Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades) | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

407 pointsandrecarini291 comments

With all the news about the Apple M2 and the people excited to sunset their couple years old computers, I feel compelled to share my reality (and that of many others outside the HN bubble).

I'm a 27 years old software developer from Brazil. The computer in question was assembled in 2007 from parts that were mostly bought abroad (and then gifted to me) by a wealthier relative that was visiting. That's a key point: the currency exchange rates and the import taxes make electronics out of reach for the common folks.

That was an AMD2+ motherboard, 4GB of DDR2, a 5400 RPM rust spinner, and a Phenom X4 coupled with an ATI 4870.

Although the household was never in a dire situation financially, I had always been taught by example to fix things and keep using them for as long as possible. Even back in elementary school times I would troubleshoot computer issues myself and brush off dust from the components.

Yes, there have been hardware failures since 2007: two HDDs died (about 6 years lifespan for each), the 4870 died (but I extended its life for one more year with the bake-it-in-the-oven trick), one DIMM failure, a PSU blowout and a CPU cooler bracket mechanical failure.

All replacements that had to be purchased would cost me a significant amount of money. HDDs and PSUs were not that expensive, but GPUs were out of reach. When that DIMM died in 2018, I purchased an used and dusty DDR2 replacement kit off AliExpress.

After the pandemic hit and I got my first proper (remote) job in 2020, I splurged and replaced some components: a hand-me-down GPU from a wealthier friend (I had been using the onboard graphics since the 4870 died), an AMD3 motherboard, a Phenom II X4 and some DDR3, all used and from AliExpress.

The monitor, a 22" TFT panel from Samsung, is still kicking since 2007 with a couple of dead pixels. Same goes for the mouse, manufactured by an unknown Chinese brand, and a membrane keyboard that I completely disassembled and scrubbed clean under a running faucet.

Even with my career finally taking off (I'm due to complete undergraduate Computer Science this year) I don't see myself doing major upgrades/purchases any soon.

When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

View on HN

Give yourself extra life. Buy the best tools you can.

Don't let virtues learned by necessity become the vices that suck up your lifetime. You'll never get the time back that you spend working on unimportant projects, sustaining old builds, placating unhappy people, working on slow computers, etc. Unless it's the fastest way for you to deliver whatever good you have to the world, put it aside, especially if you've invested time to get good at tending it. There's no deeper hole to lose your irreplaceable lifetime.

While I agree with the general sentiment, I think this can be nuanced.

By that I mean that always keeping up with the latest and greatest can be overrated, [0] and actually be quite a huge time sink to keep looking for a new computer and / or new parts, compare them, etc. Sure, if you only buy the latest MBP that's easy, since there's not much to choose from. But it is expensive, and it's not always worth it.

I'd been working all through the pandemic lockdowns on an i5-6500 I had saved from the bin at work. Old SATA SSD from ~2012, 16 then 32 GB RAM. Integrated HD graphics (not the newer UHD).

I never felt held back by it, it would chug along nicely through pretty much everything I threw at it. The only thing for which I had to wait around a bit was Rust compilation.

Then at the end of last year, my work laptop was up for renewal. So I spent around a week comparing models, looking up on intel vs amd, etc. In the end, I ended up with a zen 3 model. While the CPU is fast, in my day-to-day I see no difference compared to the old one. It compiles some of my Rust projects almost twice as fast, but it's still not instant, and I don't wait around for full compiles anyway. [1]

Aside from that, Teams, web pages, etc, there's absolutely no difference in perceived performance.

I get that this is less extreme than OP's situation, but I guess the point is that they maybe shouldn't go to the other extreme and upgrade with each new CPU that comes out. I also realize that up until last year or so Intel CPU upgrades didn't bump performance all that much.

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[0] Yes, some people absolutely need the last drop of performance they can squeeze, by even among HN readers, I think those people are not the majority.

[1] Incremental Rust compiles were still somewhat slow on the AMD, but in the meantime I've found out about mold, which speeds things up nicely even on the old machine.

Yes. The post you reply to makes it sound like his author's life is too important not to get the fastest cpu possible. Some people have modest hardware requirements that are satisfied with modest hardware for years. Not everybody compiles or renders.

Pretty good piece of advice. Not that you should never repair anything, but thinking about cost/benefit is worth it.

But how will I signal conspicuous consumption to my Bay Area peers unless I have an M2 and a hoodie with no logos?

Seriously? You're such a hustler that you can't afford maybe 2 hours per month maintaining your house/car/electronics? You can't afford to be self reliant and self sufficient?

People used to write their own Haskell compilers, now they buy stagnant/slow computers as an upgrade.

You have a point, but I don't remember that time when people used to write their own Haskell compilers...

They still do - the rest of us are just lucky that they make them open source so we don't have to write our own :)

Agreed, in that it's not a benefit to hobble yourself with bad tools that hold you back.

But... the worthwhile upgrade cycle has become ever longer. Back in the early 90s it always felt that last years CPU was unimaginably slow. But over the last decade and more, there's hardly a convincing reason to upgrade very often other than marketing or perhaps cutting-edge gaming (don't know much about gaming).

My primary server at home I built in 2010. It runs my zfs file server, many VMs for assorted things and all odds and ends to run the house. I've upgraded a few drives and added some RAM, but still the same hardware mostly. I get the urge to upgrade every now and then, but objectively I can't justify it. It works great and does everything it needs still fast enough.

My personal laptop is a Toshiba I bought also in 2010 but it was used, so I think it might be 2008 or 2009. Dual boot Linux (primary use) and Windows (for some exercise and astrophotography tools). Still runs perfectly fine, zero urge to ugprade it.

My desktop is my newest machine, a 2014 Mac Mini. No urge to upgrade either, it works perfectly.

And in comparison, my work 2020 MacBookPro is a far inferior machine. Fan runs constantly, always overheating. I'm glad that junk machine is not mine, just have to tolerate it for work. I'd feel sick if I'd bought it with my money, so I'm glad I keep my trusty 2014 Mac.

Maybe related in case you are charging the macbook from the left side: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find...

The two right-side USBC ports died entirely. If I plug anything in there, the machine immediately reboots.

So the left-side ports are all that remain in working condition.

This machine is to me the depth of how low Apple quality has fallen.

Have you ever lived south of the USA before?

Shit gets EXPENSIVE out this way for electronics. I mean I can get my groceries extremely cheap and rent hasn't ever been more than 200$/mo, but electronics are all manufactured out of Asia and the supply lines and/or taxes on specifically that just add all this extra cost that's hard to justify in certain cases. We're talking like 50%+ of the cost you'll find in the USA.

I learned programming specifically because my shitty computer from 1999 wasn't good enough to waste all my time playing world of warcraft like my peers, who were too busy playing video games in high school and being well-off to get into programming or getting their dicks sucked. Now they ask me how to get girls or what they need to do to learn programming. It's extremely different here.

If you live in more humid areas you're forced to replace your electronics a lot faster just because they rust like that. There's computers in plywood boxes with an incandescent lightbulb in there just to prevent the humidity from wrecking it kind of level.

Why are the import taxes so high?

Why are multinational companies who rely on slave labors from the mines to the factories selling for so high prices? (And how is it even legal?) That's a rhetorical question of course.

As for the import taxes, i would guess because electronics are a luxury commodity in many places they are taxed as such. When not used as a luxury good for rich kids to play video games, they're used by industry which makes a lot of money so taxing them makes sense.

Remember many places around the world still don't have reliable electricity (if any at all) or internet infrastructure. Some regions don't even want it as they'd rather preserve their eco-friendly way of life than contribute to the crazy show we've been offering them: first invent new problems (eg. electronics in cars or in agriculture) then sell solutions that will create more problems (eg. mining/refining/factory/landfill pollution).

Most times low-tech is the best answer, and i personally would argue the world and the environment would be much better off if IT/electronics industry were highly regulated and taxed, and had strong obligations to make everything 100% recyclable and actually recycled (also: interoperable, repairable, etc).

Wow, I have to say I strongly disagree with every single thing you said.

Video games are a small niche in the universe of technology products. To use them as a justification for classifying all tech as luxury seems, well, extremely stupid and misguided.

I’m surprised you don’t know, but the vast majority of businesses are small businesses with low profits, to act like they have plenty of extra money to spend on heavily taxed goods is ignorant at best. Tech is a productivity multiplier for many businesses, this is not really an arguable point as it is well studied.

By the way, no one is forced to buy tech enabled products (despite the implication in your “crazy show”). People buy tech enabled products over others because they solve their problems better.

And tech products are very low on the list of environmental issues in the world. If the tax was actually structured to promote eco friendly behavior in these countries it’d look wildly different.

You seem to have an axe to grind here but nothing you claim really holds up to a bit of critical thinking. Not sure why an extreme tech pessimist is on HN anyways :)

> Video games are a small niche in the universe of technology products

Sure it's a niche but not a small one. Just like cryptocurrency mining, it certainly drives shortages and high prices. My point is that only such specific applications require brand new hardware: for other usecases the second-hand market (which is dominant in the Global South due to tons of containers shipped full of 2nd-hand equipment leaving Global North shores) is more than enough. So in that sense it makes sense to tax the new hardware.

Even without considering the actual applications, taxing new products is a good incentive to keep existing hardware running, which is much better for the environment (most pollution and energy used in the lifecycle of IT is in production).

> By the way, no one is forced to buy tech enabled products

That's definitely not true. Most people who want a car/truck/tractor want a reliable mechanical device, not a random piece of electronic junk with literally hundreds of microcontrollers who can all fail in mysterious ways and are hard to repair (if possible at all). The movement for the right to repair, which is strong amongst agriculture workers, would explain it better than me.

Also, there's plenty of situations where people are forced into owning IT devices. In raising livestock at least here in France, there's mandatory regulations for chipping all animals and equipping your farm with high-tech. Many public services will not talk to you anymore unless you have an email and cell phone to give them. There's probably plenty of other examples from specific fields: i recall friends working in libraries and hospitals mentioning how their IT tools (imposed on them) are driving them crazy and degrading their quality of work.

> And tech products are very low on the list of environmental issues in the world.

That's definitely not true. Please take a look at the stats before making such a claim. If only by CO2 emissions, IT is a great contributor. If you add industrial pollution, IT is one of the worst industries you can think of due to requiring complex multinational supply chains for mining, refining, assembling hundreds of different materials, and failing to recycle billions of devices.

> Not sure why an extreme tech pessimist is on HN anyways :)

Oh i'm not a pessimist. I just think we should not obscure the dark side in what we do. I hope IT can become a field of human emancipation again (helping people accomplish tasks, instead of controlling them) and we can build 100%-recyclable computers as a priority (instead of aiming for more DPI or more GHz). I'm just really sad about the current state of our trade and how computing is used to both destroy the planet and ruin many people's lives :)

> Just like cryptocurrency mining, it certainly drives shortages and high prices.

The prices for state of the art graphics cards which are only required for mining or gaming are high, but these products actually -subsidize- or lower prices of more generally useful, simpler tech. Please look into the price history of RAM, simple graphics cards (now builtin to many CPUs, which is very economical!) or any other basic computing components.

> Most people who want a car/truck/tractor want a reliable mechanical device

Please find me any source or other evidence that tractors or cars have gotten any less reliable. All studies done indicate the exact opposite of what you are saying. This sounds like a made-up narrative that you happen to want to be true. See: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/cars-reliability-higher-jd-powe...

And I think you are losing track of the original claims you were making about taxes here. For example:

Do the countries in question actually only tax new products, or ALL tech products?

Tech may be a polluter, but again, your claim was that this is what drives the tax policy. Tell me, do these countries tax oil by the same or a greater amount? It's obviously true that environmental concerns _do not_ drive these tax policies.

