[HN Gopher] How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
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How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)
Author : mgd
Score : 74 points
Date : 2025-01-01 18:38 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (solar.lowtechmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (solar.lowtechmagazine.com)
| robin_reala wrote:
| (2020)
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Yep, saw that too:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36646791
|
| 374 points, 530 comments
| ksec wrote:
| LOL I posted this in the previous thread
|
| > _I am still on my MacBook Pro 2015 because of the Keyboard
| and Trackpad. So in about 2 years time this will be 10 years
| of usage. I dont intend to replace it any time soon. For
| browsing it is fast enough. And if you look at the Louis
| Rossman Channels it seems newer MBP just aren 't built the
| same. It may be worth looking at it again I 2025. How little
| ( or big ) the past 10 years of Laptop has changed._
|
| May be time to look for a new MacBook especially when all of
| them now has 16GB memory by default.
| nottorp wrote:
| Jumping from x86 to arm may be worth it just because of how
| little power it needs. Perhaps you'd like a laptop where
| the fan never [*] turns on enough to be audible and with 20
| hours battery life?
|
| They fixed the keyboard and the trackpad has been good even
| in the emoji keyboard models.
|
| Do get one with 32 Gb ram if you can. You never know what
| you'll want to use it for next year.
|
| [*] Of course, if you compile/run renders etc you may get
| to hear the fan and it won't last 20 hours.
| layer8 wrote:
| The Lunar Lake laptops have reduced the power efficiency
| gap by a lot.
| nottorp wrote:
| CPU wise or whole system wise?
|
| You can play some pretty taxing x86 3d games on my M3 pro
| laptops, in spite of the two layers of emulation. Those
| Lunar Lake laptops would need a GPU for that wouldn't
| they?
|
| Have they in the Wintel world figured out why Apple
| trackpads can actually act like a mouse replacement yet?
| 7speter wrote:
| The Lunar Lake SoC has a few (4 iirc) Battlemage GPU
| cores.
| layer8 wrote:
| Whole-system wise (they roughly doubled the battery life
| over the previous generation [0]), and the Intel SoCs
| have reasonably powerful integrated GPUs.
|
| I'm not a laptop user myself and don't consider even
| Apple trackpads (I actually own one of their desktop
| trackpads) anywhere close to a viable mouse replacement,
| so no further comment on that.
|
| [0] e.g. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/first-
| intel-lunar-lake...
| nottorp wrote:
| Well you clearly can't play first person shooters even on
| Apple's trackpads, but every time I switch to an x86 one
| the control is more ... approximate.
|
| On my apple laptops i've succesfully played stuff like
| Minecraft or Path of Exile without a physical mouse. And
| never missed a mouse while doing software development.
|
| > reasonably powerful integrated GPUs.
|
| Path of Exile is anything but reasonable to the GPU. And
| on an older M2 mac mini I was lucky to get 20-25 fps.
| However, the M3 pro on my laptop can mostly run it at 60,
| to my complete astonishment. Especially considering it's
| a windows application that is ran by x86 wine that is
| translated to arm by rosetta 2...
| ksec wrote:
| >They fixed the keyboard and the trackpad has been good
| even in the emoji keyboard models.
|
| I actually have one with my previous company and they are
| still not as good. New Scissors has a key travel distance
| of 1mm instead of 1.5mm, and trackpad is too large that
| causes false positive compare to zero on my MacBook 2015.
| Was rather hoping Apple to walk back these two thing by
| the time I get a new MacBook for myself. But looks like
| not.
| nottorp wrote:
| Hmm that's probably because you do a direct comparison to
| the 2015.
|
| I made the mistake of getting an emoji keyboard model in
| like 2019 and this new M3 Pro felt like I could breathe
| again :)
| johnea wrote:
| > On the contrary, the only thing a consumer can do to improve
| their laptop's ecological and economic sustainability is to use
| it for as long as possible.
|
| This is true for everything, not just laptops.
|
| Any purchasing that occurrs on a fashion cycle is largly a rip
| off...
| jll29 wrote:
| I believe most people do not WANT a new device, as getting used
| to new ways and new quirks is a unproductive distraction.
