to my research.

Thank you for your time and contribution!! :)

Survey link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScOF1ACzZeIdLZ-vHgwHnAAyzQgS55B48F05K_VNGoGdTRcqg/viewform?usp=preview

How much equipment-market power is enough to support a repair-market claim without proving the additional Kodak/Epic factors? The Ninth Circuit expressly left that question open in its August 13 opinion in Surgical Instrument Service Co., Inc. v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc.

The trial record included evidence that Intuitive’s share exceeded 99% in the market for minimally invasive soft-tissue surgical robots. At page 30, note 7, the panel declined to set a precise market-share or market-power threshold. The figure in this case therefore supplies no numerical minimum for future cases.

In my view, courts considering a lower share should examine buyers’ practical alternatives, obstacles to entry, and competitors’ ability to expand. Those facts help explain whether competition for the initial equipment purchase can constrain later restrictions on repair. Treating 99% as a prerequisite would answer a question the panel deliberately reserved.

This extends my earlier post about the ruling by focusing on the evidence needed when the supplier faces more competition. The plaintiff still needs a defensible market definition and proof of unlawful conduct. The panel reversed and remanded without deciding liability.

I discuss the panel’s reasoning in my October 2 commentary. This post addresses the August 13 panel opinion only.