Are you going to provide an example of tech hardware being used to "control" people? Would love to see some evidence of this outrageous claim.

And I'm really begging you, when you are about to advocate for very high taxes in this area, to consider the effect it has on small businesses.

> Please find me any source or other evidence that tractors or cars have gotten any less reliable

My understanding from friends who work in that industry is that the mechanical parts have gotten more reliable, but cars have gotten less reliable overall due to relying on many micro-controllers and their firmware. I don't find source right now for statistics but i remember reading electronics were ~30% of the price of a new car, and represented the reason for >50% of recalls in the past years in the USA. (I will update with a link when i find the source again)

As for tractors, it's a well-known problem that's been widely discussed on HN regarding John Deere in particular. There's a growing right to repair movement due to the fact manufacturers intentionally make the tractors harder to repair with electronics: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farm...

> Do the countries in question actually only tax new products, or ALL tech products?

Fair question, it would require to take a look at a specific example. In general, i assume taxes mostly apply to new products as the second hand market tends to be undeclared hand-to-hand transactions. For example in France the copyright mafia has imposed private copy "taxes" (technically not a tax, we call it a "redevance" in french) on every second-hand device, but only second-hand shops (eg. backmarket) apply it and >90% of second-hand transactions on markets and platforms like leboncoin are totally unaffected.

> Tell me, do these countries tax oil by the same or a greater amount? It's obviously true that environmental concerns _do not_ drive these tax policies.

I'm not saying that's the reason these taxes exist; i'm saying that's a compelling reason to consider such taxes. As you may know, producing electronics requires tons of coal/oil along the whole industrial process. Also, oil is highly taxed in many countries (including in France where spiking taxes have birthed the gilets jaunes insurrection).

> Are you going to provide an example of tech hardware being used to "control" people?

The NSA/Palantir infrastructure (among others) come to mind. The whole CCTV, facial recognition, and marketing/analytics industry come to mind. Also, bossware solutions whether on your own laptop or dictating work like in Amazon centers. When a facial recognition algorithm gets you to jail, or a bossware algorithm prevents you from peeing on the job because you have to hold the cadence, i'd call that social control without a doubt.

> when you are about to advocate for very high taxes

I'm not advocating for or against taxes. Hell, i'm against money and private property to begin with. I'm simply pointing out that most problems we face today can be solved with less tech not more (lowtech vs bloat), and that tech intended to solve human problems (eg. cars) often end up becoming a radical monopoly doing the exact opposite (see for example Ivan Illich's calculations on cars). I can't help but cringe every time i see a thread about a startup that wants to build automated farms... i really don't to produce more electronics waste just for food, and i certainly don't want electronics garbage seeping into our soils. That's a typical example of an industry trying to invent a problem that's been solved for decades with modern, science-based permaculture techniques.

Hi OP here

The automation thing makes a lot of sense for food if you aren't growing in soil. Farming is HARD work but if we could grow more with less water (even vapor!) in drought stricken areas I fail to see the drawbacks.

As someone who dwells in the jungle I love permaculture and I think it is pretty cool but I also like the idea of solving mass starvation on a large scale. I don't see what is done here with permaculture feeding the world any time soon, but I also don't even buy bananas because I'm sick of seeing the infinite banana tree fields

No income tax

These are usually an attempt to:

1) Reduce the current account deficit (roughly defined as exports revenue minus import costs)

2) Incentivize multinationals to open local factories

3) Incentivize consumers to purchase from local brands instead of foreign competitors

4) Conserve foreign currency reserves for essential operations such as purchasing fuel, materials, or managing the currency value on foreign exchange markets

Lots of Latin America (especially Brazil) still have remnants of import-substitution policies [1], where tariffs on manufactured goods are high to encourage domestic industry. It's one reason Lua was created (in Brazil), because importing customised software from abroad was too expensive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrial...

They tend to have very left-wing/socialist friendly governments, and instead of just building better products locally the governments have decided to just keep you from buying foreign things. Electronics are particularly hard to make and a desirable market, so they tend to have high tariffs or other limitations.

Famously in Brazil they had a very inward facing economy (propped up mainly by the socialist candidate Lula, who was later arrested on fraud charges). But one of the things they did was build a Blackberry factory which was a big deal at the time, however the phones were always years out of date and generally terrible

Restrictions on importing computer hardware and software in Brazil were put in place by the extreme right wing military dictatorship.

Well clearly one of you is wrong, but neither of you provided anything to prove your case. Which is it?

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol%C3%ADtica_Nacional_de_Info...

- The law is from 1984

- Military dictatorship ended in 1985

- First election post-dictatorship happened in 1989

- Lula, the first left-wing president post-dictatorship, was elected for the first time in 2002

There we go, thanks!

For the record, given that the parent poster believes that "later arrested on fraud charges" is relevant to the conversation, I feel compelled to mention some important details that were left out:

- Brazilian Supreme Federal Court annulled all the cases brought against Lula because the judge overseeing those cases (Moro) was found to be biased and have violated due process [1][2][3]. Leaked conversations from Telegram revealed that the judge and the prosecution were actually working together and conspired with the explicit goal to put Lula in jail.

- UN human rights commission also concluded that due process was violated [4].

- Lula was found guilty and arrested before the 2018 election. He was either leading the polls or a close 2nd. Judge Moro responsible for the sentence that blocked him from running and removed the main adversary for Bolsonaro was later offered the position of Minister of Justice for the Bolsonaro administration, which he accepted.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_In%C3%A1cio_Lula_da_Silva... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-supreme-court-... [3] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210625-brazil-judge-... [4] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/brazil-crimi...

It's interesting and very sad how all the comments seem to ignore completely the positive impact of repairing on the environment :(

No wonder why we are in such a bad situation now.

For me, this is one of the main (subconscious) reasons why I stick with old tech for as long as I can. It is really frustrating to imagine a computer I would "throw away" to literally land on a landfill and rot there. In reality, this is not quite how it goes -- some parts get recycled; students in my country (Estonia) are currently refurbishing donated laptops for Ukrainian war refugees, etc.

But there still is a lot of electronic waste in junkyards. Thinking about this always makes me feel like a loser -- because I have neither the skills nor the time (nor even the need, considering that I already have all the necessary gear for daily life!) to repair as much of that stuff as I could. Junk is nasty and embarrassing. We have a lot of junk.

If it's not broken, my stuff goes to ebay.

An advantage to buying better hardware in the first place: it will still be worth enough for someone else to buy it from me.

I sometimes also donate my stuff and repairing issues before. Like my two last laptops

> An advantage to buying better hardware in the first place: it will still be worth enough for someone else to buy it from me.

Yep, a great source of inspiration for this line of thinking: https://forum.thinkpads.com/

Have you read his hardware specs?

I do a lot of things which just wouldn't be possible on his setup at all.

Well there is a difference between "purchase a computer that is good enough for your needs and keep it as long as it's good enough" (which I assume is the case for OP) and (quoting parent comment) "Buy the best tools you can" (which for some people here would mean purchasing a new phone and a new computer every year).

Not very surprising on a tech-focused forum. Most won't bite the hand that feeds them. But look, here we are, you're not alone :)

"Don't let virtues learned by necessity become the vices that suck up your lifetime."

I really like this line. It resonates with me as this quote from Henri Bergson (from memory, can't find exact quote) ~ "tools we use become a burden when the environment that we used them within, no longer exists"

Sadly, this attitude is endemic; the only goal in life is to make things as easy as possible for yourself, rather than leave things in a better state than you found them. You might be giving yourself "extra life" (the massive assumption being that repairing and reusing tools is a net negative timesink rather than a positive pleasure) but you're taking life from the people at the other end of your supply chain.

That's a weird sentiment.

Without the investment of early adopters the hardware would not be as cheap or as good as it is right now.

Also no one throws older hardware away.

People literally throw old hardware in the bin where I'm from

I literally have 2 laptops, 1 tablet and 1 desktop computer at home that friends/family gave to me because they were about to throw it away. Why? Because they were too slow, ie, for some reason windows was something something. After an OS reinstall, I'll give them away to whomever need them.

I wish people didn't throw working hardware in the bin, but in my country (France) and social circles (middle class), people definitely do.

In your example though they gave it away, to you ;)

I tend to look for yesteryear's best tools, not today's. Proven track record, initial flaws have been documented or corrected, and usually only half the price of this year's new thing.

I've a different view on this, which comes more and more relevant with pollution and climate changes. It's to consume for things you really need and minimize your environmental footprint

This may be good advice under very, very specific circumstances, but it's making a lot of specific assumptions that were not stated by the submitter.

For all we know the attachment this has created for this machine may well have enriched its user's life instead, with no practical hindrance for their work and enjoyment of the machine.

If anything, this person felt proud enough of this little triumph that they felt the need to share on HN. (it didn't sound like an "I hate me shitty 15-yo machine" rant to me ... quite the opposite)

I completely disagree with you. First it's really not that hard to replace components in a desktop and second the virtues of reusing components are some of the most valued one in today's world. I mean, global warming is not going to solve by itself right?

Apart from specific needs like gaming and video editing you don't need newer components. What may slow your computer is crappy corporate software, dozens of greedy tabs open, fancy animations on your 4k screen.

But you know what? All this is gone when you use an OS that's does not make high-end components assumptions (i.e. linux). Yeah, you don't need macOS or windows to be a productive programmer.

Edit: added some punctuation

This is predicated on the idea that new computers are meaningfully better, when they generally aren't for most of us.

I want a new computer, but I go shopping and here's what I see:

They don't have any more RAM than they did... 10 years ago. Maybe it's marginally faster RAM on paper.

They run software that used to run in 0.9ms in 0.72ms and no one cares. It's all instant to me.

The graphics got better, but not hugely so. 2015 GPUs still run... everything, unless you have some particular need for VR or something.

I could buy a new computer tonight, but why? To do the same stuff at the same speed?

I'll buy a new computer when they do something new, or something substantially better. I keep thinking that's a few months away, but it never happens.

> They don't have any more RAM than they did... 10 years ago

What do you mean? Today, building a desktop PC with 64GB or even 128GB of RAM on board is affordable. 10 years ago it was 8GB or 16GB at most.

> They run software that used to run in 0.9ms in 0.72ms and no one cares. It's all instant to me.

Maybe that's true for single-core performance, but nowadays you can get a 16-core CPU at home which I think is mindblowing. It's very beneficial for tasks such as compilation or rendering and can save you minutes (and it adds up).

> The graphics got better, but not hugely so. 2015 GPUs still run... everything

In my opinion, the difference between 2015 and 2022 is quite drastic. You can buy a display with an 8K resolution, 4K + 144hz, QD-OLED. All of these make a huge difference and they weren't available or affordable back in 2015. That's only speaking of productivity; for graphics in games, have you seen Unreal Engine 5 demos? And that's just a start of the next generation!

Some time ago I got the advice to buy twice ... first, get the cheapest option that is available (within reason). This allows you to get familiar with whatever you are getting into (be it new tools, new hobby equipment, cars ... basically everything). Then, once the cheapest option breaks or just is not good enough anymore, spend the money and get the best thing you can afford.

Often times I found that the cheap option is perfectly reasonable (e.g. a 500€ cordless screwdriver is not 5x as good as a 100€ one), saving me money in the long run. Other times I quickly outgrow the cheap option, but the experience on the cheap model makes me appreciate the expensive option more (e.g. going from a 150€ Ender 3 to a 2000€ Voron 2.1).

Buy twice, once cheap, then good ... I'll just repeat this advice here :-)

I wish software developers wouldn't commonly take this advice. There's so many inefficient software out there which appears to be done this way just because the developers are always using the latest and greatest hardware that allows them to be unreasonable about resource usage.

