Sweating the assets: Techies holding onto PCs, phones for longer than ever

The Register ^

[dfwgator]

Still use my 2010 MacBook.

[brianl703]

Probably does. I drove from Virginia to Illinois with my T-Mobile phone streaming Pandora the entire way and it never skipped a beat.

[chrisser]

I’ve been thinking of the Pixel 7 also.

Currently have a Moto G Stylus, which I am very happy with, but it has Android 11 and Motorola has basically orphaned it.

I have to use Duo MFA for work and I’m already getting warnings that I need to upgrade to 12. Just a matter of time before Security decides to lock me out.

I hate that I have to get rid of a perfectly good device because the manufacturer won’t support it.

Google seems to have better Android support on their phones, although they’re significantly more expensive than the Motorolas that do everything I need.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The two-year tech upgrade cycle has become a five-year cycle - and that's going to inflict major damage on tech stock prices.

Having had some understanding of the virtues of Unix, I got on board AAPL long ago, and I have a good bit of unrealized capital gains there. That was then, this is now. I now have a new AAPL, it’s called TSLA. The price of TSLA has gone up, but it’s still far below its highs. The fundamental proposition of TSLA is that

1. They are more profitable than just about any other car company, per car. They have been increasing their profit by 50% annually. They’re growing their vehicle capacity aggressively, but they have a big order backlog, which they can’t keep up with. That’s enough to be bullish on the stock. But,
2. They are working to get production of the Semi going at scale. Nontrivial business opportunity, building a plant in Nevada for Semi’s and batteries.
3. They also produce “megapacks” of batteries for instant-on power backup for utilities. They report that demand is “virtually infinite” and margins commensurately high. LARGE opportunity.
4. They plan to produce “cybertruck” pickups in serious quantity in ’24.
5. they are making serious progress on “full self-driving.” When it’s sufficiently mature, they expect to get major income from their fleet of car owners who are willing to pony up $15K to have a “chauffeur” drive their cars. Since that’s just software, the income will be all profit. In that context, they are seriously into AI: Musk was behind the development of ChatGPT.
6. They’re working on robots. They potentially might begin production of a small cab type vehicle with modest range and low cost to satisfy the demand for city driving, esp with FSD.
7. They are in solar panel installation, and the price of solar panels just got 30% cheaper. And they have developed a system to allow non-Tesla EVs to buy juice at Tesla charging stations.

I can’t see how enough things go wrong to make TSLA a bad investment.

[Organic Panic]

FOR BIDENS SAKE!!! SPEND MONEY!!!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Interesting. We switched from Verizon to T-Mobile. We live in north Idaho. Just a couple days after we switched, I dropped my wife off at the Spokane Airport. On the way home, I tried to make calls. Four or five wouldn’t connect. The two that connected lasted less than a minute before disconnecting on their own.

The funny thing is the problem is mainly voice calls. My Spotify streaming is almost always rock solid.

[AppyPappy]

We get a new computer every 3 years at work and it is a PITA to set them up. People routinely refuse them so I end up with a new one every year. This Macbook I am using is 7 years old. Two more Dell laptops here and one desktop at work. I’ll set up the new desktop at work this year and promptly retire. Go figure.

[brianl703]

I was having a similar problem when I first got my replacement T-Mobile phone (I had a Sprint phone previously), I called T-Mobile tech support and they had me change some settings on the phone which fixed it.

I thought it was strange that the phone didn’t already come set up that way from T-Mobile, but I chalked it up to it having come with a Sprint SIM that I needed to change for a T-Mobile SIM (they included the T-Mobile SIM with the phone packed separately, but what was inside the phone was a Sprint SIM).

The setting tech support had me change, if I recall correctly, had to do with setting the phone to use VoLTE for calls instead of GSM.

[Maelstrom]

Uh, it’s less about saving money than it is that each and every piece of new hardware comes with malware, and data tracking within the firmware.

[Chickensoup]

My dentist said it.

He held up his phone and said. I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH ANOTHER LEARNING CURVE.

Me neither.

[Chickensoup]

My dentist said it.

He held up his phone and said. I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH ANOTHER LEARNING CURVE.

Me neither.

[P.O.E.]

DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH ANOTHER LEARNING CURVE.

I said that after Fortran 77.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thanks. I’ve been meaning to call their tech support and discuss it, but I forget about it all the time (at least until the next call).

[Drago]

Wife and I are still on our iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus...but new 14’s are on order from T-Mobile (leaving ATT...too pricey w/o the “bennies” T-Mobile offers).

[Chickensoup]

Lol

[RideForever]

No more Windoze for me. Switched entertainment PC to Ubuntu after Intel merged with IBM over ‘supported’ CPUs. Windoze had removed Win7 off my machine without permission and over-installed Win8 after wiping personal data off the Win7 drive.

Still have Win7 laptop for office.