|
| For instance, I would pay a lot to get my BlackBerry back,
| screw all that app bloarware nonsense. Fast email, phone, a
| good keyboard and long battery life, that is a winning
| combination, from a user's perspective. (And I actually prefer
| devices with no camera or microphone in it, for security
| reasons.)
| bluGill wrote:
| That depends on what you do. a newer cpu is often enough more
| efficent per unit of work as to pay for itself. I first
| calculated this when we were arguing if the price of a 80486
| was worth it over the cheaper 80386 and if you kept it busy
| 24x7 you would pay for the new computer in a year from your
| electric bill (more in summer when you need ac)
| Jolter wrote:
| The idea of the article is to not run the newer, more
| demanding software which drives the replacement cycle.
| Instead install a lightweight Linux or similar and don't use
| all those extra CPU cycles.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Maybe for OpenBSD. These days I am parano... savvy and prudent
| enough to not trust security swiss-cheese software bare metal,
| and so I box it all up into qubes with Qubes OS. For Qubes, it's
| always best to max out RAM, core count, and GPU count (AI).
| Libreboot laptops don't cut it if you want to run seven isolated
| chat/social profiles on seven separate VPN/Tor connections while
| also running LM Studio in an offline GPU-passed qube, to
| obfuscate cross-profile lexical correlations.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > seven isolated chat/social profiles on seven separate VPN/Tor
| connections
|
| Bravo for you, but surely you realize that almost nobody does
| this? Hardly relevant to an article about getting some more
| useful life out of an old laptop.
| devops99 wrote:
| You actually don't have to dig too hard to find places where
| hundreds if not thousands of people are doing exactly this.
| terramoto wrote:
| Still, hardly relevant to an article about getting some
| more useful life out of an old laptop.
|
| Its like saying, not good enough for video editing 8k.
| devops99 wrote:
| In response to the comment further above (so not just the
| article), outbound network path management is not
| uncommon. However we often see it presumed to be uncommon
| by those who haven't thought of it, or have thought of it
| but the ability to do it is out of their reach.
|
| Qubes makes outbound network path management easy enough
| but it's not too hard to do on Linux and FreeBSD, so it
| can also be done on machines with modest compute
| resources (which may or may not be subject to the machine
| being an older machine) as well.
| geek_at wrote:
| Use refurbed when possible. But obviously the "don't buy new"
| incentive only scales to a hard limit
| RajT88 wrote:
| I picked up a few years ago a refurb Dell for a little over 200
| USD (with shipping 215).
|
| It is one of those big beasts with a number pad and decent GPU.
| I use it as a gaming PC. I was just last night playing Dead
| Island Riptide with default settings. It is probably the best
| computer purchase I have ever made.
|
| My advice: keep an eye out for Dell refurb deals on
| slickdeals.com. They occasionally have half-off deals, which is
| what I scored.
| morningsam wrote:
| >I grumpily ordered a replacement key for 15 euros.
|
| A single key for 15EUR?! I remember ordering one from an online
| shop specialized in replacement laptop keys at some point in the
| 2010s and it was like 2EUR total. Browsing through similar shops
| now, it seems like the minimum is 5EUR per key nowadays, but
| still a far cry from 15EUR.
|
| >After spending more than 100 euros on plastic keys, which would
| soon break again, I calculated that my keyboard had 90 keys and
| that replacing them all just once would cost me 1,350 euros.
|
| Someone who breaks keys this often could just buy the whole
| keyboard assembly FRU for ~30-50EUR and take spare keys out of
| that, assuming it's not always the same ones that break.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Even if it is, most of the keys are interchangeable. Your
| fingers don't care that the M key has an N on it.
| mbreese wrote:
| With my mechanical keyboard, I have had a tendency to break a
| few (specific) keys. I got around it by 3D printing a few
| blank keys.
|
| So long as I know where the N and M keys are, that's all that
| matters :)
| linsomniac wrote:
| I used to be a Thinkpad die-hard (including both IBM and
| Lenovo), and as you say the full replacement keyboard was like
| $30US. And after replacing the keyboard, which I seemed to need
| to do every 3-ish years, it felt like a new laptop! Plus, the
| replacement would only take ~5-15 minutes.