This.

Sorry for disagreeing, but you clearly talk this from a privileged point of view.

For some people, buying the best tools is out of question; if they need to choose between feed the family or buy the latest Apple M2 processor, they're choosing to feed the family. For some, the allegedly saved lifetime does not pay the bills.

Of course, you said "buy the best tools you can". It is not wrong, because for some folks the best tool they can buy is none.

I am also brazilian, and we are living a hell of time. Economy is ruined, inflation is getting high, food cost is sky rocketting, and a lot of people are starving (for real). Getting the best tools is clearly way down in the list of priorities in this country.

Remember not everybody have the same conditions than yourself.

There are more ways to deliver whatever good you have to the world than what's in your day job. Embracing frugality, understanding one's tools by digging in and repairing them? That actually sounds rewarding, teachable, memorable. I laud it.

As a Brazilian who later emigrated, I believe you may be underestimating how expensive things can be in a developing country. A nice desktop may cost a year of wages. When I lived in Brazil I could do way more with less, out of necessity.

I agree in principle. However in many situations "buy the best tools you can" is meaningless because one just cannot. Other comments have argued about this better than I'd ever could.

On the other hand, have you consider that maybe it's not the hardware is slow; it's just that the software you are using is just plain bad? Before I had my current desktop which I assembled ~2 years ago, my desktop was a 4790K with 16GB DDR3, which was cutting edge at its time. However it booted up Windows really slowly. After I uninstall the Adobe suite, the boot up time improved by 5 minutes. I haven't been using any Adobe software ever since.

In a similar fashion, when I had my 2011 MBP 15 inch, I once tried PyCharm on it. Guess what, after I fired it up (and waited for the UI to be stable), it needed 30 seconds to react to my first key press.

Of course now most 1st world people have SSDs, but bad software is still a waste of energy (ahem nodejs).

A very honest answer. However each person's reality will dictate what they can do.

I would have kept the same hardware forever too, but for some reason my tools seem to take more and more resources every year.

Silly example is gmail, which loaded in 1s on my 2011 MacBook Pro when new, if it load it again today (I just tried) it takes 35 seconds before I can click anything.

Another might be everyone’s favourite software to hate on: Teams.

On my 2011 MacBook Pro: fans squealing, UI of the OS becomes unresponsive, beachballs. But chat/video software of the era was not so heavy.

What annoys me is that this machine is supposedly faster than yours, (i7, 8GB, SATA SSD) but the capability of the machine has been whittled away over time.

Did the Alpine mail reader stop working with Gmail? I switched to self hosting after Google kicked me out of my account with a broken password reset so I haven't had to switch to a different mail reader.

Gmail supports IMAP (and even POP), so you can use just about any e-mail client with it:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229?hl=en

I believe Gmail requires (or soon will require) authenticating with OAuth2 in order to use IMAP and SMTP. Thunderbird supports it, but I'm not sure about other email clients.

My first iPad, I believe it was the third generation: I would have never used it if it were as slow as it has become today. It also lost some synchronization options, though I don’t recall what it was.

That being said: I kept my 2013 MacBook Pro retina until a few months ago, one year after a battery replacement which ended up breaking other parts and becoming to expensive to fix. Otherwise it ran perfectly fine and the high quality screen was almost on par to current screens.

I’m still using my 2013 MPro Retina as a nice backup computer (when I need to do MacOS things), I refuse to sell it. It had the last good keyboard before the butterfly came along.

> It had the last good keyboard before the butterfly came along.

Wasn't the last of those the 2015 Macbook Pro?

It indeed was the 2015 model. I have an early 2015 MBP sitting in my desk as I’m typing this which I use primarily as a slack machine and it still has the old good keyboard.

Oh my bad then! Still. The retina screen and it still being supported natively is just chefs kiss.

I have the second gen iPad (iPad 2 3G) and I still use it for reading books and comics. The battery is still reasonable for the little usage it sees.

Unfortunately, upgrading to iOS9 makes it utterly unusable so I have it still running iOS8. The only issue is Apple doesn’t let you download older versions of apps unless you’d bought them way back.

I really wish Apple let alternate firmwares on these devices, I would love to run KOReader on my iPad over Linux.

My same iPad was real slow until one day I did a system reset on it and it was good as new. It progressively has slowed down slowly since then, but I haven't installed the same amount of apps on it. It makes a big difference, maybe try it.

I know this isn't your main point, but for GMail there's always "Basic HTML view": https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui

The fact is the normal view used to be very fast even on the hardware of the era. Nowadays normal view has the same functionalities but is much slower even on modern hardware.

My gmail was great on my commodity 2010 Windows laptop until a couple of months ago, and then it suddenly fell off a cliff. I've tried everything I can think of, but I think Google just messed something up and made it at least an order of magnitude slower quite recently.

I used basic view for a while, and didn't miss any of the advanced features. What made me stop was the fact it inserts newlines into messages to keep lines below 70 characters. (I guess this is in line with the RFC, but my recipients didn't like it.)

To be pedantic, the correct URL is technically https://mail.google.com/mail/h/, which then expands in practice to https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/ and then gets the jumble of characters near the end added on which appears to be an everything-compliant cache-busting mechanism. When typing the URL manually the "/" after the "h" is required; "mail.google.com/mail/h" will not work.

You can also use https://mail.google.com/?ui=html

Initially it takes me to a page that asks, "Do you really want to use HTML Gmail?" I need to click "I'd like to use HTML Gmail" button to proceed to HTML Gmail.

Wow, it's insanely fast. Incredible.

They're doing their best to kill it. Last time I checked, they stopped honoring the setting that used to allow you to permanently switch views. Now they always use the default slow view unless you use a specific URL.

In my experience, that's the only sane way to use it even on modern hardware.

yah this is it; software doesn't stand still unless you use old applications. I've read about folks keeping old systems around to use their old licensed software or some other application they know the ins-and-outs of and can get stuff done on it without having to break their mental model of the application behavior each upgrade with all the UI scramble and revamping. I'm starting to get a dose of that myself with some applications I keep running.

Rather than keeping old systems around (though we do that too, still having 486 systems running), we keep diskless version of old OS versions around, complete with installed applications (IDEs, compilers etc). Anything from WinXP to Win10 works fine over iSCSI (presumably 11 does too), DOS using etherboot and MSNET, and diskless linux has never been a challenge.

Very true. Reminds me of a video by Luke Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7lG4bont7g&t=7

>Gmail

I feel the early-00s PC I had at the time gmail came out would explode and kill everyone in the room with shrapnel if I tried opening gmail with it now, while remarkably, the 2005 (?) version had all the features I ever cared about

That seems strange. I run multiple older computers, Core 2 Duo CPUS, 4GB RAM, cheapest possible SSD. They load gmail fine in about 5-7 seconds. And I have 67,000+ unread messages and multiple gmail addons installed too. 35 Seconds before you can click on anything seems crazy.

I also find it strange - my Core 2 Duo[1] has 2GB RAM and spinning rust HDD (no SSD) and gmail loads in about 10s.

[1] I'm still using this laptop productively throughout our regular brownouts. It takes a bit of time to boot, but from login window to a completed WindowMaker startup (with a few xterms on startup + wicd app) it takes about a second.

> Silly example is gmail, which loaded in 1s on my 2011 MacBook Pro when new, if it load it again today (I just tried) it takes 35 seconds before I can click anything.

Gmail currently does easily over 50 HTTP requests when loading, and browsers limit the number of connections:

https://docs.pushtechnology.com/cloud/latest/manual/html/des...

The net effect is that you wait at least 8x (but probably much more) your ping to the server for the page to load.

It's sort of a plague in enterprise web apps and stems from the fact that nowadays you have small teams working on independent modules, which do their own requests. Banking apps are the worst offender here.

Also some people are simply unaware of/ignore the issue. The other day I inspected an e-store my friend paid decent money to set up and the first thing that I noticed was that it was firing 200+ requests, because the devs neither bundled nor minified their code.

I thought this was because it was still in development - nope - another store by the same company had the same issues, causing the site to load 12s+ on a good connection, and 30s+ on a 4G simulator.

FYI, I am running Arch on a Macbook Air 2011 and it handles Teams OK ;-)

This. People seem to think their hardware somehow slows down, when in reality their shitty OS just got more bloatet.

Find that hard to believe too.

My laptop since 2017 has been a Dell Precision 5510, (Xeon 1505v6, 32G) running Arch and honestly it's not smooth in the slightest.

Granted, last time I used Teams was 2 years ago, maybe it improved a lot, but the UI lags so hard that it almost bugs out, along with pegging and entire CPU core, sometimes when the program has been on a call but is no longer... Teams should be sitting idle.

While teams is super inefficient, 10 years ago no one was casually streaming 4k with a webcam feed in a remote team session with 2-10 people.

> no one was casually streaming 4k with a webcam feed

aren't most webcams on laptops firmly in the 720p-1080p territory? I know most people receive 480p streams.

I'll grant you that 10 way calls were much less common then, but even now Teams only shows 4(?) of them depending on UI layout.

720p as webcam is very new.

My teams shows up to 8 I think.

This is going to sound like fanboy talk. But both Mac and Windows tend to feel slower and slower over time, each upgrade somehow pushing your 'old hardware' to new limits.

On Linux it's often the opposite and a new update may even makes your old machine faster than it ever was.

gmail just loaded in 1-2s for me.

About 2s here as well.

About your MacBook fans squealing: I had the same problem with my 2012 MacBook Pro. It turned out that the grilles through which the fans blow out the hot air were completely clogged up with dust and the Macbook would overheat.

I cleaned both and now the fans rarely spin up to full speed, because the hot air can actually leave the case again.

See this guide (the guide does not show cleaning the grille, but that is the important part).

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+clean+your+MacBooks+fan+...

I still use my 2011 macbook air, not as a main driver but still quite a bit. I had to put linux using xfce on it for it to actually work in a non painful way, MacOS not being able to update properly was part of it, I did find a way to force the updates since I thought I may use it for iphone dev and still use xcode on it, but it wasn't viable. It's mostly used for web surfing via firefox, and if I run something like gnome or cinnamon it struggles quite a lot more than xfce.

Admirable and well worth sharing. I'm originally from eastern Europe and understand and empathize with the perspective. We get quite the mixture here on HN, from SV perspective on salary and minimum acceptable HW, to more world wide stories :).

That being said, there are many reasons to stick with repairable old equipment, including "it still works".

So while I am not currently computing on anything from 2007 :), I have t420s laptops used on daily basis (February 2011),and my primary main desktop is chugging the amd fx8350 (2012). I use it for gaming, light room and Photoshop no problems! I live in Canada and have good income - but there's genuinely no reason for me to replace these. Like yourself, I've changed and fixed parts - particularly hard drives. But their hearts are still beating strong :).

Never lose that spirit. Buy, run, and maintain what works for you.

I also have a machine from 2007 in regular service, though in a secondary role (file server, etc.), but my daily driver isn't that much newer (2013, still a rust drive). Both machines have generated and continue to generate plenty of productivity and revenue.

I find that a little overbuilding in the right areas, like choosing a first-gen quad core in 2007 (often considered overkill on forums at the time), will greatly help the chances of you creating something that will last.

It's important not to hoard, but there's tremendous value in finding and maintaining quality. The advantage of old things is that you can point survivorship bias in your favor. Buying new, but very selectively with an eye towards 20-100y duty cycles (and maintaining them, like you're doing!) greatly helps in the same way.

I'm a likeminded fellow Brazilian, and I would love to keep my gear forever and never have to deal with choosing and spending on new shit, but software keeps getting worse (slower) and you really feel the difference after a major upgrade.

