In a single generation we seem to have went from a time when people bought things intended to last a very long time and when those things no longer worked, effort and care would go into fixing them. Be it cars, vacuums, radios, shoes, and of course technology.
Alas, we now seem to live in a time where everything is disposable, near nothing is repaired, and we buy things with designed obsolescence. I can’t tell you how many vacuums we go through. Once upon a time cars used to get truly repaired, it seems so many are considered totaled that once would have been fixed. Have you seen how many people toss their 2 year old cell phones now? While you might feel you can afford this extravagant disposable lifestyle, can the planet sustain it?
While parents are trying to teach their children, and themselves, how to live a greener life, to be eco-friendly, too many stop at recycling. I can’t tell you how hard recycling even in some places, some places still don’t support it at all. How many people truly know what to do with batteries that can’t/shouldn’t be tossed in the trash?
My point is, we have long way to go. Every time I turn around there is something new to learn in the effort to save ourselves from the mess we have created. The fact is, the earth will be here long after humans, but how long before we make it unlivable for ourselves? We must do better.
One of the basic things we can teach kids is that just because something is a few years old doesn’t necessarily mean it is too old to us. Just because something is broken doesn’t mean it is trash. One of the ways we did this recently was to show the kids that one of their old desktops could still be used. Many things were wrong in the old machine and one of our daughters was at wits end with it. You don’t have to be tech savvy to bring some life to old technology, special old desktops. One of the simplest things, the thing that inspired this post, was to add new wifi to the machine!
For about $10 we got the internet speed of this old machine up to working condition. ANEWISH dual band wireless adapter with High Gain Long-Range 2dBi Antenna is a tiny way to get speedy next generation Wi-Fi connections, by connecting it to the USB 2.0 interface of a PC, laptop or Mac, you can establish 433Mbps connection at 5GHz radio or 150Mbps connection at 2.4GHzradio with your WiFi router. Of course if you want to the 5GHz band, you need to be closer to the router and then the 2.4GHz and as the kids wanted to be able to stream videos (because youtube is life apparently) We made sure the old machine was close to the router. I really think the antenna helps in this case!
You can get one of these on Amazon from a great brand: Duel Band Wireless Adapter
Code ：A3MHD82Z
After Discount：$9.99
This is a super easy fix/upgrade as it just plugs into the USB port, the one you use for everything these days for charging and data transfer.
The kids are all about playing with the insides of things and we need to be brave and support them! (unplug things first of course!) We need to help the next generation see that they can fix things, they need to try, and we need to stop being a disposable society.
Yeah, I still have one of those old desktops and it’ll do a lot of things, but it’ll only go so far as it’s on Windows XP, and that’s the end of the line for it as far as OS, which kind of limits it for some of the fancy-schmancy newer software that wants lots of bells and whistles. But if it just wants some of the stuff to move faster, it’s more than accommodating….