The story of electronics...

I wonder a little about the idea of making electronic devices that will last a whole lot longer, rather than having them replaced every few years.

For certain types of appliances that aren't really improving this makes a whole lot of sense - e.g. your microwave isn't getting much more efficient.

For other devices, this seems to make less sense - although improvements to waste disposal mechanisms and electronics recycling seem to make sense. For a bunch of electronics, the use phase of their lives has a bigger environmental impact than their manufacturing costs and embedded materials. If you can provide a device with equivalent functionality, but half the power consumption (e.g. the PS3 slim that I bought a year ago), then this may make up for throwing out your device every few years.