Last week I got a new iPhone SE 3rd gen to replace my almost-five years old iPhone 8 due to its battery gone wild (76% of original capacity, randomly dropping to 1% from 70~80%). The old one was fine, but it was only when I got the newer that I realized what I was missing — basically, speed. I got used to iPhone 8's sluggishness to the point of not noticing nor caring about it, but when I put my hands onto the newer version, it was like I removed a giant stone from my shoulders — in that context, I mean.

Today Apple announced a newer macOS that I won't be able to install on my 2015 MacBook Pro. A few minutes earlier, they announced a beast of a new computer. So… yeah, I still firmly believe that someone should keep a computer as long as possible, but if it's your tool to get work done, maybe update it once in a while — and, obviously, resell or repurpose the old, still capable one.

Felt similar after my SE(1) to 13 Mini upgrade.

> The old one was fine, but it was only when I got the newer that I realized what I was missing — basically, speed.

Still using an iPhone 5S (from 2013), but mainly for calls, text, mails, maps, gps, and the occasional youtube video and web page. Works fine for my use case. To do real work I use my MBP (also from 2013). I do real work with it, honest!

In every other aspect of my life, I take some pride, and go to some effort, in not spending. I wear clothes till they fall of my back, then they are replaced with hand-me-downs from friends, family or as a last resort, the second hand store. I do this not because I cannot afford it, but out of principle, I don't care about clothes, they are necessary, nothing more.

Cars are the same, driven to death.

We have few cups, plates, knives and forks of the same style, they are all from somewhere else.. never bought.

I have a large collection of old computers that I enjoy playing around with for various reasons, and I have just never been able to throw out a computer that works (or that does not, my wife would interject).

But for my whole computing-life, one thing where I will spend whatever money is available, has been computers, if I can get an improvement in speed, capacity or stability, I will take it. I've spent my days waiting for computers, to watch them while they pick up bytes from tape, while they grind at floppies, and clunk away at harddrives and spin plastic discs, and for nostalgic reasons, I don't hate it entirely, but I don't want that in my daily life anymore, I don't want to waste my hours waiting for computers, unless it's pure retro-recreation (has anyone ever sat down to watch an RS/6000 boot? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7bN1hYqD7Y)

> has anyone ever sat down to watch an RS/6000 boot? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7bN1hYqD7Y

The ridiculously glacial boot, which ended in a system artifcially crippled by license restrictions, not to mention the eye-watering prices, is what killed the commercial Unix industry. They were all like that to some degree, really.

I used to have a dumpster-rescued RS/6000. You could telnet into it with a maximum of three simultaneous sessions, after that you just got a banner saying to buy more licenses. It went back into the dumpster.

Used a i7 3930k with 32GB Ram since 2012 with only upgrading to a 2080 TI from a 750. Did everything it needed to do and more (heavy vfx, editing, nibbling into machine learning) and still was usable for most of the things you threw at it. The board finally gave in after 10 years so I upgraded and the CPU is now framed and hanging above my new workstation. My computing devices all have the names of quake weapons but nothing will ever top - railgun.

For repurposing I often hunt for old broken radios to put a raspi in it and use it as smart speakers with mycroft, spotify connect and airplay connectify. If you get ones from quality brands the speakers are usually still in really good shape and you need nothing more than a small amp to use them. Add some yellow leds for lighting and you have a nice looking smart speaker for 30-40 bucks. I just love the aesthetic https://imgur.com/fZDEEyL

The two greatest problems in computing are: naming things, multithreading, and off-by-one errors. It looks like your comment helps me fix one of them. Computers (or more generally 'machines') in my network tend to be named stupidly, or at the very least uninspiredly. I will choose a pre-existing list of things that suit me, and name everything after them.

Thanks!

I can't recall the last time I threw away a computer. Either I've repurposed or fixed my devices over the years, as you have. A few examples:

- When my partner replaced their desktop, I rebuilt the old one into a NAS. I had to get new hard drives and a SATA port card to make that one work.

- Current main computer is a desktop that I helped my friend build, which I bought back from him in 2013 or 2014 after he upgraded. I've had to replace the power supply and the graphics card; currently it has an RX 580 from 2017.

- Picked up most of my networking gear from my previous job as an IT consultant, including an HP JE008A switch and an old Sonicwall TZ210.

I've also got the IT pack-rat shelf full of equipment that I "might use someday" - a stack of Chromebooks, network switches, graphics cards, various bits and pieces.

The last piece of kit I actually spent real money on was an refurbished Dell R720, which I'm currently using as my VM server. I've added more RAM and drive space to it as I've needed.

I grew up poor. I was raised to use things until they break. Even then, I'll fix them if I can.

I'm still rocking a 2007 custom built desktop w/ an overclocked Intel E8500 Core2Duo. In 2012, I upgraded the hd to an SSD and the GPU with an Nvidia GT640, and converted it into a rock solid Hackintosh.

My other computer is a 2013 15" Macbook Pro with maxed-out specs that was purchased for me by my company.

Both systems are stable and fast to me. My main applications are Firefox, Sublime Text, Xcode, and Iterm2. I don't do gaming or video editing. I dabble with ML via Colab Pro. The only thing I'm unpleased about is the Macbook is about 64°C when it's connected to my Apple Thunderbolt monitor and 2 other monitors, so a laptop cooler is a necessary part of my set up. I wouldn't get rid of this notebook unless I had to, which I will be forced to real soon because Apple won't update the OS (stuck on Big Sur), so Xcode is forever stuck on 13.2.

I'm in California, btw. I haven't used the M1. Besides running cooler, I can't imagine an M1/M2 feeling very much different.

I used to have the same thought, and had the same setup with you. Coding with sublime text, training ML via Colab Pro.

But one day, when I had to render 1.7 GB photoshop file for my work. It was just too different. My 2015 Mac Pro took me 2h15m to render, and Mac Air M1 just 17m.

It's amazing to me that the passively-cooled Macbook Air can do that. Makes me wonder if M1 iPhone/iPad can handle long-running jobs as well. I'm in the process of converting a torch model to Core ML for fun and I'm curious to know whether the ANE on the M1 iPhone/iPad will handle long-running jobs without thermal throttling.

> I'm still rocking a 2007 custom built desktop w/ an overclocked Intel E8500 Core2Duo.

I applaud keeping an old machine going, my main desktop is still a ten year old i7-3770. Still, if we're being honest about it, with an E8500 and the concomitant 8GB memory limit, you're engaged in easy listening at best, not rocking.

Congrats on not contributing to making out planet a giant electronic dumpster!

My first laptop is from 2009 (ouch). It's a Samsung 17"3, with an Intel core duo, something like 4GB RAM and some ATI Radeon GPU. Though I'm not the primary user anymore, it still works well enough (main annoyance in that I broke the W key and never bothered fixing it). The only upgrade I have ever done is replacing the disk with a SSD after it broke (the computer felt from a table). The battery is completely dead now, so it mostly has become a desktop computer (which is fine, it's pretty big anyway, and an external keyboard/mouse are nice too, given the touchpad is shit and the keyboard is a bit broken).

It costed my parents 700€ (I'm in France), so even at the time it was not a very high end computer. It has served me well, and now my wife. I'm thinking of retiring it, maybe transform it into a server by removing the screen and the keyboard.

So I absolutely agree and applaud your effort and think that we should all generally endeavor to use our hardware until it breaks or is completely impossible to work with anymore. However. If you replaced the motherboard, the CPU, the graphics card, and the hard drive, how exactly are you calling this the same computer? Forget "minor upgrades", that's a proper Ship of Theseus - I guess you've got the same case and... some of the RAM? but what else is even left from the original?

The British name for this is the “Trigger’s broom” [1] of computers…

[1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LAh8HryVaeY

“look after your broom” is an old saying road sweeps have handed down for years.

The CPU, GPU and motherboard updates were very recent, about two years ago, and marked the proper end of that cycle.

Although, they still work and have been assembled into an empty case I scavenged, for use by another family member.

I still have a 2008 Mac Pro (tower). At the time it was possible to order the bottom of the line system and add your own memory, video and drives, just like a "normal" PC. I think it cost about $3000 new which was still the most I'd ever paid for a computer. Picked it up from an Apple store. I used it as a home workstation for work and music and a gaming rig by dual booting to windows -- which no longer works. Did a few upgrades, video card, SSD, more memory. It's a dual quad core Xeon, 32gb of ram and 2tb of storage. It's almost 15 years old now and it still runs fine.

Except!

I feel like there's been a lot of forced obsolescence for sure. Things really went downhill like 2-3 years ago. Gradual lack of OS and driver support made it harder to use as a music machine. Boot camp was no longer supported without some crazy firmware hacks that I didn't bother with. I just got an xbox/ps instead. After some combination of OS and driver updates, my firewire audio devices no longer worked. The USB Audio devices I tried were always terrible (keeping the machine from sleeping properly).

It can still mostly log in to iCloud and iMessage, but there are weirdnesses. I did pick up a used firewire interface that does work with this OS (El Capitan).

But I really think the hardware could be made to work on the latest OS with very little effort.

https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...

You can check out:

Cool, I will definitely check that out! Finally time to make sure everything is triple-backed up and wipe it completely and do some experiments. I've actually still been using it as a print and media server but it does burn a lot of watts haha.

I do hate the obsolescence - in my case it's 100% the device vendor's fault. Had some great Firewire interfaces, they worked fine in Mojave, but when that went out of support I couldn't keep it back because I use it as a work machine so I really need to keep on top of security updates. (I still do have an install on an external drive for messing about but it's a lot of friction to jump back into that).

As far as I can tell, literally all the vendor would need to do is re-compile the drivers and sign them. But they just say "Sorry, it's end of life so we won't bother". So my perfectly functional hardware doesn't work on any recent Mac OS or Windows versions anymore...

While this is an admirable perspective, keep things in context. Make sure you aren’t keeping a computer that takes a couple extra seconds on things you do 100s of times a day (eg opening browser tabs, compiling, etc).

If you waste an extra 15 min a day on loading times because you have a 10y old PC, the wasted productive time can add up surprisingly quickly. At the very least, ensure you get those high-value upgrades in (in particular SSD, but also other stuff like semi-modern 4-8 core processor, enough RAM for your tasks)

Am I the only one who sees compiling, loading, etc time as an opportunity to think?

The cycle, for me, is code -> compile -> run -> observe results -> think.

Compiling is in the wrong position in that sequence to merge it with thinking.

I think about what I just coded and what it should do when I run it. A mini review, an opportunity for an “aha!” moment, and to plan the next step.

I realize different context, but I'm curious how many other HNers do the same as me: I haven't had a fully new personal desktop computer since ~2001.

Since I originally built it, it's undergone dozens of upgrades: close to a half dozen motherboards, a few more CPUs, several GPUs, lots of RAM, drives, etc. I think 3 cases, and at least that many power supplies. But it was never all at one time. I definitely did a couple generational upgrades that were nearly everything, but stopped short. There's literally nothing left from the original build.

The parts were always then passed down to other uses: builds for other people, or a server in my basement.

This year, due to a failing motherboard, I did probably the biggest upgrade I've ever done at once; including AMD over to Intel, new case, SATA SSD to NVMe, but still but full: I kept the power supply (I hust bought it a couple months earlier, thinking it was the thing causing me trouble) and GPU (impossible to buy something reasonable).

I haven't bought a new computer for myself since I started working full time in 2012. Since then e-waste computers with a new SSD have been fine for me. I don't even need to upgrade RAM since you can usually find a few identical e-waste computers at once and just fill up the slots on one.

We're in serious "Ship of Theseus" territory here. Personally, I think the moment you switch mainboards, you have a new computer (even if mostly consisting of 'old' parts).

Absolutely -- it's like the PC of Theseus. I'm mixed on the motherboard thing. There's at least one instance where I changed only the motherboard, and so that didn't really feel like a "new" PC.

