Hmm... overall a good presentation that will leave viewers motivated and plant the seed of much needed consumer education and reformation.
However, among the facts she was throwing out the one in regard to computers has damaged my opinion of her credibility. She claims the reason computers become obsolete is because a single component is changed every few years with a new and non-backward compatible version, forcing consumers to dispose of their old machines. It seems as if she is suggesting it were some conspiracy.
Where do I begin? First, she's probably talking about the CPU. Yes, not all CPU's physically fit into the same slots, and the slots do change every few years due to a variety of legitimate reasons. However, so do many other components. In the last 10 years, for example, we've had no less than 5 different interfaces for expansion cards (ISA, PCI, AMR, AGP, PCIX), at least the same amount for RAM, and 5 for plug-in external connections (serial, parallel, SCSI, USB, firewire/ieee1394). Each interface is incompatible with each other. These are facts, and they alone knock the legs out from under her "a single part" argument.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, are the reasons for change. Think about it like this: basenotes runs on a server in some datacenter with 1000's of other computers. Poor Grant keeps upgrading the basenotes server due to increased traffic (which is actually a good problem to have). Pretty soon he may have to upgrade again or even split the load between multiple machines (if he hasn't already). Luckily he will have access to some of the fastest and best hardware available. But what about 5 years ago? Basenotes would take two or maybe more computers to keep up with the current load. 10 years ago? A dozen maybe. See where i'm going? 60 years ago a calculator took an entire building. Now computers perform billions of calculations every second, with a fraction of a fraction of the electricity, raw materials, and pollution.
While she espouses the fact she has devoted 10 years of her life into researching product life cycles, it is obvious she didn't look into this before presenting it as a cold hard fact. As a computer professional I have a considerable amount of knowledge on this subject, but not in others she touches on. Knowing she so confidently got this one wrong I can't help but question the accuracy of her other examples and the thoroughness she claims to have researched her arguments.
In short: take the message to heart, not her "facts".
