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.
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.
Absolutely, a ten year old computer today is still capable of doing pretty much everything that most people use computers for. It's not like the old days when every few years a new tier of computer would come out that made older devices no longer capable of doing what people wanted.
I was still running a Q6600 (a 2.4 gHz quad core from 2007) until a few years ago. It ran most things acceptably for its entire life - it wasn't until around the time of PS4 Pro/Xbox Whatever ports that it could no longer keep up, and even that was largely due to the other components I was restricted to on such an old motherboard.
That thing was also a tank. The CPU cooler was stock and the thermal paste had degraded and separated to the point it idled at 65c, but I never had a single hardware fault in nearly fifteen years of running it. I kind of miss it.
It depends on how good it was to start with. I have a machine from 2006 that is usable for daily tasks. I also have a netbook from 2009 that can barely do anything.
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.
You feel sorry for ze little old computer. Zis is because you crazy. It is just a machine; it has no feelings.
It is working just as well as it was 10 years ago and capable of all the same things now as it was back then. Nothing has changed except your expectations of it. That's right, there's nothing wrong with it -- in reality, you're the problem.
Not really. As it’s been updated over the years with new features the OS has heavier usage on the hardware. Also if it’s still got a hard drive in there chances are it’s dying after 10 years
Running an OS significantly newer than original on a computer gets filed under "expectations." Nobody bitches their Amiga can't run Windows 98, either. If it is 10 years old, its original OS was Windows 8, updates for which ended in 2016 (or last year, for Windows 8.1). No new bloat after that!
But even so, unless the computer in question is a netbook or something it'll be fine. For reference, I have a ThinkPad laptop that was manufactured in 2012 and I still use it daily. It runs Windows 10 just fine. Updates and all. The latest Corel suite, modern browsers, video editing, no problem. PC performance reached a bit of plateau coincidentally... about 10 years ago.
The MTBF of even a middling consumer hard drive is, if we are being extremely uncharitable, 300,000 hours. That's 32 and a quarter years of continuous usage and there are vintage hard drives in circulation in perfect working order that are much, much older than that. The main thing this laptop is going to need help with is its battery, which probably is degraded a bit by now.
But even so, unless the computer in question is a netbook or something it’ll be fine. For reference, I have a ThinkPad laptop that was manufactured in 2012 and I still use it daily. It runs Windows 10 just fine. Updates and all. The latest Corel suite, modern browsers, video editing, no problem. PC performance reached a bit of plateau coincidentally… about 10 years ago.
even then you could just install something like linux on it, and it would probably be lighter than win7 which is what likely shipped with that machine, though i think some sported windows 8 later in the cycle.
Well actually, electronics age just like the rest of us, every electron that passes through wears down the component just a little more creating just a little more resistance with each passing use. So in effect the 10 year old laptop does have something resembling getting harder and harder to wake up
have there been like studies on this? Or anything that shows any sort of relevant data about it? I've been curious what effect it has on manufactured stuff like this for a while now.
Assuming that the software updates haven't slowed it down and that it's been kept clean of dust (which also causes it to throttle itself to avoid overheating).
Silicon doesn't age friend. Heat might degrade circuits and harms processors by thermal deformation. But most electronics are designed to stay well under the temperatures that will harm them with throttling and heat management. So, unless you're incredibly negligent with maintenance or intentionally overclocking, most electronics have a way longer potential life span than people use them for. My 15 year old desktop computer was so beefy when I build it that today it still outperforms this year's off the shelf office units in raw speed and processing power, despite being physically about 12 times larger. It's only recently that new games started to tax it beyond performance goals (60fps at 1080p), but get a lower modest expectation (800p at 30 fps) and suddenly she is back in the game. Only thing I'm missing now is lack of on-board bluetooth connectivity and usb-c ports. Even if I were to build a new one, I bet the old beast could go on as a server for decades more.
That's lovely. When is the last time you bought an electronic device made entirely of silicon including no capacitors, thermal past, electric motors for fans, etc, etc? Electronics may seem permanent, and yes they have an amazing shelf life, but chips do in fact degrade (see solid state ssds), and you're held back by your weakest link.
Ten year old laptop is 2013 (this post seems to be from 2023). That's really not old at all. I use a 17 year old machine and it works great for basic tasks.
17? As in 2007? What are the specs on that thing? You running a lightweight linux distro on it? Surely you have an SSD in there and have upgraded the ram.
It's interesting how light KDE has gotten. It used to be the big, bloated desktop environment that you wouldn't even try using on old hardware. It seems to have traded places with GNOME.
I took out all her parts and determined that the fault was with the power supply and with a wonky pci shield on the wifi card. Replaced the psu and straighten the shield with pliers, reapply thermal compound for fun, and bam, shes back.
Its an i73770k lga1155 socket, with 16g DDR3 RAM. They dont make lga1155 sockets anymore, or DDR3 ram, so I would have been out $1600 to replace the CPU, motherboard, and RAM.
But now, she might have another 5 years in her yet. Im determined to keep her around until she's old enough to vote at least.
Probably, but I wouldn't settle for something that's just more powerful, Id want to spend the money to get higher-end current-gen hardware that will last me another 15 years, including upgrading to a good M.2 drive and better GPU. In AUD Id probably be spending at least $2k.
In fact I still have the birth certificate for my current PC, and I spent $1500 on it in 2012 dollars.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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