I think it was AMD AM3 to AM3+, enabled because AMD retained CPU socket compatibility. I needed a new board for another system, so instead of buying a new "old" board, I bought one for my main PC that was still compatible with my existing CPU (Phenom II ?), then used the old board for the other system. I later upgraded to a faster, newer generation CPU.

Agreed, the motherboard is what the computer really is. Maybe if I knew more about ship(building) I would have a similar opinion on the Ship of Theseus.

For what it's worth I believe Windows licensing works on this basis.

The last "new" computer I bought was a laptop in 2011. A 13-inch Macbook Pro with a 2nd gen i7. After that, I've always bought used, as the place where I'm in right now, the people prefer the newest shit, so I happily buy their used laptops for cheaps. Mind you, these are T480 Thinkpads that people are selling for very cheap in order to buy the latest.

My personal machine is the first and only new computer I ever bought: a 2012 Mac book air. I wanted to get a pro but couldn't justify the price. I took it in to get the battery replaced a couple of years ago instead of upgrading, again, I couldn't justify the price. I think I'll probably get the battery replaced again soon as it's started to falter. For the stuff I do in my spare time this machine is totally adequate. I also have the original iPhone SE as my phone which I will probably get refurbished soon instead of getting a new one - all the new phones are too big.

I have a machine given (lent) to me by work though.

> I also have the original iPhone SE as my phone which I will probably get refurbished soon instead of getting a new one - all the new phones are too big.

Have you looked at the iPhone Mini? It is a bit bigger than the original SE but not by much!

I did a size comparison of the 13 mini when I was last in an apple store, and it was like 10mm bigger all around. A small phone by comparison but I like the SE better

The SE is losing support this September with iOS 16

About 1/4" larger in both height and width is more than a bit bigger IMO. I agree that the mini is the closest option right now though.

iPhone 13 Mini has an annoying power (side) button placement: it is almost opposite volume buttons—screenshot is triggered often by accident.

> My personal machine is the first and only new computer I ever bought: a 2012 Mac book air.

This is the single Apple computer that I have fully operational. Anything made under Tim Cook - MBPs, iMac - lasted for up to 4 years before either too expensive to fix hardware failures occurred or Apple artificially slowed down those devices by blocking the ability to install non-newest macOS which made those devices too slow to work efficiently. Every installer from High Sierra to Big Sur starts but in 100% cases shows random errors at the end and fails to finish. Monterey is so slow on the 2017 MBP that the cursor is jumpy even in the installer.

I've had the opposite experience - my 2011 MBP died (due to dodgy graphics chip, logic board was replaced twice and it still died a third time), replaced it with a mid-2015 and it's been super solid. I did finally have to replace the battery last year for like $200 but it's running Monterey like a champ. Still my primary work machine with no signs of giving up yet.

I also have that MacBook Air, fully functional including battery. It has only been used occasionally and lasts for a couple of hours, but nothing has been replaced and it’s still my casual personal laptop (I use another machine for work). I was tempted to get the M1 pro MacBooks, but just can’t make myself replace this one - it’s been so good to me.

The recent Raspberry Pi models (4/400) have the potential to really expand computing globally. They're the first ones that have enough CPU power and RAM to do virtually everything you'd ever want to do with a desktop computer, with the exception of playing the latest games (and perhaps ML? I don't know much about it), but they cost $45 and run from a USB power supply.

It's amazing how much you can do with them.

>with the exception of … perhaps ML? I don't know much about it. It's amazing how much you can do with them.

Indeed. Cloud VMs can fill in the needs unmet by the Pi—the amateur ML hacker generally only needs high performance computing resources infrequently enough that renting them on-demand from cloud providers is an extremely economical solution.

It's out of stock everywhere.

That would be the "potential" part, but I don't think the supply chain problems are limited to the Raspberry Pi.

(Also, it's often in stock, check https://rpilocator.com )

The only fly in the ointment is the lack of SATA or NVMe on the base model. I think there are riser boards out there for that, but it's all very boutique.

While it's true that SATA or NVMe would be ideal, I just recently started booting a Pi 4 straight from a Samsung T7 SSD and it's night and day compared to the SD card even over just USB. I'm sure we'll get to better interfaces one day, but so far I'm very happy regardless.

The USB 2.0 controller seems to be relatively inefficient on the pi 4, or at least the driver is. An RTLSDR dongle uses almost 50% CPU just shovelling samples when it should only use less than 1%.

I wonder how well PXE boot + NFS shares would fare in comparison? Hasn't a lot of the USB stack been pushed into user space in more recent operating systems?

Well, the Ethernet interface is PCI-E, so there's a good chance it would be efficient.

One thing to keep in mind is that USB 3.0 is a completely different independent controller from 2.0. So, just because USB 2.0 sucks doesn't necessarily mean 3.0 does.

It's just unfortunate because you would expect 2.0 to be well optimized by now. I assume the kernel driver must be using the CPU to shovel data from the USB 2.0 controller rather than DMA.

Thank you for your service fellow e-waste reduction brother.

I've been getting my equipment 2nd-hand off of ebay. Recently "upgraded" to an HP fanless mini-pc (Core i5, 16GB) to make more room on my desk. Since Moore's law is practically dead, I didn't see the point in paying ~$800 for a new one when the 5-yr-old scratch-and-dent model was only $135, and any performance difference has been imperceptible under my use cases. I work mostly in the terminal anyway. The previous computer was also more than fast enough, and so was the one before it.

Only "game changer" for me has been the SSD. I will never go back to platters for an interactive machine.

I also have a really outstanding clicky-keys keyboard I picked up on alibaba a long time ago, and it disassembles easily enough for an occasional run through the dishwasher.

That's a very nice lifetime for a build; you should be proud. Though I can't imagine using a 5400 RPM HDD today. 7200 RPM or bust, I'm spoiled…

> When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

Ugh, unfortunately I'm at "throw it away", basically.

My current build, built in 2011, won't stay powered up. It gets anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours (and sometimes days) and then inexplicably power-cycles.

A tech thought it was bad RAM, but the DIMM he pulled checked out under memtest, and removing it doesn't change the symptom.

Given the behavior, it's probably one of the PSU or mobo, the problem is just which. I lack a competent tech or the parts to hot-swap with. The problem with replacing the mobo is that it then causes the replacement of the CPU and RAM, as the sockets for both have since changed. (Unless I find an older mobo, but it's 11 y/o, so probably not.) What with the chip shortage, it's going to be fun to find parts. I'll probably jump to AMD, too.)

The mobo (an ASRock) is not a high quality board for what it should have been, and in addition to the power cycling problem had other flaws since day 1. The PSU impacts the case fans. Newegg regened on the GPU so it never got that. And now it doesn't turn on. I will probably salvage the HDD in it (its on its second), and … I don't really know what else I can take. The DVD drive, I suppose.

I had random freezes and power cycles until... redoing the electric wiring in the house!

My guess is the washing machine, which was down the same line as my office (in addition to our main supply line being extremely undersized), was causing some spikes on the supply voltage.

That's a good find!

I know someone who worked on mainframes with wire wrapped backplanes back in the day. He was the customer support technician sent out when all others failed. One time, he discovered that a customer's reliability problems correlated to folk riding the elevator before and after lunch.

One of the offices at my old employer had terrible power. They relied on UPS with line conditioners for their PCs.

It's possibly just some electrolytic capacitors on the main board or PSU that have gone out of spec or completely failed. Look around for capacitors with a popped out top.

Finding a motherboard with an 11 year old socket shouldn't be hard, unless it was a really obscure socket. Looking up the Intel socket I had in 2011, for example, yields plenty of options on Newegg.

You do realize that the only benefit by having a higher rotational speed is improved rotational latency, right? A 2 terabyte 5400 RPM drive is going to transfer data much faster than a 36 gig 10,000 RPM drive.

I update my system when needed but I always have reasonable good hardware.

SSD/nvm are same defaults for me.

Memory I currently have 48gb in my desktop for running a VM properly.

My last CPU upgrade was necessary when I got a new camera and the raw files grinded Lightroom to a snail.

My keyboards are either full metal base with real cherry MX keys or a expensive ergonomic keyboard also with cherry MX keys.

I sit too long on my device every day to cheap out.

My displays always are at least IPS panels but my current display is already 6 years old. Still IPS with 27" and 1440 resolution.

I think it's good that you can work with your setup and your situation is a little bit harder I guess but make sure that you don't need to wait unreasonably long for your PC doing it's tasks.

And never use a HDD as your main hard disk!

Awesome! My main laptop is still a 2011 Thinkpad X201. It's a beast, been all over the world and dropped countless times but it still works perfectly fine.

It's missing a couple function keys (which I never use) and I finally replaced its battery this year after growing annoyed of having only 30 minutes to an hour of battery life.

I love my little Thinkpad. Keeping up with shiny tech can be fun, but there's also pleasure in using and maintaining your timeworn tools.

What replacement battery do you use? I'm looking for a backup for my X220, but all the aftermarket batteries have terrible reviews and I'm afraid the $90 original Lenovo ones are degraded after 10 years and not worth the money.

I'd love to know too. I have a T530 from 2012. I ordered two replacement batteries from Lenovo's official supplier, and both bricked within a week of use. (Thankfully I was able to return both for full refunds.)

The machine still runs Linux like a champ -- I'd just like a new battery so I don't have to have it plugged into the wall at all times.

If you can't find a suitable source, would it be feasible to replace the cells inside the replacement batteries instead?

Most replacement batteries seem like they use fairly "standard" cells, which aren't all that hard to obtain.

The one I bought doesn't seem to be available any more (and the reviews are gone... strange). But I saw several other ones at similar pricepoints and with similar reviews.

To be frank though, I do not expect this battery to last 10 years. I'll be happy if it maintains its 4-hour charge over the next couple years. If you're operating on that kind of timeline you might be out of luck.

I usually get looked at like an alien when I tell people I repair my phone.

Here, it's usual to just get a new phone every year or two. Usually iPhones of course. As a student, I find it insane to spend 1k+ a year on smartphones.

So in 2018, I decided to buy the Pocophone F1 (360€ at the time) from Xiaomi, recently replaced the battery (15€) just before dropping my phone and cracking my display a few weeks later. I ordered a new screen on AliExpress the same day and it cost me 30€.

I'm planning on using this phone throughout my graduation for at least 2 more years before it'll eventually end up as a raspberry PI alternative for side projects (if it lives that long)

Bom dia, tude bem, andrecarini! :)

Currently I also live in Brazil but I came from another country.

I also realized that in Brazil custom fee + taxes for abroad equipments are too high, a custom fee is 60% (yes, sixty percents!), the reader can look prices for Apple devices in their site for Brazil. When I compare prices between US and Brazil Apple sites, I found that difference is about 100%!

But, you known, there is some options. I asked my Brazilian friends and they said that you can go to Paraguay (especially a city near waterfalls) and buy goods there. It is seems Paraguay don't have a custom fee only taxes. You can use https://www.comprasparaguai.com.br/ to compare prices. Brazilian citizens do not need a visa.

Also, I found that sellers on local Amazon and Mercado Livre also sell goods which are much cheaper, then in officials stores. For some goods prices are about like in US Amazon.

Other options are to travel to other countries, like US, Costa Rica, Ecuador or ask you friends or family members from abroad to buy and to bring to you.

I think the "Paraguayan route" is very-well known to most Brazilians. However, a small FYI since you might not know this: you still have to pay import/customs fees when bringing the purchases from Paraguay into Brazil, so if you do it legally you might save very little money compared to buying domestically. Most people buying from Paraguay are smuggling (or they pay "professional smugglers" to do it for them), and that's where most of the difference lies.

