My 9 year old laptop is currently sitting in two pieces... But only because I wanted to pull the hard drive out for easier transferring of old files I wanted to keep.
When I get back to the main part, I'll be removing 90% of the apps on it, doing everything I can to make it run better, and it will be my hobby shop computer. It was going back and forth between my game room and the garage where I kept my lasers and printers.
If and when it finally bites the dust, it will be given a place of honor amongst the modern tech. Like a transparent top coffee table with all the parts disassembled and arranged inside.
I remember one of my first machines, a 486DX50 I think, really had a hard time playing mp3 files. But it hasn't been an issue for anything that came later.
I recently resurrected an old desktop computer (linux is great for ding this) I had built in 2009. I upgraded the ram to 8Gb 16Gb, replaced the broken graphics card and installed Gnu Guix using the system crafters install guide. I'm not doing any hardcore gaming so it does everything I need it to do. I have a raid store, jellyfin server, and samba share.
I have an old lightweight laptop that I use for youtube videos from time to time.
Page loads take 3-10 seconds. Video decoding, once it gets going, is great due to dedicated MPEG hardware. But the site itself - well, old man gets there eventually.
Edit: already stripped overhead to the bone by running Bodhi Linux. I may try FF over Chromium in case there's more performance to be had. But the 2GB RAM footprint is really pushing it these days.
Bitwig Studio, sound design and modulation focused DAW, with Linux support, from former Ableton devs*. A recent update does allow it to open FL projects (among others) but I haven't tested that part.
Same with mine, i'm only still to dumb to get it using the old nvidia gpu instead of the intel graphics. Didn't take the time yet to look further into it
I still have a Samsung Ultrabook Series 9 with Windows 7 Ultimate laying around.
Buddy is over 10 years old and works in a pinch as a replacement device.
It's always a pleasure opening it and seeing the custom login screen
I wish I could upgrade it with a USB-C and more RAM but Samsung was really anti consumer back then...
If it isn't hp, it can work for 20 years, but with hp laptops, you are lucky if it lasts for 8.
Btw, it works for phones too. I got my dad's redmi 4x from 2017 a month ago. It works suprisingly ok. I am planning to flash lineageos without gapps on it, to not have to use android 7. It should work for another couple of years.
Nah, not business machines. I've made those last quite a while, even as an undergrad in engineering running simulations that were too heavy for what the machine could actually do.
Pro tip: need an impromptu white noise generator? Load up some COMSOL or Ansys.
I know people doesn't like Redmi/Xiaomi, but man what a punch for the money, and "malware" have been inexistant up until very lately (deep malware are everywhere). I bought a (the FX) file explorer for like 5€, there is a totally ok free version too and that's the only thing I needed to have a nice experience (no pub, I know everything is probably tracked like on all phones).
Got the redmi note (pro?) 2 shipped from alibaba.com a long time ago for < 100€, then the 5, 7 etc.
Greatest value for sure, they all still work except the 5 that I went swimming with, I cracked the screen on the 7, ...
The older ones also had swappable batteries (3000 mAh too!) and SD card slot when the concurrences had like 32GB for OS + everything else.
I'm not a fanboi but my 4 year old phone for 250€ has 6GB RAM & 128 GB storage...
Well, their newer phones do have a lot of shady things (even the 4x video player demands weird permissions), new mis, especially 11 series are known for being unreliable. I particularly hate the bootloader unlock experience, waiting time, issues with the app (on pc and phone), no linux and USB3 support (I had to use a vm in an old laptop). BTW, I'm angry as today I didn't read the error messages properly and reset it. I wasted a day and now I have to wait another week (or more) to unlock it.
My wife’s 10-15? Year old laptop came in clutch last year. I had a guitar-Bluetooth pedal that needed a firmware update and the software wouldn’t run on anything but windows 7 lol
Hell, I was gaming on a PC from 2013 all the way into 2022 (i5-4670K, 16GB DDR3 1600, and a 770, later upgraded to a 1070). My CPU stopped meeting the minimum requirement for games around 2018-2019, but it was enough to maintain 60 FPS @ 1080p in all but the most demanding titles. If a pile a money didn't fall in my lap, I'd still be gaming on it today. But now that I've experienced 4K 120Hz gaming in HDR with Ray Tracing and DLSS, I could never go back. It was worth building a new PC for HDR and DLSS alone.
I'm on a similar train. My old PC can still run around half of new games but I can see the struggle. I'm considering going for a mid to low range laptop with Linux for everyday stuff and move my gaming to a Steam Deck. I ran the numbers and this option is around $750 cheaper than building a new mid level PC the way I want it. Unless I get a big downfall, the Deck+Laptop way is gonna have to do in the next year or so.
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