Tax-Free IT Repairs Proposed For the UK

judgecorp writes "Removing tax from computer repairs could have a real impact on the IT industry's carbon footprint, according to a petition of the UK government. Old computer equipment often ends up in landfill, or in toxic illegal re-cycling centers in developing countries, because users think it is not cost-effective to repair it. Making repairs tax free could be a simple bit of financial engineering to encourage skilled jobs and keep electronics out of the waste stream, says the author of the campaign."

Comments

But it isn't cost effective!

[jawtheshark]

Look, I'm an avid dumpster diver and the only reason I do it, is because I get gear for free and it's fun. However, if you calculate in my time? No, not economic. That 2400+ Athlon XP with 1GB RAM I gave to a coworkers daughter? Cleaning it, assembling good parts from different cadavers, installing Ubuntu and "ready" it for normal usage[1]... This took hours... At my "work" rate, this computer is more expensive than a mid-range new machine which includes real warranty. Now, I *like* doing this and I don't ask a dime if I give away "recovered" machines, but this is in no way economical in the real sense of the word.

Also, if they just talk about "replacing" parts... That's good for RAM or a power supply. Still, you need some time to diagnose the problem which easily exceeds the cost of the parts. Heck if the hard disk fails, you're in a whole crapload of trouble. You lost your OS, your data and most likely the recovery partitions. You ain't getting a working system quickly that way. A dead harddisk is economically the same as a "total loss" for a computer, if you consider the working hours needed to repair it. With cheap netbook and nettop machines, which are most likely better than your older system (even though the Atom is really a weak chip as I can tell from my own experience), comparatively repairs are expensive.

[1] Make sure all media plays, make sure Flash works, make sure Java works, make sure that OpenOffice saves to .doc, .xls etc by default so she doesn't get into confusing problems when she starts to share school works, etc, etc, etc...

Re:But it isn't cost effective!

[vlm]

The few times I had computers from unknown origin at which I actually looked at the content of the disk, it was usually pirated movies, personal documents like letters and recipes

pirated software, homework essays/term papers, music, and possibly homemade pr0n

The "elite" types like to think only other "elite" types have access to pirated s/w, but trust me, from researching the contents of "goodwill harddrives" the unwashed masses somehow have access to virtually every warez we have. Also the same people that claim they can't be bothered to figure out how to change their background picture and could we do it for them, seem to easily have the motivation and technical ability to install warez. I think feigned ignorance is more a matter of pride, at least for the average loser, so I don't feel so bad about carefully structuring so I can't / won't help. It never fails that the village idiot, despite proudly stating he knows nothing about computers, somehow has the worlds most complicated cracked warez installed and working. WTF?

Homework is uniformly bad. Not only is grade inflation increasing over the decades, but writing ability seems to be plummeting at the same time. So, what was a good "C" is now an "A" from the bell curve declining pushing it to a "B" and then some inflation pushing it to the "A". It is true that there are very few misspelled words, and the gross grammatical errors that word can find are fixed, but the essays are usually filled with homonym substitution and terrible paragraph construction. Most people are, for all intents and purposes, illiterate, and can't write because they have no experience of reading good writing. I read it for the LOLs.

The music I find is usually pretty interesting. I'll listen at least once. Rarely is it stuff I actually want to keep, but its interesting to hear one time. I've noticed that on average the great unwashed seem to be moving away from discographies and albums. You'll just find that "one good song" from a musician. Much more like a "stream ripper listening to commercial FM radio" than the traditional computer dude attitude of mirroring a complete directory because its no harder than copying a single file.

As for the Pr0n its surprisingly hard to tell if they just downloaded a collection of one person or if it was genuinely homemade. Unlike home decorating, most people have good taste in Pr0n selection so you can't strictly go on subject matter. If they're chubby its homemade as "most americans are now fat". Also homemade stuff has ridiculous hoarded junk in the background or terrible lighting, that no pro photographer would put up with. Also the homemade stuff has bad hair/makeup. Other than that, its difficult to tell... needs more research, much more.

Anyway, thats what I find on hard drives, rarely this "movies, letters and recipe" stuff you refer to.

I don't have the patience to wait for a borked OS to load (if it ever loads).

External USB hard drive enclosure. Plugged into a machine not running that O/S to prevent any contagion. Stereotypical windoze drive, in a $25 USB external enclosure, plugged into a Linux box. No problemo.

Sorry but

[Datamonstar]

I don't think so. The reason people don't get their PCs serviced when they get infested with cybervermin is that they see the overall cost as too high an investment when they could just go buy a new system that will work 100% guaranteed as opposed to playing whack-a-mole with screwy software. Unless they're in the know that a wipe and reinstall can re-create that like new PC experience pain-free, then people will most likely always go for something new as opposed to shelling out more and more to fix their old systems. A tax break isn't going to change that.

Re:Sorry but

[nacturation]

It's the same story with used cars. At the first sign of a problem they want to buy a new one.

When the cost of a new car that just rolled out of the factory is less than a day's charges for a mechanic and you get a fresh, new, faster vehicle... you bet the same thing will happen.