Do you have to pay import/customs fee only when you bring good from Paraguay? What is about other countries? Is there a special regulation or a law?

Any country. This is not specific to Paraguay. Basically you have a personal tax-free allowance (which is pretty low, but I do not know the exact amount) for items brought into the country and everything beyond that has import tax applied, which will vary according to the kind of items you are importing.

This is not different from many (most?) countries, except for the fact that the typical import tax in Brazil is probably way higher than the average country.

https://www.gov.br/receitafederal/pt-br/assuntos/aduana-e-co...

Thanks. Is it only for Brazilian citizens? When I came to Brazil with my equipment and belongings, no one asked me to pay fees.

As I know, the tax-free allowance is about $50 and it works only when a parcel is handled by Correios (the national post), for other logistical companies (like FedEx) you will pay taxes and customs fees (practically once it cost me +100% to the raw price from Amazon US for a parcel below $50).

[I thought a little later] Maybe you mean for orders from international e-commerce stores? Because paying for taxes and customs fees for goods which you bring by your hands in your luggage during traveling by flight sounds really strange. Of course, I mean the realistic amount, not gray import like bringing dozens of iPhones in bags... For example, as I know, in Russia it was about the equivalent of $10000 in cash.

It applies to Brazilian residents and on paper even to visitors: any time foreign goods pass the border. The fact that is inconsistently applied does not mean the law does not exist, so be prepared if they happen to single you out and enforce it.

It is definitely about both mail and your luggage. The link in my previous reply specifically mentions luggage, including a whole FAQ. Tax free limit when entering by air is 500 USD.

May I ask where are you from? I am a bit puzzled by your surprise because I do not know a single country that does not have similar laws. The whole EU has analogous rules, for example (and I live in the EU). Those absolutely apply to your luggage, and also mail. The difference is in implementation details such as what qualifies as personal use, what is the tax-free allowance, and what are the fees. But the concept itself is not something odd that only Brazil does.

I don't speak Portuguese and I use a translator to read it. So maybe it is wrong, but as I found in the link which you mentioned, the tax-free limit is 1000 USD (arrival at the country by air or sea) and 500 USD (arrival in the country by other means of international transport).

My main reason to surprising is the size of the limit. For example, if a person buys a laptop that cost 2000 US, he/she must pay additional fees. Or another situation, when foreign visitors bring their stuff (e.g. MacBook Pro or photo equipment) they also must pay fees. It is weird and awful.

I am from Russia. I am not an expert in import regulations, but as I see tips for travelers, the limit is 10000 USD (50 KG) by air for personal belongings and 500 USD (it is low and it was a surprise for me) by other transports.

In general, the customs fee size in Brazil for hi-tech devices for me looks pretty outdated, because I can see that there are only a few local brands and I don't know but maybe they just use OEM devices from China. And, of course, as I understand, not anyone international computer supplier who does localize their manufacturing in Brazil.

And, as I know, many EU residents when they visit the US buying laptops and phones, because it is cheaper and more models are available :)

You're right about the limit, I have mixed them up. It's 1000 USD when arriving by air or sea and 500 USD when arriving by land. Yes, the amount is pretty low.

Regarding visitors, I believe the fees are not really enforced because you can argue that the goods will not stay in the country and enforcement could hamper tourism. But if someone shows up with two brand new laptops still in the box, they'll probably have some explaining to do in case they're selected for customs checks and want to convince them that they're strictly for personal use and it's not an import.

I still stand behind that such rules are the norm, not the exception. The problem in Brazil is not the rule, but the low limits. Regarding EU residents when visiting the US, very similar import rules still apply but the difference is that (1) the limits are higher, and (2) it's easier to take the things out of the packaging and argue those are your personal belongings that you left EU with [1], and (3) the majority are not checked. But even in EU the fact that you're not caught does not mean that the rule does not exist: when you purchase things abroad and they add up to more than your tax-free limit, you are supposed to walk through the "goods to declare" line before leaving the airport, just like in Brazil.

[1] In Brazil if you want to make this argument you have to report your item to customs when leaving the country and then you get a receipt that you can show on your way back to prove that you left the country with it. If you don't have such receipt, customs can argue the item is new and purchased abroad.

¡Cual cosa mais velha! (What a beautiful thing)

Yeah here in this opposite corner in South America, I'm thinking, older is better a ton of the time. Here (I guess there too) laptops get stolen. They're the number-one target of burglary, of which there is a lot, they take that and that's it. They split. That's all they want. Plus there's this, this vocé and I have in common, which is in these parts, South America, there's this belief the machine is magical, has a little spirit from America that is extra "comerciable" meaning fenceable. Like it's cooler and gives a better thieves's high they get (very common here a lot of people get highs from larcency) because it's an abduction. That ties into the fact these things are exotic and magical because they're not produced or fixed here, because that very same theft makes a fab unthinkable.

> When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

Maybe this is uncommon, but I don’t know of anyone throwing old laptops or computers away! They’re still valuable!

Here are a number of things I’ve done with old laptops and phones:

- sold or given it to a family member

- traded it back through a program which likely resells, refurbishes, or recycles it

- turned it into a server

- sold it to someone on Facebook marketplace or Reddit hardwareswap

- sold to a friend who wanted a gaming PC when I was looking for a laptop

In each case, these computers have gotten a second life while I get a sometimes used and sometimes new device. Using a device forever, while perhaps admirable, isn’t the only way to give a computer a new life :)

Indeed, I may very well upgrade to M2, selling my current MacBook to a family member who will use it for their freelance work.

Clothing most recently, I took about 5 articles of outdoor wear in for repair through a 3rd party and Patagonias service (Patagonia expensive, but I'd have had to pay almost $1000 to replace what they've fixed for me for free over the years)

Tech-wise, my "home server" is a business dell whatever bought second hand, main personal computer came from a startup liquidation, the computer that replaced went to a relative, and I've been able to re-home several routers/modems I saved from other folks apartment cleanouts (though the ones I have left are bumping against isp and speed limitations unfortunately).

I'm also looking forward to buying out my work MacBook for cheap when I get to 3 years, since it's rather beefy.

Also a swe, but in the US

A lot of my 20 years old clothes are in better shape than newish clothes after 10 washes. The build quality is incomparable.

Only industrial clothing seems to be made to last nowadays.

Cool story, but this is going to be the main tool for your craft. You should buy a modern set as soon as you can afford it. You've earned it :)

Personally most of my computers are Ivy Bridge (3rd gen Intel). I do not use anything past that, I do not see any improvements in technology that make it worth upgrading, and there are many annoyances to the new stuff, I don't like USB-C at all. I can still run DOS and Windows XP on a 3rd gen Intel.

I prefer using old 5:4 1280x1024 monitors. I can't stand 16:9 or 16:10. I use three monitors with integrated graphics on an Optiplex. I do not like LED monitors, I prefer CCFL.

My keyboards are PS/2.

The point is all my computer equipment is dirt cheap, and I actually prefer it to the new stuff.

The ATI 4870 is actually kind of a nice GPU.

I have no interest in the M2, however if and when they release the M5 Multitronic Unit, I will definitely have a close look at that one.

My sandy bridge 2600k from 2011 is still perfectly fine for gaming and stuff. I can overclock it easily, but there's not even really a need to.

I did build a new desktop when zen3 came out at the end of 2020, but that was a spare-no-expense splurge on my part a few months after I spent 5 days in the hospital ICU with a surprise heart problem. Because of the supply issues, I didn't get the 5950x until 2021. I finally just got a "new" GPU about a month ago for a reasonable price on eBay, a 6800xt. I used a Corsair PSU from probably 2007. I figure I should be good for another decade!

My daughter is 3 right now. Maybe the 2600k based system will be her first computer in a few years. A step up from the Apple II my dad set up for me!

Until around 2020, I used a 2006-ish Thinkpad T42 for almost everything, including radio program production (warmest greetings to the author of Non DAW [1]!) and occasionally even live recording.

It's a 15" 4:3 model with IPS, Pentium M and my all-time favorite keyboard, so it's not easy to let go. Currently, it works, but the GPU is dying -- a pity, because I would still need that machine to work in WinXP and Avid Pro Tools about twice a year. I can stubbornly use it with Tiny Core Linux in framebuffer mode for lighter tasks and experimentation, though.

I bought that machine in around 2014 for 20€. Really fun to think about that, considering that I used it for years to do pretty much everything that another radio producer had to buy a shiny Macbook Pro for. :)

Probably because of grandparents' influence, I like using all kinds of gear until it stops working or seems irrepairable. I'm not a coder by profession, so my computational needs are really modest. Currently, I am making efforts to use a Dell Mini 9 as a daily driver in framebuffer mode. Interesting macine: 8.9" screen, Intel Atom, but fanless build, thus spookily quiet. Saw it in mint condition for about 20€ a few years ago, and, having recently been inspired by Joey Hess' endeavours [2, 3], I just couldn't resist. I added an anti-glare coating, and now it's actually a joy to use and carry along, especially considering that it is around the size of an A5 writing pad.

I guess I'm just one of those guys who likes to build himself a world where well-chosen tools could live forever. Not anti-progress, but old tools do have a lot of unused potential IMO. (What are the chisels, jack planes and scythes of computer hardware?) It is quite possible that climate warming will be a huge eye-opener for contemporary societies in this regard.

On the other hand: not quite sure, but I think it was Alan Kay who said that by using yesterday's technologies, you're also stuck to solving yesterday's problems. Even those can still be interesting, though.

1: https://non.tuxfamily.org/

2: Link from 2012: https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/

3: https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/xmonad_layouts_for_netbooks/

> When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

In general, I do my best to do that, but when it comes to computers, unfortunately, not so much. My current laptop is barely 3 years old, and I'm replacing it this summer. Fortunately, I'll be replacing it with a Framework laptop, and I hope that my experience with it will involve incremental upgrades for many years to come.

When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, my dad used to bring home computers for work, those destined for the dumpster, even though they were mostly in good working order (but were presumably a few generations out of date for the business). I remember replacing RAM, hard drives, graphics cards, sound cards (remember when those weren't built-in, and were a big deal to even have at all?), ethernet cards, anything that was replaceable. I remember getting my first CD-ROM drive, after begging my parents to help me pay for it.

When I went to college, my dad and I put together a computer from new parts, the first time I'd ever done that. It was a big splurge for us, even with my dad getting the parts at a discount from a friend's company. I upgraded that computer for many years as components wore out.

The 2010s probably brought the beginning of shorter-lived computers for me. Many of them were Apple laptops, which are designed to be user-upgrade-hostile, though I can't single out Apple too much; laptops are just harder to upgrade than desktops.

So I'm hoping that Framework will change this, at least to some extent.

I recently tried to fix the display on an otherwise functioning Lenovo Yoga laptop. It was glued together and I accidentally cracked it. Then I discovered that the display was fine and that the root failure was the mainboard letting out some magic smoke. That sucked because I could have sold the display module had I not broke it...

I've repaired various smartphones over the years. I bought an EVO 4G from a sketchy dude on Craigslist, and it turned out the USB connector was broken off, with part of the PCB missing. I managed to track down the relevant signals elsewhere on the PCB and dead-bugged on a new connector.

I've bought various early generation iPhones and repaired cracked solder joints with a heat gun.

I 3D print replacement pieces for random stuff around the house all the time. Table leg end caps, closet guides, curtain rod bracket stiffeners, etc. My most recent home print was a two-piece exterior vent cover to match the style of the other 50+ year old ones.

That's great! (I mean, not the stuff about the laptop display, but the rest of it.)