|
| Unlike my daughter's friend's Dell, where basically everything
| had to come out of the laptop to get at the keyboard (battery,
| speakers, motherboard, etc), AND it was plastic-riveted down. I
| must have spent 2-4 hours replacing it, because I had to do it
| twice (for reasons I don't remember).
| Joeboy wrote:
| I presume, with Windows 10 support ending this year, there's
| going to be a glut of used laptops.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| This will be an interesting one to observe; will Canonical and
| others be able to capitalize on the Microsoft FUD around secure
| boot to convert users?
|
| Alternatively, can the community come up with some interesting
| uses for all the machines?
| binkHN wrote:
| > Alternatively, can the community come up with some
| interesting uses for all the machines?
|
| Google has targeted this model with ChromeOS Flex.
| mossTechnician wrote:
| One common suggestion I've seen: convert your old laptop into
| a server.
| nottorp wrote:
| That's all fine when you use the laptop as a typewriter. I keep
| around a 2010 laptop that only has some text editing software on
| it for that exact reason.
|
| Unfortunately, with the advent of soldered ram and storage, this
| isn't feasible any more for more taxing uses. Most of the used
| devices will have the default ram and storage and you'll have to
| buy new so you can order the thing with enough resources.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| You can just be an informed consumer and not buy laptops with
| non-replaceable components. Don't give bad products money and
| incentive to keep making more like them.
| BadHumans wrote:
| Before Framework there wasn't a good option if you did
| anything more than office work. Even Framework's offerings
| aren't powerful enough in many ways.
| nottorp wrote:
| I don't think there is any middle ground left between thin
| and portable and all soldered and replaceable components and
| "transportable" instead of "portable".
|
| Gaming like laptops are a no no for me, sorry. And I doubt
| there's anything just slightly larger than a macbook pro but
| with upgradeable components.
| cconcannon wrote:
| Have you considered a Framework laptop? They have 13-inch
| and 16-inch models and are designed to be upgraded.
|
| https://frame.work/
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Do they have 15 hour battery life, run cool and silent
| like my MacBook Air?
|
| The Framework laptop has way too many compromises
|
| https://www.theverge.com/24185827/framework-
| laptop-16-six-mo...
| cconcannon wrote:
| I have the 16" Framework model and I bought it as a
| replacement for my personal 2019 Macbook Pro 16 after the
| Macbook screen died last year. Apple wanted more than
| $700 for a replacement screen. After 17 years of owning
| Powerbooks and Macbooks, I decided to ditch Apple and
| instead buy a laptop that I could repair and upgrade
| easily. I'd compare Framework models to the Macbook Pro
| in terms of battery life and performance. The battery
| life and performance of new Framework builds don't quite
| match the stats for new Macbook Pro models but the
| tradeoff is that the Framework models are less expensive,
| upgradeable, and very closely resemble the portability of
| a Macbook Pro.
|
| They're noticeably bigger and run warmer with less
| battery life than a Macbook Air.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You realize that's not exactly a ringing endorsement
| right? Everything you are stating as a negative has been
| a solved problem for four years.
|
| Portability in terms of weight it might be close. But
| according to the reviews I've seen they run hot and loud.
|
| Because of timing and layovers, I spent an entire day
| going from ATL-LAX-SJC. Not having to worry about battery
| life and actually being able to use it on my lap without
| having to worry about infertility from the heat was a
| godsend.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Other than an incredibly annoying habit of failing to
| sleep when its discrete GPU is awake,
|
| I don't think we can blame Framework for that on their
| own, Microsoft must surely have a contribution to this.
|
| But still, after getting used to apple's offerings I
| don't think I'd like a laptop where you need to check if
| it actually went to sleep instead of just closing the lid
| and moving along.
|
| > They're noticeably bigger and run warmer with less
| battery life than a Macbook Air.
|
| Bigger is fine to a point. Less battery life, same. But
| the heat and noise when you have alternatives that don't
| have the problem...
| zepolen wrote:
| Sure, when it's switched off, which is the only way
| you're getting 15 hours of battery life from a Macbook
| air.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| https://www.techradar.com/computing/macbooks/apple-
| macbook-a...
