If you like messing around with computers in general, if you keep your eyes open, you can find old, used stuff everywhere. Right now, I am trying to put Core/Libreboot on 10+ year old hardware for fun.

For things that should “just work”… My laptop still runs fine, and hopefully will be the next 5 years as well. Same with my gaming PC. I threw in a used 3060ti right before the AI bullshit took off, and it comfortably runs everything I want it to run with room to spare.

Drives are a bit of an issue, though. Good quality SSDs are hard to get for non-crazy prices, and I don’t want to buy used ones with who-knows-how-many write cycles.

I’m sticking to i7-2600/ddr3 class machines untill the new Enron crashes

I’ve been lucky with my upgrade/build timings. Built my first PC right before the crypto madness, and did my last major upgrade right before the AI madness.

I’m going to run my current system until it crumbles to dust. With any luck, the market will have settled a bit by then.

As for projects, I have lots of old “useless” tech that I can work with. Like old laptops, phones, Raspberry Pis, even mobos and other spare PC parts. Building small is more interesting to me than building big.

Recycling stores

I started repairing vintage film
cameras

Second hand buying and being friendly with the IT guys at work.

The last time I bought something new out of a store at full price was maybe 15 years ago. I can usually find anything I need by watching the local equivalent to Craigslist, people with lots of money are constantly updating their systems and selling almost new components at bargain prices. A bit of luck and quick action is required, naturally.

The IT-department at work is more than happy to get older gear off their shelves, only the hard drives/SSDs and USB-sticks are off-limits for obvious reasons.

I also like keeping older gear alive with LineageOS and Linux distros. My home laptop is ~10 years old and it runs Fedora smoothly without any problems. My tablet is a Samsung Galaxy something from 2015, the only thing it can’t handle with LineageOS is HD-streaming, which isn’t a problem for me.

Used tech is your friend like others have said, but yea I’m also not buying anything new right now. Once the prices stabilize again, I may buy some stuff but for right now, old used stuff or getting stuff from friends for me.

Experimenting with stuff I already have. Using an old laptop with a cracked screen as a Nextcloud + other bits server, switching to a tiling WM (Niri + Noctalia) on my personal laptop (it has been awesome so far!), setting up emulation stuff on my phone, etc.

I’m just not buying anything new. I need more drive space, but with current prices I’m deleting stuff rather than expanding my storage.

Other than that I’ve just taken up new hobbies like woodworking and homebrewing. I’ve toyed with the idea of tiny arduino type projects but haven’t made the plunge yet.

I realized I don’t need new tech, I find more joy in repairing and using what I can find second hand.

I tried to do all of my tech purchasing for the foreseeable future shortly after Trump was reelected, based on the assumption that he was going to fuck the economy. Gotta admit I thought the high prices would come from idiotic tariffs instead of idiotic AI, but whatever…

Any half rate cook can make top tier ingredients taste good.

A true master chef can create culinary delights from scraps.

i haven’t bought new hardwares for a long time. it’s mostly all older used items, sometimes even straight out of garbage bin.

the newest machine i have is from 2021.

I’ve been rediscovering “old” tech. Not necessarily because DDR prices are through the roof, but because some things were genuinely well built in the not-too-distant past.

And sure, I did enjoy servicing a 1980s VT320 serial terminal that I got for free, but I’ve also been examining what an original Raspberry Pi 1 is capable of doing. Did you know the RPi has hardware H.264 encoding capabilities? And mpeg2 hardware decode? With these things being fairly available – just ask some tech friends if they have some to spare – it’s not inconceivably to make a TV frontend to access Jellyfin, in lieu of a Google TV stick or whatever.

Likewise, some pursuits avoid new hardware outright: a FreeBSD-based router runs really well on older hardware, because the drivers will have been tested and rock solid by now. And Asterisk as a PBX software is great if you want to get into telephony. If modern packet switching is more your thing, dn42 is one such environment that you can plug into and pass traffic with other networks.

And if you don’t have PC hardware laying around, maybe try smaller: microcontrollers and embedded/IoT hardware is still fairly affordable, and has a breadth of applications, from home automation to just building things for the lolz. MeshCore and Meshtastic are comms networks built from low cost radios.

Just because some hardware became expensive does not mean the entire hardware space is out of reach, and in any case, the software domain is wide open. In that regard, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is timeless. This is akin to trying your hand at Software Defined Radio (SDR) before taking the plunge by buying an expensive ham radio.

The tech field is not limited to just Apple and Samsung. There’s also Dell, and Tektronix, and Linux, and Texas Instruments, and Arduino, and soldering, and KiCAD, and FlipperZero, and HomeAutomation, and IPv6, and more. Find your thing in this great big field!

Mechanic’s car trope: they’re outdated rustbuckets and often half broken 🥲