It really sucks that the things you describe doing are out of reach for most people. The vast majority of smartphone owners wouldn't know where to start repairing a PCB. The stuff around the house is cool too, but how many people have reasonable/affordable access to a 3D printer? Probably not many. I just wish all of this was more accessible. The kinds of people who would benefit most financially from being able to repair their stuff are often the people who won't have access to the tools required to do it.

I'm still using my i7 860 with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 that I built in 2010. I've replaced hard drives over the years. My current boot drive is a Samsung 860 SSD. Everything else is original including my 4GB DDR3 1600x RAM, 700W PSU,Gigabyte GA-P55A motherboard and Samsung 24" 1920x1200 monitor. I started with Windows 7 Pro, and upgraded to Windows 10. Obviously, the machine is not Windows 11 compatible.

I mainly use the machine for web browsing, light gaming, office software, and hobby programming. I used it as a media server with TV capture cards (cards are still in it) for years until I recently bought a Synology NAS that now hosts my Plex server. The machine has been running 24/7 outside of power outages and occasional periods no one was at home.

It's started having problems with Windows updates causing it to enter a BSOD boot loop. I've had to reinstall the OS a few times and disable automatic updates. I figure my hardware combination is the culprit.

I keep starting the process to replace it with modern hardware but never follow through. I don't know why it's taking me so long to replace it, since I'm not strapped for cash. I think it boils down to that I just don't "need" something better.

Phenom x4 consumes 110watt idle, whereas an Intel Nuc consumes <11watt idle. With usage of nine hours a day, 230 working days a year this amounts to 207kwh which in my country currently costs 108 euro's (power is expensive here yes). New (cheaper) Nuc set costs around 250 euro's. Fancier Nucs cost around 500 to 600 euro. Upgrading to more power efficient devices can earn quite some money back.

Web developers who assume everyone has a MacBook Pro or a phone made in the last 2 years and broadband like them don't give a fuck about folks like OP. They think computers are still "doubling in speed every two years."

That feels old!

I still have my core2duo system, since approximately 2008 - it still runs great and works perfectly. I am mainly running Linux on it as a "build" server for a project.

I also have a J1900 for the past 10 years or so, running a couple VMs on it - not too performant to run major stuff, but works great. I've used this system as my main machine until 2020 (early covid) and upgraded to something way stronger.

I'm a professional iOS developer and I'm still using MBP Pro 2015 model (bought second hand for cheap because of its defective speakers) that is maxed out. Since its speakers are not working, I have to buy a portable JBL3 bluetooth speaker as a replacement. Big Sur is still working fine for my 2015 model but I believe it won't work anymore on Ventura.

I'm going to sunset this laptop next year but for now it is still capable of compiling Xcode projects (both UIKit and SwiftUI). But obviously there are visible slowness when compiling. For example Android Studio is such becoming a memory hog with every release that it is slowly becoming impossible to run Xcode and Android Studio side by side, which I could do with last year's macOS Monterey.

My brother also gave me a Dell 2017 laptop which I can't wait to play with it with my hobby projects and install Linux.

That is why I also make it a choice to only use native apps and not apps compiled using electron. Electron apps on my 2015 model is just accelerating its near death with their abusive memory and battery practices.

> I'm a professional iOS developer and I'm still using MBP Pro 2015 model

Oh how I wish I have saved this model. Instead I bought the MBP 2017 with its garbage keyboard. Apple replaced this keyboard (along with a case which did not need replacement in a new laptop) with the same useless shit.

This was the beginning of the end of Macs for me. That was just too much money for such a huge downgrade. Work on the 2017 model was so inefficient without external keyboard and using trackpad less pleasant with external keyboard that I started looking elsewhere.

Now I'm a ThinkPad user and while things aren't perfect, it's a better work tool than the garbage from Apple. I've been told that Apple finally created usable keyboard later but they lost me as a customer with this 2017 trash. I've seen benchmarks for M1 models. But I'm just not gonna risk it with Apple based on previous experiences.

If I kept the 2015 model, I may have skipped Apple's compulsive urge to make things thinnier and more awkward to use and remained Apple's user.

I said something similar, that I was never going to buy another scissor keyboard and if that meant no more Macs, so be it.

The 2019 and later models have the same old keyboard they should never have stopped using, and you can tell it's just as boring and reliable because no one talks about them failing, since they don't.

Hardware is one thing. Apple forces users into SaaS model by hiding details of security updates and merging them with unwanted UI/UX downgrades.

You can't have secure Apple device without giving up more and more usability and performance over time.

I assure you, if I wanted to be responsible for my own OS upgrades, I'd run Arch like the rest of the 0.05% of the desktop computer world who want to do this.

The 2015 MB Pro may go down in history as the best laptop of all time. I still have mine, just got an official apple store battery refurb because it was swelling, but now it's as good as new! Was working at a startup for 5 years and used it daily with no issues, compiling code and running VM's all day. At the new job I have a new MBP (16", 2019 model, core I9, the M1 was not yet approved by corporate) which is hopefully the last Intel model they're going to make and its garbage. 2 hours of zoom calls and it dies, fans turn on all the time for no reason.

The keyboard is better now though.

I did have the 2008 MBP and I thought that model was fantastic too, I got a 2008 Mac Pro at the same time. I gave away the laptop but the tower is still running. Not sure why 2008 was such a good year for them, but they really got it right. I'd run a 2008 MacBook form factor with a decent linux OS any day.

Yes I am going to hold onto this 2015 model as long as I can. I don't really care if this gets all the Ventura fancy features.

The keyboards are so durable, no matter how many times my 3 year old toddler slaps, throw or play, this machine just doesn't break.

I tried to do this with every laptop I've bought: something that will last and be repairable. Three Dell XPS 13s later I'm buying a Starbook. I hope it'll be the last for a long, long time.

Desktops I've had more luck with - my last one that died did so in November last year. I've replaced it with a Udoo Bolt and I'm hoping to hang on to that for a decade, too.

Thinkpad T430 for me.

Bought a couple for the kids used, in 2015, and they're still going strong, albeit both have had screens, keyboards and fans replaced. But that's the beauty - the replacements are cheap enough to be worthwhile, and you can perform the replacement yourself with basic tools.

It's a shame laptops don't have more standardized modular interfaces, like desktops, so that replacements would be commoditized, and you could mix and match parts.

Meanwhile I'm on my third macbook in the same period (needed for work), due to software support, gpu failure, keyboard failure, etc, all too expensive to bother fixing, and my latest takes 3-4 times as long to start up as the T430s running xubuntu...

Cool story and congratulations on your work.

-------

I gave my 2010 macbook pro to my parents when I got a new one in 2015. They still use it to surf the internet and sometimes for netflix before bedtime. Its battery is so swollen that the lid cannot close anymore.

I also bought apple care but never had any chance to use it. Very impressive for a computer without any hardware failure for 12 years.

Yeah, I would get that battery replaced... if it ruptures, that's a metal-air fire that you do not want your parents to deal with....

That battery is a fire hazard.

The battery is a massive fire hazard. Show them videos of battery fires if they don’t see the point in replacing the battery.

Apple swore up and down that the bloated battery in my 2017 MBP was not a fire hazard. But I just paid $200 to replace it (plus tax!) even though their 'trade-in value' is about $250.

It feels lousy that they charge so much for the battery since this is a safety repair, and arguably caused by the fact that there were insufficient tolerances in the original build. This battery was put in circa 2019, when they replaced the keyboard/etc., so it's not even that old. I felt like I had a gun to my head since it could be a fire hazard.

Hi, interesting Tell HN! I like repairing stuff, started in 2018 and gained more skills since.

The Phenom II X4 isn't bad (according to https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php), there is a variety of model numbers but they all seem to have the same kind of performance as the i5-3337U in the (very portable) somewhat old laptop I'm using right now, which is usable.

- I recently upgraded a low-end Lenovo Ideapad (from 2019? 2020? or so) from HDD to SDD and from 4 GB to 12 GB of memory. This laptop contains a Celeron CPU that has worse(!) overall performance than the Phenom II X4 despite being 10 years newer.

- My personal laptop is from 2012 (bought used in 2015 or 2016 for pretty cheap), upgraded memory to 16 GB

- Also repaired ~3-5 retro computers over the last year!

- Just repaired my toaster last evening (broke yesterday morning)

All machines get extra lives!

- 2004 custom dual boot gaming desktop is running FreeNAS at a friend's house

- 2007 custom desktop survived until 2019 when a power surge fried the motherboard, memory and PSU. I repurposed the case and drives (which survived!)

- 2011 MBP is really one of the best. Replaced the battery, memory and display over the years. Now dedicated shared kids machine because parental controls are super simple for all adults

- 2015 MBP is my personal laptop for freelance work, learning, etc. Will most likely repurpose it as the kids shared laptop after I do a battery replacement. The 2011 will then migrate to storage until I'm sure I won't need things like a CD/DVD drive, SDXC card slot, Thunderbolt port, Firewire, Ethernet, etc.

- 2009 Samsung SyncMaster 23" is still used as a secondary monitor

- 2007 Razer mouse still used today

- 2012 (?) original RaspberryPi is my wireless print and scanning server

> When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

I appreciate your story and wish more people would take it to heart. I almost always just resurrect hand-me-downs from family and friends (I know enough people with more money than sense so it's pretty easy for me to pull off).

My desktop PC has an AMD Athlon II X2 260, which was released in 2010, although I don't remember when I got it. I think I upgraded the CPU/motherboard/RAM and kept the rest. I do have some modern components though, like a cheap mechanical keyboard I got a couple of years ago, and I replaced the monitor at some point because the old one stopped working (and I wasn't able to fix it). Installing a ~120GB SSD was a big win too. I use this PC all the time, I'm not much of a phone user (and my phone is similarly obsolete). I keep the software up-to-date, and currently use MX Linux.

Occasionally, I take a look at refurbished computers on eBay or whereever, and find systems with CPUs that are 2 or 3 times faster for a couple of hundred dollars, but it doesn't really seem worth it.

I am too a software developer and I am still using a desktop I bought in 2011 for less than 400USD (not including hard drives, which I continuously buy...). Since then I replaced a broken mainboard for about 60USD and replaced the initial 8GB RAM with 16GB RAM.

I am still using Windows 7 and I am dreading the day I have to upgrade to something newer. Because I am sure user experience will decrease massively because of the increased Windows 10 requirements. Recently a lot of software seems to be dropping Windows 7 support.

I have been contemplating buying a new system for at least 7 years now, but with horrible GPU prices and overall pretty bad value-for-money ratios compared to my current build I never really get around to it.

PS4 and Nintendo Switch take care of my gaming needs.

While I was waiting for my Framework laptop, the digits 1-9 on my six year old Macbook Air died. This was summer 2021. I discovered when my laptop got hot, the digits worked again. So I wrote a script just adding numbers and started it up when the digits died again. But after about three months this didn't work anymore.

I started up Ukulele and remapped the keyboard that when I pressed alt-key below the digit I got the digit (alt-Q = 1 and so on). This worked surprising well, after about one week my muscle memory switched. However I lost the ability to work with my wife's laptop.

Now my Framework laptop is here and I had unlearn this trick and this took more time, about four weeks.

All the computers I've owned and used are still in working condition, except for one. The oldest ones all have had their hard drives replaced, the oldest desktops all had GPU upgrades. Upgrade one, and shift the rest down the line. Only a few machines got RAM upgrades. One dead GPU got replaced on my previous PC. A dead PSU was replaced on my current machine with one from the PC that I'm not fixing. The dead PC was also a donor for upgrading two laptops to SSD, it only has the broken main board with CPU left in there. I also repair my headphones whenever needed using spare parts from broken ones of the same model.

It's enjoyable to keep things working.