|
| > The fact that the battery lasted over 14 hours on a
| single charge in our battery life tests again shows just
| how good the 13-inch MacBook Air is for people who want a
| compact laptop they can use almost anywhere.
| nottorp wrote:
| Hah, I was going to say they're an US only thing but I
| opened their web site and they gave me localized pricing
| this time.
|
| Ofc, it's easy to run prices through a converter so I
| wonder where they ship from and where the warranty is
| located...
| em-bee wrote:
| sadly, i'd prefer a size in the middle, a bit larger than
| 13.5 inch. also, i really need a trackpoint and dedicated
| mouse buttons, as i keep triggering the touchpad
| accidentally, so i have to disable at least the tap
| options, if not the whole touchpad alltogether. if
| framework would add some options there i'd consider it.
| nottorp wrote:
| > as i keep triggering the touchpad accidentally
|
| That's the miracle with apple's OS. And I say OS because
| I'm sure it filters out accidental input in software. The
| trackpad is made by whoever makes them for the x86
| laptops too, but I really can't remember when it
| registered a touch when I didn't want it.
|
| (I'm sure it happens occasionally, but not enough to be
| worth keeping track of.)
| scarface_74 wrote:
| In 2025, I expect my laptop to be lightweight, fast, 14
| hours+ on a single charge, silent and run cool.
|
| I care more about all of those features than the replaceable
| parts.
| em-bee wrote:
| the difference between a thinkpad T14 with replaceable RAM
| and SSD and a T14s with soldered RAM and SSD are minimal.
| depending on the specific generation and features, the T14s
| can be heavier than the T14.
|
| i'd accept soldered RAM if it is at least 16GB, (though
| 32GB would be better) because i'd rarely need more than
| that. but a soldered SSD never. that holds my precious
| data, and even if i have a full backup, i do want to be
| able to take out the SSD when the laptop dies, or replace a
| broken or worn out SSD (as i had once). the risk of not
| being able to recover data from a soldered SSD is just not
| worth the few grams saved in weight.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| If you had a full backup, why would you worry about your
| data?
|
| My important documents are synced with cloud storage, my
| photos and videos are synced with iCloud, Google Photos
| and OneDrive.
|
| My code is pushed to a remote git repository.
|
| I can add more external storage. I would be more
| concerned about RAM.
| em-bee wrote:
| a cloud backup for a 2TB disk is too expensive or to
| slow. an offline backup is not automatic and only current
| the moment i run it. a combination of both is more
| complex. an always synced full backup is difficult to
| achieve. it is possible when the only places where i use
| the laptop are at home and at the office. as soon as i
| add traveling and using expensive mobile data my backup
| becomes unreliable or to expensive to maintain or
| restore. in other words, even if i have a full backup, i
| can't always rely on it.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| BackBlaze at $7/month is too expensive?
|
| And when you are traveling you don't keep your important
| documents backed up? What happens if your SSD goes bad?
|
| And if a restore would be inconvenient when you are
| traveling, getting a new laptop and hypothetically
| connecting your SAD wouldn't be?
| em-bee wrote:
| the data storage alone is not the issue. the cost of
| accessing that data is. not every place has unlimited
| fast internet that would allow you to download that much
| data without problems.
|
| with a replaceable SSD i can (and in fact just did a few
| weeks ago) take the SSD from the old laptop and put it
| into the new one. took me 5 minutes.
|
| restoring all that data from the cloud would have cost me
| a few hundred dollars in mobile data fees. or several
| weeks of visiting a restaurant which has free data, but
| would also have racked up a restaurant bill not to
| mention the time that would have been taken away from
| working.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| With BackBlaze you can have them ship you your data on a
| hard drive. They charge you for the hard drive. But if
| you send the hard drive, they refund your money.
| cowboylowrez wrote:
| if you have a backup but can't rely on it, is it really a
| backup?
