Planned obsolesence? Not in this household, bitch
Also fuck Logitech for making their headphones entirely out of brittle plastic
Edit: Photo
My 10 yo laptop is still going strong. Naively updated from Win7 to 10, but after a while updates stopped working and it was generally shit so I swapped to Linux. Removed the CPU fan (lol) because it started sounding like a chainsaw, computer still works fine for webbrowsing. I will not buy a new computer unless the motherboard fries or something.
You know, it would be nice to set up some kind of barter system for mending things. When my computer goes kaput, all I can do is cry and start saving for a new one (and then cry because I'm totally bewildered by all the options). But I can mend clothes and other things made of fabric! Lots of things aren't made to last these days, but my cheap clothing lasts because I know how to fix it.
Yay, something I can help with! What I do is sacrifice my oldest, rattiest pair of pants to be the patches for the others. I have a pair now that I've been slowly cutting parts off of for years now. When I notice that an area is getting thin on a good pair, I cut a piece of fabric that is larger than the thin area, so you're anchoring it to sound fabric, not part that's getting worn. If you're hand sewing, you're going to want to put the patch on the outside and sew around the edges. If you have access to a sewing machine, you can make your fix blend in a bit better. Put the patch on the inside, then sew over the thin area and into the patch over and over, going horizontally and vertically. The patch will give stability, and if you've matched your thread color well enough, the threads going up and down and side to side will be less noticeable than a patch that's just been sewn around the edges. The main thing is to make sure your patch is plenty big, so you don't end up with a new hole growing at the edge of the patch. Also, as the old saying goes, "A stitch in time saves nine." So if you do your mending while things are getting thin, but before holes appear, the whole thing will look better.
Depending on your laptop, you might find a CPU fan for 10-20 USD. Thermal paste costs maybe another 10. Replacing the fan so your CPU doesn't overheat will do loads for its lifetime.
I have a pair of soundmagic earbuds/IEMS that are 3 years old and work just as well as the day I bought them. I use it for everything, from my ps4 to music and zoom calls. As a rule I avoid GAMER™ stuff because it's overpriced and unreliable. Also unpopular opinion here, all that gamer RGB stuff looks tacky. Imagine buying a pc that costs as much as a car and it looks like a toy.
I had to get a headset with an integrated USB soundcard dongle because all the headphone and mic jacks on both my computer's front panel and on the motherboard had tons of annoying electrical interference I just couldn't get rid of, it was a huge pain in the ass. I've heard a decent studio headphone + cheap clip on mic combo is infinitely superior to most gaming headsets, but whatever, at least I've got fake 7.1 surround audio.
Also unpopular opinion here, all that gamer RGB stuff looks tacky.
looks down at keyboard currently pulsing in all the colours of the rainbow What can I say, I like the pretty colours
Yeah I personally prefer earbuds/IEMS massively to headphones as having that thing over my head makes me very uncomfortable. I know headphones probably have vastly superior sound, but whatever. And I did say it's an unpopular opinion lol, pretty colours go brrrr
Look into Chinese HiFi, super well made and priced competitively
I had no teaspoons to spare so I had to go with full-sized Ikea tablespoons
my cable in my sennheiser bt 4.40 headphones broke, but it's completely detachable and i just bought a new cable for 15 bucks instead. any other headphones and i would've had to pay another 100 bucks for a new pair.
It's always the cables that end up doing my headphones in, I guess a more electrically savvy person could strip and fix the wires. Sadly none of the headphones I've ever bought have had detachable cables.
I'm going to assume they sound nicer than the lower end gaming headsets I usually go with
