Hacker News Reader

I've got this old HP-42s calculator here in front of me, which has no viable upgrade path, and adjusted for inflation it was more expensive than an entry level M1.

I have an HP-67 and an HP-97 as well, neither of which has any upgrade path and they each cost half as much as a new economy car when they came out.

View on HN

They were different products for different tasks, and the fact that they can still be used after decades shows how much they're different from a computer, particularly a modern computer. Today not being able to upgrade the RAM or storage, or having a non replaceable battery can mean halving the life of a product, which in today figures would not be like 15 years instead of 30 but rather 2.5 instead of 5.

I still use an over ten year old Thinkpad as my daily driver. It’s not as dire as all that.

My X240 isn't yet 10 years old, but as of today is among the fastest machines in my house: It literally flies with Debian+XFCE. It's remarkable how long hardware can last if we ditch bloated software.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com