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Do you work 14 hours in a row?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I travel for work not as much as I use to. But a full day
| on and off planes with layovers can turn into 14 hour
| days.
|
| And that 14 hours turns into 8 going back and forth
| between conference rooms with it powering a USB C
| portable monitor which is getting power and video from
| one USB C cord.
| jmclnx wrote:
| My newest laptop is a Thinkpad W541 with Linux purchased used a
| few of years ago. That is just as good as any new laptop made
| today.
|
| The Old T430 I got from a relative who went to a MAC is also
| quite adequate for daily use. I have NetBSD on it and just
| finished upgrading to 10.1, so this was typed on that T430.
|
| So unless you are a heavy duty gamer or work on complex 3d
| graphics professionally, any recently used laptop will work just
| as well.
| bhouston wrote:
| Hmm... okay...
|
| Why the SD Card thing when you can just use the built-in OS cloud
| syncing capabilities in Windows or MacOS?
|
| Also you can take my M3 MacBook Air 15" from my cold dead hands.
| That laptop is ultra-lite, perfectly quiet, and ultra-fast.
| Wouldn't trade it for a 10 year old laptop.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Old article... 2020. Maybe cloud syncing wasn't suitable for
| that person back then, I'm guessing.
| em-bee wrote:
| cloud syncing a large disk (which today is at least 1TB or
| 2TB, but will grow in the future) won't ever be suitable.
| bhouston wrote:
| Why not? Here in Canada true fiber to the home is available
| in most urban centers at up to 8Gbps speeds. You only make
| small changes usually if you are a normal person so not
| problems at all.
|
| The only issue is cloud costs which are high for 2tbs in
| the cloud at this point.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Not that I concur with the author's choices but they discuss
| why they don't use cloud halfway through the SD card section.
|
| I'd be willing to bet your use cases and goals don't align with
| the author's. Which is fine, but remember the article is about
| why they did not why you must also be the same.
| jancsika wrote:
| If it's someone local or friend-of-a-friend, fine.
|
| But for rando ebay/web: is there some part of the supply chain
| where thousands or tens of thousands of machines hit a single
| point where it's scalable for, say, a software rootkit to
| efficiently be put on them?
|
| E.g., I know universities typically buy a shit-ton of the same
| model. Where do they eventually unload them if they don't end up
| selling through their official used channel? Same for
| police/govt/etc.
|
| I don't think the economics of, say, rooting a bunch of machines
| in the hopes of hacking a big Bitcoin wallet need to even make
| sense. There just needs to be an easy point of access to many
| machines, so that a confidence man can _sell_ some poor schmuck
| on the idea that if they buy a rootkit and install it on all of
| them they 'll make millions in Bitcoins (or whatever).
| asdfasdf1 wrote:
| doubt a bitcoin millionaire is going to bother buying second
| hand hw. For anyone else, just format hdd & reinstall os
| qingcharles wrote:
| You can get some really great laptop bargains on eBay if you dig
| around.
|
| In 2023 I managed to get a barely used 2017 17" HP for $80 that
| runs Windows 11 fantastically and even happily runs some smaller
| LLMs.
|
| A crappy laptop can be totally transformed by swapping out their
| spinning HDD for a super cheap SSD and adding another 8GB of
| cheap RAM.
| parasti wrote:
| Off-topic, but I was far more intrigued by the fact that their
| server runs on solar power and may go offline.
| https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power/
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Thus, this enjoyable line at the bottom:
|
| ''The accessibility of this website depends on the weather in
| Barcelona, Spain''
| devops99 wrote:
| Flipping the HAP bit on the Intel ME/AMT on older laptops is less
| difficult, generally (not always). However, with more recent UEFI
| releases containing newer Intel ME/AMT payloads, the HAP bit is
| benign on these newer releases of Intel ME for all we know.
|
| There is a very dire need to have those with hardware hacking
| skills assist the larger freedom software community in
| "liberating" newer machines.
|
| Someone recently got Libreboot running on a ThinkPad T480
| https://ezntek.com/posts/librebooting-the-
| thinkpad-t480-20241207t0933/
| jll29 wrote:
| Great article.
|
| I have had a similarly positive experience with older laptops, in
| particular ThinkPads (x230) and Latitudes (e7460). The older
| machines often also have much better keyboards than more recent
| laptops, IMHO.
|
| As the OP writes, swapping out HDD for SSD (1 usually prefer at
| least 1 TB) and maxing out RAM are affordable things that you
| won't regret.
