When the Chips Go to the Cloud

12 minutes ago

4 min read

The last laptop with a CD drive

At ten years old, Ashley struggled to read.

Living in Jamaica with a tutor who believed in her, she would get lessons on Tuesday & Thursdays after 3 PM. The tutor had a curriculum ready, lessons and programs that could take a child from sounding it out to reading whole sentences. There was only one condition. The computer had to have a CD drive.

I went through every laptop in my inventory. Most of the ones with CD drives were bulky at best, and relics of a bygone age. A machine too bewildering for a ten year old's hands. I did not want to give her something hard to use. I wanted to give her something that felt like her.

I had exactly ONE that fit the criteria.

So I gave it everything I could muster. I found a hard drive that could manage her everyday needs. I sourced every part needed to turn it on from battery to screws. I made sure that CD drive spun clean. I put on the best version of Windows I could, set up Office, and stayed in close communication with the tutor to make sure nothing was missing.

Within 3 months, she went from not reading at all to reading at a second grade level.

I was amazed by her tenacity, how far she moved and how fast. And I was amazed by something else. A machine the world had already called outdated was the exact thing that changed her life.

Outdated is not the same as useless

Without that laptop, the tutor could not have used her programs. The curriculum that worked so fast and so well would have stayed on the shelf. They would have found other ways, but I am not sure any of them would have worked like that.

We call technology outdated the moment something newer arrives. But outdated to the market can be exactly right for a child.

Where the chips are going

Right now, the chips that would have gone into your next laptop, tablet or phone are being sent elsewhere. Chipmakers are feeding AI data centers first, because of how lucrative they are, making constantly huge orders, leaving little to none for the average consumer. This week the head of Siltronic, one of the companies that makes the silicon wafers chips are built on, said the AI demand is pulling supply away from everyone else.

The result lands on ordinary people. Analysts expect phone and computer prices to keep climbing. The market research firm IDC reports that memory chip costs are up more than 300% from last year, and it expects smartphone shipments to fall a record 16.7% in 2026. It does not expect prices to return to 2025 levels.

Trolls under the bridge

Knowing this, I can't help but think about the families I serve around the world, the students who have built their futures in Detroit and the children back home in Jamaica. Every small move in the market, shift in headline about titans of industry, rumors of war to come or word out of some politicians mouth pushes them further out of reach.

We treat the people who need access the most like trolls under a bridge. We fear they will take what we think is ours. We do not see that we are building the very problem we fear. We are taking away the access people need to live a good life, and forcing them to live in scarcity.

When a new laptop costs more than a month of groceries, the device already in the house may be the only one that family gets for years. Keeping it alive is not a hobby. It is a life line.

Look at what you already have

So before you replace, look.

Look at the old laptop in the drawer. The TV in the basement. The coat you stopped wearing. Ask what it can still do. Can I repair it? Can I patch it? Should I donate to a nonprofit, or give it to a child who will bring it back to life? Every fix keeps something working and keeps it out of a landfill.

In Detroit, that work is already happening at tables where cracked laptops get a second life and the people who fix them learn a trade while they do it. At The Hendricks Foundation, we teach this through our Access 2 All program. Students learn to repair computers, take a laptop home of their own, and help fix devices for students across the world.

Room to bless others

Ashley does not know where the chips are going. She knows a laptop showed up when she needed it, and it worked.

The world will keep chasing the newest machine. Let it. Some of us will keep the old ones breathing, because somewhere a child is waiting for exactly that one.

Just because you have abundance does not mean you need to splurge. Abundance is room to bless others, not just room to indulge yourself.