Re:Abused

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Retailers abuse the Sales of Goods Act. Products should be made to last a reasonable amount of time, retailers are responsible for 6 years.

Apple were happy to fix my 3 and a half year old iMac for free, Sony fixed my two year old (had a 1 year guarantee) monitor for free. Well, the guys at PC World refused to accept responsibility for a failed motherboard on a 1 year and 1 month old laptop, and wanted to charge me more than I paid for the machine when new just to repair it. Trading Standards told me to go back with a copy of the Sales of Goods Act, PC World promptly fixed it for free. Retailers need to understand this is an unreasonable time for a computer to fail and should repair it, even if out of guarantee, for free.

There should be no reason for tax free repair IMHO. If a machine fails in an unreasonable time, the retailer should fix it. If it is an old machine, the IT company should write it off for tax purposes anyway.

"Proposed" doesn't mean what you may think

[jimicus]

In this context, "Proposed" means someone's set up an online petition to ask the government to do something.

Seeing as there's a government-sponsored website where you can set up petitions asking for literally anything, this doesn't really mean a great deal. Some petitions which have been submitted include:

Force TV newsreaders to wear their underpants on their head.

Stop treating Charles Darwin with any form of respect

Introduce suitability tests for all supporters of Tottenham Hotspur who want to work with children

Re:Abused

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The trouble occurs specifically in the PC context. A substantial percentage of PCs that are "broken" are physically perfect in every way, except for a touch of dust and the fact that the magnetic fields on their HDD platters include 3,624 assorted viruses, trojans, pop-up spawners, and the like, along with the OS and user data.

Even if untaxed(as, de facto, a lot of this stuff is, because they end up paying someone's nephew who "knows computers" in cash under the table to fix the problem) cleaning these systems up can eat a lot of tech time. The user never has their restore media, and they always have some programs that they've either lost the CDs for, lost the licence keys for, or "got from work", so you can't just wipe and go, done in 30 minutes. And, of course, no backups.

It is at this point where you say(I've been the "someones nephew who 'knows computers"), "Ok, look: There is nothing wrong with your computer besides software. However, you don't have any of the disks you need, and properly disinfecting your machine will take hours and hours(even if you know what you are doing, and don't fuck around, there'll be so much malware doing disk access by the time they call you that even a basic scan will take ages to complete). I can either do that, and bill you for my time, at a very reasonable rate; but some hours of it, or we can just give Dell $300 and you'll have a computer that is faster and shinier than your present one, and running perfectly, and I'll copy over your documents when it comes. Since you got that copy of Office "from a friend", we'll throw in an extra $50 to have Dell install the OEM version."

And lo, a new computer is ordered.

Re:Abused

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Incidentally, if you really want to reduce the number of computers that get tossed due to the above, there are two things that the market needs:

1. More or less idiot-proof backups that occur by default.

2. The requirement that a restore .iso be one of the offerings on the OEM's driver support page for the models they sell/have sold.

Unfortunately, there is no particularly good way to ensure that these conditions exist. #1 would increase(substantially in the case of cheap systems) the base cost of a computer(either up front, as with a time capsule/Windows Home Server thrown in, or over time, as with a Mozy/Carbonite subscription). Plus, if it is bundled by default, people with multiple computers will end up buying way more backup than they need. If it isn't bundled by default, the people who need backups but don't know it yet will just buy the cheaper thing and skip the backup, then cry later. #2 would increase the OEM's bandwidth costs and, rather more serious, probably make MS a sad panda(which would be silly; because pirates can already get stock Windows Whatever Ultimate .isos, and have no interest in OEM restore crap; but they would object anyway).

I see no good way to make these things happen; but they would turn the hours-long slog of cleaning a machine with a borked OS into a "20 minutes of minimally skilled tech time, couple of unattended hours while the backups restore" process, which would make holding on to the hardware much more attractive.

Re:Abused

[commodore64_love]

>>>just give Dell $300 and you'll have a computer that is faster and shinier than your present one

Precisely. The article summary about tax-free repairs making people more likely to fix their machines still ignores the basics of the computer industry - technology moves fast. I have a good reliable industry-grade laptop that I considered upgrading to Windows 7. And then I thought, "Why? For the cost of Win7 plus an extra $100 I can get a Win7 for free on a shiny new laptop with twice the speed, double the processors, and 3-4 times as much memory."

It makes little sense to upgrade or repair computers, unless you're a museum or nostalgist. It makes more sense to sell the old one on Ebay for ~$100 and then apply that cash to getting the current model.

Re:Abused

[commodore64_love]

>>>2. The requirement that a restore .iso be one of the offerings on the OEM's driver support page for the models they sell/have sold.

The HP desktop I bought for my brother doesn't even come with a restore disc. How stupid is that? They tell you to "burn your own restore CD" which sounds good in principle, but I've seen burned-CDs lose their dye (fade) and self-erase. This is not a solution.

The other option is to buy the CD for about $20. Lame. When you buy a computer, I don't think it would kill HP to include a 25 cent disc with Win7 on it so you can do annual "restore computer to like new" maintenance.