| jerome-jh wrote:
| On my side I prefer Dell Latitudes and Fujitsu Siemens, which
| only makes "professional" laptops. I agree with the keyboards,
| however really good keyboards have totally disappeared now.
|
| That said a used laptop is perfect for web browsing, office
| stuff, casual development and light gaming. When it dies you
| have no regrets. It is almost 20 years I have not bought a new
| laptop. Of course my kids have used laptops too. At some point
| they had Fujitsu Siemens with a Wacom stylus/digitizer. I do
| not think they still make those. They were rock solid and quite
| fun to use.
|
| I only buy new laptops for my wife. She is very careful with
| her stuff, they last ages. I bought her a new one recently only
| to offer her a better screen.
| Jgrubb wrote:
| Unless it's a Mac ofc
| begueradj wrote:
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36646791, 530 comments
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486191, 279 comments
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674830, 111 comments
| jjkaczor wrote:
| ... well... this is all good except... if you use Windows and
| want to upgrade to Windows 11... am currently fighting with a
| Lenovo W530 from 2013 - and nothing is working "well", even the
| recent 2024 Win 11 IoT Enterprise release build that can make
| TPM/etc optional via a Rufus-created USB stick.
|
| And then testing newer Linux distros is also not working with the
| nVidia K2000M discrete graphics system.
|
| Am thinking it may be time to give-up, harvest the RAM, the SSD's
| and the screen and recycle the rest of this one...
| Jolter wrote:
| I can't tell if you read the article. The idea is to not use
| resource demanding operating systems but stay on some
| lightweight alternative like a particular Linux distribution.
|
| So how to get Windows 11 running seems entirely off topic.
| sourraspberry wrote:
| Spent like $2000 NZD on a new XPS 13 to replace my old XPS 13
| from ~2017 - a device I loved. The new one was a piece of hot
| garbage. Overheat and throttled playing League of Legends - a
| game that has ran adequately on every other piece of hardware
| I've owned since 2011?
|
| I couldn't understand how a 2022 device would run so much worse
| than 2017 device and assumed it was faulty. Returned, given a
| replacement, same issue. It is quite literally not built to hand
| the heat from the Intel chip doing very minimal stuff. I refuse
| to use a laptop that sounds like a jet engine when Microsoft is
| doing basic background stuff.
|
| Returned and ended up buying a used 15 inch T-type Thinkpad with
| an AMD chip recommended by Reddit for $500 NZD. Runs great, cool,
| and quiet. It's much bigger and bulkier that the Dell but I don't
| mind.
|
| Note: Not a Thinkpad fanboy, work has given me an X1 Carbon that
| I dislike for the same reasons I didn't like the new XPS 13 -
| it's useable, but it's still much hotter and louder than I would
| like.
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| That brings back memories of me using an XPS 13. In theory it
| was a great notebook, but in real world it has lots of annoying
| issues. I then bough a Macbook and never looked back.
| econ wrote:
| My imagination produced a product with the worse possible build
| quality but with various tiers of replacement parts.
|
| Say you buy the laptop with a crude 3d printed case and when new
| money comes in you buy the titanium case. Spending the weekend
| swapping the parts over is a bonus.
|
| It should be modular but extra crappy. 2 GB memory is a lot.
|
| Ideally go full ship of theseus.
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| I never buy new laptops, and I always put linux on the ones I do
| buy. My only issues have been running the more resource intensive
| applications I needed to run as a student, and the fact that the
| university expects you to be running windows. But as an everyday
| machine a used/refurbished laptop is the way to go.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Aren't you kind of burying the lede?
|
| You had a laptop that didn't meet your needs?
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| No the laptops met my needs perfectly. They were cheap, and
| they ran fully up to date operating systems and the latest
| software. The issues with the university are issues with the
| university.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It was an "issue" with the college that they expected you
| to use the operating system used by probably 80% of the
| population when you were in college (now 74%) instead of
| catering to one used by less than 5%?
|
| Or that it didn't run it well?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I gladly buy lots of used things but laptops aren't one of them.
| The reason is that, at least from my experience, laptops only
| last between 5-8 years before they become more trouble than they
| are worth (either they become too slow as was the case with my
| previous Macbook or they stop working for some unknown reason, or
| the battery life sucks). I've also noticed laptops get beat up
| easily -- the vast majority of used Macbooks have dings.
