Do you copy that?

This is a photocopier that we threw out at work today. It's probably 10-15 years old. Along with the photocopier we also chucked out an Apricot desktop PC (like an Apple computer albeit better because it's not an Apple computer), a colour CRT computer monitor and a printer.
My point is that in the town where I live and work there is a sugarbeet processing plant which is still using machinery that was installed in the factory in the 1930s. How come that's still good enough to use but the office equipment isn't? Is it solely down to the march of technology.
And it went into the skip withba satisfying clunk.