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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

One of the interesting developments over the past decade is that computers remain usable for much longer than they used to, unless you are a gamer or need to do heavy programming work.

My 2011 Macbook Pro is still perfectly usable for everything a normal person would want to do with a computer. So is my parents' 2012(?) Mac Mini. I just bumped the RAM up to 8GB on both of those computers and they are just fine for web browsing, word processing, and HD video playback.

I suspect that Apple's problem selling iPads is related to this -- my iPad Air 2 is never noticeably slow doing any task, and I know people with pre-Air iPads who are perfectly happy with them. These are people who have plenty of money to buy a new iPad and would do so if theirs felt slow; they just don't notice any drawbacks to using an older one.

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I did most of this year's programming coursework on a garbage HP laptop from 2008. It's not fast, but it's good enough to run Firefox / vi / Eclipse on Lubuntu.

In fact, it's not the computer at all that's making me upgrade - it's the fact that the battery is toast, but I can't get an OEM replacement. I've tried to buy a couple of knockoffs, but they've all been terrible.

Until a month ago my main machine was a 2009 thinkpad. Would still be using it if I hadn't received a 2015 laptop for free.

If it gets the job done buying a newer laptop is just vanity.

I can go back even further. While not useful as a full blown Mac -- i.e. A computer sold by Apple running Mac OS -- my parents still occasionally use my 2006 era Core Duo Mac Mini with 1.5 Gb of RAM. I put Windows 7 on it and they run Office and Chrome on it. It runs surprisingly well. The wifi is crap - 802.11g but it does have Gig-e Ethernet.

> The wifi is crap - 802.11g

Just buy a dual-band 802.11n or 802.11ac USB WiFi adapter, you can buy them for less than $20. [0]

You won't get more than 20MByte/s over USB 2.0, but it should still be a massive improvement over 802.11g.

[0]https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Archer-T4UH-Wireless-Adapter/...

> I just bumped the RAM up to 8GB on both of those computers and they are just fine for web browsing, word processing, and HD video playback.

My notebook is also from 2012 and still going strong. I just deeply regret getting one with soldered-on RAM and no expansion slot. 4GB is still enough for productivity work, but games could use more.

I doubt my coworkers who are using macmini's would say that they regularly complain about the slow speed

I'm on a 2011 Thinkpad T420, which is similarly still more than powerful enough for everyday use. 320GB traditional HDD, 4GB RAM, still gets 5-6 hours of battery life. Built like the proverbial masonry outhouse.

Wow, I'm on my second battery for my T430s and about to replace it soon. Battery life is < 1 hour, even with a new one I usually wouldn't get more than three hours. :-(

I'm on a T430s too and battery life is still quite good after nearly four years on the first one (I foolishly had it plugged in most of the time which has brought the capacity down to about 80%). I gave it an additional battery in the Ultra Bay that extends overall battery life to over nearly 5 hours of light use under Linux.

Well, I bought it refurbed about a year ago, it's very likely they replaced the battery at some point.

I agree. I think the iPad is the best proof that accusing Apple of programmed obsolence is mostly a conspiracy theory. Hell this article is, too

What? iPad Air 2 is slow as hell in many websites and always when using more than one application. I recently had to buy a laptop just because doing any kind of work was really slow on the Air 2.

Might just be running low on storage, which tends to slow things down...

I don't know, I'm perfectly happy with my iPad Air 1. It's not as fast as my fancy laptop, but it doesn't have to be. It's a very pleasant web-browsing device.

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