|
| What I do instead is buy a moderately powerful new one and just
| use it until it dies -- I don't upgrade before the laptop is
| truly dead.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Hm, odd that, the newest laptop I have here is from 2016 and
| with that just past your threshold. It works just fine,
| performance is no problem, the battery holds for around 5-6
| hours. Maybe it helps to say I a) don't buy Apple products and
| b) only use Linux? Nearly all my laptops are Thinkpads, all of
| them run Debian in some form or other. From the ancient (T23)
| through the old (T42p) to the relatively modern (P50), all of
| them work for their intended purposes. They are built to last,
| if something breaks it is easy to fix but things rarely break.
| The batteries are easily replaceable, the same goes for the
| keyboards.
|
| In other words it is more than possible to use laptops beyond
| those 8 years as long as you buy the right ones. Performance is
| fine as long as you run the right software, i.e. not software
| made by a hardware vendor who depends on a regular replacement
| cycle.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Well, I haven't always bought Apple Products. My first laptop
| was a Toshiba and it lasted five years. Then I bought a used
| Thinkpad, I can't remember the model now but it only lasted
| about three years. My next computer was a thinkpad, I think a
| T203 or something like that, and it died after five years
| also (just stopped booting).
|
| I also installed Linux on them too and the battery life was
| not great either. I could be an outlier but I've not had good
| experience with Thinkpads even though I liked them. My older
| Macbook actually lasted the longest.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| I never bought any Apple products but did get two items
| gifted over the years due to seemingly standard defects
| which render them inoperable: a 'late 2009' 27" iMac with
| an inoperable video card (a standard defect in these
| things) which I made operable again by toasting it for 5
| minutes and a 2011 Macbook Air with a broken keyboard (
| _qwertyuio_ keys dead, again a standard defect in these
| things). To fix the latter I 'll have to get an new
| keyboard, rip out the old one - which Apple in all its
| financial wisdom riveted down with some 30-odd tiny rivets
| so as to make it more difficult to economically replace the
| thing - and screw in a new one. I'm not yet clear on
| whether I'll go so far to revive the thing but the level of
| planned obsolescence in Apple products is quite disgusting
| to me, seasoned user of previously owned hardware.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I'd have four concerns with such an old laptop:
|
| 1. Lack of USB-C ports means I wouldn't be able to safely use any
| USB-C only peripherals (since the USB spec explicitly bans
| adapters in that direction)
|
| 2. Lack of security updates for firmware, microcode, etc.
|
| 3. Hard to find replacement batteries from reputable sources
|
| 4. The CPU and memory requirements of software are steadily
| increasing
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Every new laptop I've touched in the last few years just makes me
| more sure of my decision to ride out this thinkpad from 2013
| until the poor quad core can't keep up with the web.
|
| It's had no failures at all in its life apart from the battery.
| My two year old work laptop went in the trash after its USB ports
| all died.
|
| This thing has been around the planet twice and it just keeps
| going.
| tgma wrote:
| I understand doing this in extreme poverty or for nerds who just
| enjoy doing that, but for a professional, it is unwise.
| Especially ironic this article is from 2020 when M1 was launched
| and now laptops, both Qualcomm and Apple ones, are leaps and
| bounds better than before. Not surprisingly the author is quoting
| prices in Euros, which is pretty much synonymous with "extreme
| poverty" I mentioned before :)
| unicornporn wrote:
| > the author is quoting prices in Euros, which is pretty much
| synonymous with "extreme poverty" I mentioned before :)
|
| Care to elaborate?
|
| > Especially ironic this article is from 2020 when M1 was
| launched and now laptops, both Qualcomm and Apple ones, are
| leaps and bounds better than before.
|
| Something tells me you haven't quite grasped the blog post or
| what LOW-TECH MAGAZINE is about. https://permacomputing.net
| cowboylowrez wrote:
| Yeah, the guy griped about replacing keys at 15(?) eu whatever
| so I get where he's coming from. If you can't afford 2
| keyboards worth of replacement keys then it places you in
| certain economic tiers. If your laptop use is personally very
| profitable for you then it absolutely makes sense to go first
| class.
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