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Comment by ianceicys | Hacker News Reader

You are already paying a subscription for an OS. How old is your computer, 4 years-5 years old? Take $200 (cost of OS) and it's $40 or $50 a year or $3-4 dollars a month. Same applies for Apple Mac OS you just pay the $200 in the price of the $2,000 computure.

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That's not a subscription, that's amortization.

The critical difference is that amortization decreases your cost per unit time with use. More use, better value.

Subscriptions do not work that way. Having to pay $50/year for a 5 year old laptop doesn't excite.

That's an oversimplification because it requires the utility of the device to be maintained over it's operational life. Routinely the utility of the device changes as new features are added or removed during OS upgrades, support for software, and eventually hardware support is dropped entirely. It doesn't matter if the hardware is still functional.

This isn't even necessarily in the vendor's control. For example, Google Chrome just stopped loading TLS encrypted sites on my partner's MacBook this past week and displays a lovely pink banner over every tab saying the OS is no longer supported.

Companies are not held to any standards for support and the amount of support they give varies based on the product. Apple has provided decades of support for some products but considerably less for others because they shared an architecture or platform that was eventually dropped. Google is notorious for just dropped support for products on a whim.

And subscriptions won't fix this problem.

The problem with Amortization in the consumer space is the lifetime of the device. Sure, you can keep running a computer for year 6 instead of the standard 5 years...but 90% of consumers don't - What machines from 2016 are you using today? If you do, let's get serious you're already looking to upgrade in the near future, no?

I agree no one uses devices for long. But as a pedantic N=1... I use a computer from around 2011-13.. can't quite remember. Added a stick of RAM(it came with 4gb), and changed the HDD to an SDD, and had to replace the coin cell battery in the nvram once, all told for <10000INR. So it's the original cost + 10000INR for something that works perfectly well today, after 10+ years ;)

So yes, we exist too.

But, no complaints, linux windows all of it work flawlessly.

Me? None. I give them to my mom.

> What machines from 2016 are you using today?

Most of my machines are that old or older.

> If you do, let's get serious you're already looking to upgrade in the near future, no?

No. I only look to upgrade if the system stop working or if it can no longer perform as I need it to.

What? Say you bought some pants last year for $60. Do you think you paid a $5/month subscription for that? What have you ever purchased that's not a subscription then?

Well, I actually had to take those $60 as a 12-month loan, so I've paid $7/month for a year...

Thats a very positive and forgiving perspective on subscription fees!

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