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To me, it looks sad and in pain and later happy, but still in pain.
That’s what I’m seeing too. It hurts, but he’s glad to have the sense of purpose.
My 2012 desktop PC died the other day.
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.
My laptop will be old enough to vote next year
I’m pretty sure you could get a full brand new desktop that is more powerful for much less than $1600…
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.
Windows Laptop: “Sure, no problem, just let me install all these updates first. Why don’t you go ahead and create a Microsoft account?”
This is one benefit of still using Windows 7
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 a ThinkPad T61 running Gentoo. I upgraded it to 4GB of RAM and an SSD. Works fine with 10 browser tabs and youtube
linux on an ssd without a DE goes hard as fuck on anything that has no beans in it what so ever.
WM are the shit.
I can run KDE just fine on a ThinkPad T61 from 2007
probably? Kde is a little spicy, but i’d be surprised if it wasn’t usable to be honest.
I mean it’s not like I have a choice. If I stop using KDE then Konqi will come to my house at night and kill me in my sleep. I’ve sold my soul to them
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 have a couple of 11-12 release year thinkpads, they’re super capable, not productivity monsters, but they’re fine.
look at the laptop, he’s so happy.
Just enjoying the tunes, and the light workload, content as can be.
My Mac mini serving as a movie server for nine years after retirement. If the movie starts stuttering back out and go back in, works every time.
2008 mbp still working well as my plex server! Ssd really helped it come back to life.
Nice! Mine developed a boot loop error of some kind years ago and never came back. Otherwise, those original Aluminum unibody systems are tanks.
Next month is my desktops CPU model’s 10th birthmonth. Still my default computer.
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.
i had a q9xxx on an x38. i had it overclocked to keep up and it did no sweat for a good while there.
by the time i sold it an old computer collector was buying it from me hahaha.
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.
“By the time you see it on the shelf, it’s already obsolete“
I ‘member
It’s all about the pentiums, baby!
One hit 12 before I retired it… and now it’s a network file and web server.
Yup. My old gaming rig is now quietly humming away in the basement as my dedicated media server.
My notebook is 8 years old. It was a gaming beast when I got it, now it’s not great on most modern releases(1060). It still works really good to be honest, I just stopped using once I got a good desktop computer.
Heyo yee old laptop gang. I have a 2011 MacBook Pro that I slapped more ram and a SSD into and it works amazingly. I don’t use it for games anymore (I bought it to install Windows and play games) but it handles like 60k photos wonderfully.
I did that with a 2010 17” MacBook Pro. It had Windows for games and Mac OSX when I wanted a reliable computer. Finally died on me in ~2022 but otherwise was doing fine. I switched to a tower for games in 2018 and now my friend and I(mostly my far more savvy friend) and working out how to make Linux work reliably because Windows is…ya know.
I read about this from people like you, but I did NOT have the same experience.
I recently upgraded a 2011 Pro Macbook with new RAM, and a new battery. I am furious at myself for even wasting the money to do that in the first place.
The battery, even when brand new from iFixit, barely lasted an hour or two on Youtube while I am at work. Two videos around 15-20 minutes, medium brightness, 720p, and the damn thing barely lasted those two videos. God forbid I want to use it for anything after those!
I’m assuming it was because the CPU is way way power hungry, which is okay, but DEFINITELY not usable in real situations. My main point is that my side of this situation was not at all good, and to not waste your money!
Replacing the spinning disk hard drive with an ssd will give you a significant increase in battery life. And it’ll also make the machine wildly faster on all tasks that aren’t cpu intensive
The battery, even when brand new from iFixit, barely lasted an hour or two on Youtube while I am at work. Two videos around 15-20 minutes, medium brightness, 720p, and the damn thing barely lasted those two videos.
googles
This is a discussion from back when they came out, and it sounds like two hours is maybe about right.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2789298?sortBy=best
Maybe get a 100Wh USB-C power bank? It sounds like you can get USB-C-to-MagSafe adapters.
Wow. Thank you so much for this post! I always thought I was flipping crazy, but it actually makes sense now!
As an aside, I just went ahead and bit the bullet and got a new laptop as I was under the impression the CPU was very power hungry, and that no matter what upgrades I gave it, it would never be “efficient” enough for me to use for what I need a laptop for, which is battery life.
Thank you for helping me understand the issue was always there, and that I should’ve definitely researched more before I bought these upgrades!
Hey just chiming in that I did exactly this on my 2011 i7 MBP (p Probably circa 2018) and had the same experience, terrible battery life on the new battery, MacOS would stutter, etc. Not worth it. Interesting to read that that’s all we should’ve expected!
Jesus, that’s a terrible experience!
I actually am on my original battery, it only has like 25 or 30 cycles because I only used it to play games so it was always plugged in. Before I installed the SSD, I tested the battery and got through 1.75 playthroughs* of Beetlejuice on full brightness!
The model I have is the early 2011, so it’s got an ancient i7 and a dedicated GPU. On the most recent OSX version it’ll take, the GPU doesn’t appear to be working though… which is fine, because I just use it to browse stuff and store a million pictures.
I’ve realized, thanks to tal, that I was under the wrong impression and had thought the CPU was just too power hungry. Maybe it is, but it has always had not so good battery life unfortunately.
I have bitten the bullet, and upgraded to a newer laptop. The battery actually lasts multiple days of youtube, plex, and anything else like games I throw at it. I just wanted a laptop I didn’t have to worry about charging unless I got a few uses out of it first! I will always miss the glowing apple on the back of the lid though. That was some good times. :')
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’m weirdly nostalgic about my electronics.
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.
You monster.
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.
need help with is its battery, which probably is degraded a bit by now.
Kingsener is your friend…
Also, if windows bloat is bringing your old friend to its knees, time for linux!
I need a moment to process the fact that Windows 8 was 10 years ago
As it’s been updated over the years with new features the OS has heavier usage on the hardware.
windows skill issue.
Also if it’s still got a hard drive in there chances are it’s dying after 10 years
too bad they soldered those to the motherboard in a ball and grid arrangement type deal, those suck to remove…
This is kind of like buying a car and not changing the oil and tires and being mad when it totals and kills your family on the highway.
It is working just as well as it was 10 years ago
Not if it’s running Windows.
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
Did you just make that up on the spot?
The name to google is “electromigration”.
It’s absolutely not what makes you old computer slow (neither are bad capacitors). But it may be what makes it stop working.
But that is not caused by “every electron” and only happens under very specific conditions.
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.
…maybe lmao
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).
Hello. Why are you French? Thank you!
Or german
Swedish; it’s an ikea commercial from, idk, fifteen or twenty years ago iirc
this comment is fucking brutal dude, i love it.
Hey aren’t you that knife nerd?!
You’ll never pin a single thing on me, copper.
Electronics most certainly age like you or I. A new off the shelf device will perform measurably better than an identical one with 10 years of wear.
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.
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.
Turn your old computer into Lemmy or federated servers.
At least he looks like he’s enjoying making music =)
Far more than comfort, we old men want most to be useful.
I recently resurrected an old desktop computer (linux is great for ding this) I had built in 2009. I upgraded the ram to 8Gb, 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.
FreeTube?
![Elders [Alex Krokus]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fc2ce290-f5ce-4973-8f43-65861afc1737.jpeg){kind=link}