My desktop is mostly from 2011. The GPU is only about 4 years old, but the case and many of the fans are at least 15. The newest drives are new SSDs. I ripped my whole CD collection with the current optical drive (DVD?) and a now-defunct one in 2001 or so (different case). The build started out as an Athlon XP, and then was a 64 bit AMD for a while.

These days, it's fine for 4K linux gaming. CPU performance really stalled out over the years. The original motherboard, ram, cpu, etc build was about $1000.

Many other computers and laptops have come and gone, but it's still my main home machine.

> CPU performance really stalled out over the years.

It can be fun to look through https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html. In single-threaded performance, the cheapest retail processor I could find at a glance just now (the Intel Pentium Gold G6405) is about 1.4× as fast as the fastest processor of a decade ago, the i7-3960X. The i3-12100 is about 2× the i7-3960X. The i9-12900KS is about 2.4×. (And all this disregards memory performance improvements which I believe will make typical loads much fasterer still.) Then multithreaded performance, well, there you’re looking at more like 5× increases on high-end SKUs of both eras.

(As for the Athlon XP 3000+, well, the i9-12900KS is around 10× single/170× multi on it.)

Simple simplified simplistic summary: a similar grade of processor now is probably at least 2–4× as fast as the one of a decade ago for practical tasks, even ignoring other related improvements.

Almost same is here. Somehow decent desktop was always ~$1k here in Russia. Progress was fast in 90x - I was working as a student to get dx386 and finally assembled 486. Then had some Pentium which eventually got fried by PSU (even mouse died that time). So I assembled Phenom x4 925 back in 2009, had GTS250 for a long time. Upgraded slowly some components (like HDD when run out of space), switched to GTX 1060... Still works fine for everything for me. I could easily upgrade everything but I don't like to spend time moving everything to new system :)

By virtue this is nice and noble. But objectively you're likely not doing you a favor.

To answer your question, and to also give you an example: In early 2020 I passed my 2012 Xeon machine down to my SO to replace her 2007 Celeron. Technically, the machine was "good enough" for what I did, but for WFH I needed more RAM if I wanted to avoid VNCing (via VPN) into my office computer to do my work - which really annoyed me. Upgrading 4x4GB DDR3 to 4x8GB DDR3 would have made no economical sense (even used), so I switched to AM4 (MB/CPU/RAM). Because I hate waste I already planned for a future upgrade path (= decent mainboard) and got a really cheap Ryzen 1600 AF (still 50% faster than my old CPU) instead of a more expensive 2800X. Back then I planned to eventually get a 3800 (wasn't released then), now the 5800X or better are an option.

That was for work. The machine is actually my personal computer (work data is encrypted on Linux), so that also does gaming duty (got new GPUs 2007, 2014 and now 2021; old GPUs have been passed down to family/friends). For hobby I still have a 2009 Xeon in the NAS (got it from a friend), which will probably inherit the Ryzen 1600 CPU once I upgrade the desktop.

For the sake of your eyes: Get a decent TFT. Also more screen estate will make you more productive. I usually recommend 2x27" WQHD or 4k for pure work stuff. At home I use 1x34" UWQHD instead (because two screens are not good for gaming).

My desktop is a 2012 iMac that I got second hand in 2015. One RAM and spinny->SSD upgrade a few years after, and it's been going well since.

My personal laptop is a Dell XPS 13 that I think is now 10 years old and has never had an upgrade.

On both those, I don't keep any data for long before making sure it's backed up - I'm expecting a disk failure soon. Also the fan on the iMac makes audible spinny noises. But backups are good practice anyway, so that's a win.

I only just stopped using an external monitor that was so old it had a sticker on the front proudly boasting it had a HDMI port - fancy!

There are comments about investing in your tools here - and I think it's a balance. Yes, if you don't have the right tools your work will suffer. But the skills it takes to keep something running can themselves be valuable. And reducing e-waste is a good thing for many reasons, such as the climate crisis.

Away from computing, I just upgraded to a Canon mirrorless camera. A second hand shop had a body only model for way cheaper than it should be. I took a chance and got it, because I've seen their pricing go very weird on niche items before and I reckoned this was a similar case. (Most people looking for a camera from that shop would be after one with a lens - the seller should really have picked a different place to sell.) Turns out the sensor was filthy - but one cleaning kit later and it's doing fine.

I am using a 2009 Apple MacMini as my home computer. Many years ago, I upgraded RAM from 1GB to 3GB. Of course, the original operating system Mac OS X is unusable and unsupported for a long time now. It took not long after the first end of life messages from Apple that I installed GNU/Linux on it and this runs the small machine very stable since then. I also enjoy improving the performance of this system by following KISS philosophy. That means I mostly run CLI/TUI applications, the most used GUI app is Firefox which I use for web browsing (when Links/lynx/w3m are not sufficient). And because of such a minimalist setup, this 13 year old MacMini not only feels but in fact is way faster than my 4 year old Windows 10 work laptop.

I hate that I have to replace that work laptop now with a more powerful machine just because Microsoft Defender is eating up too much resources permanently and Windows 11 installation is just around the corner. This exploitative way of acting by the industry is fatal for our environment and must change if we want to give future generations a chance. So thanks for this post - you have shown how it can be done differently and spread the word!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Not a computer per se, but I bought a good rice cooker in China in 2014. Not overly expensive (around 40 dollar) and much better than I could buy at home.

It stopped working in 2019 with some error code. Unable to go just go to china for a decent replacement (and the ridiculous shipping and china-local-product export tax, think 200 dollars) we thought let's give repairing it a go. After consulting friends and using online translation tools to dig through the manual, we found out that the temperature sensor was not giving a correct response.

Okay, so what is wrong. Using a screwdriver and the right amount of force, we managed to open up the plastic encasing of the rice cooker.

After going through the electronics, we noticed the wire from the board going to the lid of the cooker was, well, bent. Think like a thin speaker wire making a 90 degree turn. Well, that can't be right.

After cutting out the problem, soldering back the two wires and closing it off with some tape, it actually came back to life. It has since been working without other problems.

Asian here. Can relate, shit gets expensive here, too. My CPU was built in 2012ish, 8G DDR3, AMD 5450 and core i3 4th gen.

Except for the GPU, everything still runs fine. The current GPU is now AMD R7 240, which is, not great. But the most graphics intensive game I play are old school games and the most resource hungry apps are Electron apps(_reading this hurts_), so it tugs along really fine. I fixed it sometimes, 1 HDD died, and I had to fix the CPU cooler myself, but otherwise, it's still chugging along really nicely.

Oh, I'm running Fedora on it, and it also serves as a part-time media server, running Jellyfin with transcoding disabled. And lots of other stuff, however, nothing exposed to the internet directly(_behind a VPN_)

I have 6 Haswell (2013)-era Dell Optiplex computers that are the kids' Minecraft (and YouTube) computers, the living room TV source, my non-work PC, an electronics lab computer (with a GPIB interface and general look-crap-up usage), and a PC in the guest room [which also serves as an additional video conference PC when multiple of us need to take simultaneous calls].

I got two of them right as the pandemic started for the kids, paying around $150ea, and got the other 4 earlier this year for $90 ea with i7-4770 or 4790, 8 GB of RAM, and an OEM Windows license. They'll all run Windows, Linux, or macos (Hackintosh) as needed. Some I've upgraded to 16 or 32 GB of RAM. All got a modern SATA SSD. So, I've got 6 working computers for under $1300 total. They're not speed demons, but they're perfectly usable and can drive multiple 4K displays at 60 Hz.

You take care of your things. I, unfortunately have a propensity to break stuff. That being said I can't imagine periodically switching to a new device "just because".

> When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

I replaced parts(fans, batteries) in a few laptops. My previous machine is still waiting for me to replace the power socket and battery - perhaps the screen as well. Unfortunately over those seven years of intensive usage (and one water spill event) it experienced, mechanical failures started to accumulate.

Also I just give stuff away. My mother still uses the laptop I bought in 2010 and passed on in 2013 after a botched screen replacement, which relegated it to the role of a stationary device. My brother in law installed an SSD there, so it's appropriately fast now. Also one external display I had found a new home at my friend's place.

The flipside of this story is: if you're buying a new machine, get rid of the old one! The sooner the better, both for you (if you can get some money for it) and for the environment (the newer your machine is when you get rid of it, the more likely it is to prevent someone else from buying a new one).

The amount of time it takes to dissemble, photograph, describe, list on a site or two, answer email or sms questions, package, and finally ship spare PC components.

Yeah, no thanks, it can keep collecting dust.

Just donate it then.

What in the world is bake-it-in-the-oven?

Oh, not sure what he meant exactly, but when I used to work soldering boards we used an oven to recover older boards. Basically with a little bit of heat all broken up parts can heal with it. Found this result on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFCFiSB2Fuk

Almost certainly referring to this technique:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Temporarily+Repair+a+Lost+Cause...

Literally baking your graphics card to reflow the solder

Another tale of repairs: In 2018 my friend was still using an old Nokia dumb phone from 2007. Mainly because it has physical buttons which is good if you have problems with touchscreens, but mostly because you can drop it from large heights without it breaking (yes, 12 floors onto a grass field is a great height).

But even an old Nokia can only survive that many drops, so one day the phone screen stopped working. The phone would still turn on, make a startup sound, but it would only show white. Must be a display thing.

So we opened up the old Nokia, which meant lots of little screws. Inside we found that the screen and the main board were nog one part, but instead connected through a flat wire with like 10-12 lanes. Careful inspection of the wire showed there was a cut in the last two lanes. So part of the display signal was not reaching the display. Yeah, that might be an issue.

Searching the internet for the Nokia manual/design revealed the part number of the flat wire. AliExpress didn't have the part. In a stroke of luck, we actually found a webshop in the UK that sold the part for like 4 dollar. Ordered and two weeks later we got the part.

Opened up the phone again, replaced the wire, and the screen is working again.

I do want to say the phone is still in use, but unfortunately there are two issues we have been unable to solve:

1. The battery is no longer charging. The phone boots, and runs, but on the first incoming call, it drains so much power it just does. Unless on a charger of course. We have not been able to find a replacement battery yet (haven't searched either).

2. This is a phone from 2007, which means it has no 4G. 3G is already turned off and 2G is expected to be turned off in 2-3 years. This means this phone can no longer be used as a phone in my country. Such a shame really. We have bought a replacement Nokia 110 4G, but it is larger, heavier and has a illogical menu settings. I wish we would just have an upgraded version of the old phone with 4G. Snake is still there though, so we got that going for us.

You can build a Ryzen or even a fairly powerful Xeon/x99 build in Brazil purchasing key parts (some used) from trusted sellers on AliExpress. I've done both. Not exactly the cheapest parts in my case, but I can say that I saved a good amount of money while building desktop hardware that exceeds my laptop to work on software development with modern IDEs, containers, VMs, being able to create useful and interesting test environments/scenarios for backend development. Anything less than that would cost me productivity and make me loose money.

Since I discovered the lively used parts forum in Hungary, I haven't bought new anything. My motherboard seemed to overheat one day. I could stabilize the situation, by turning a room fan on max at the disassembled config, but it got annoying after some time. Since the AM3+ boards were out of production, I looked elsewhere - and the love for used parts was born.

I had good luck with the pieces so far. I also got rid of my hoarded parts and electronics.

On the flipside, we bought an assembled config for a friend of mine. It worked really well for 2 months, but then the GPU gave out. Which was the third of the price of the config. There's no guarantee on used parts, so now he has to look at another one, which will hopefully last longer than this.

i build a few systems when the to good to be true second hand offerings in my area added up to a complete system. They never lasted for very long but it was hilarious. Thinking about it I want to do a synergy setup with 2x4 monitors.

My working horse is a X230 from 2011 and I changed keyboard, upgraded RAM und changed HDD/SDD 2 times and upgraded Debian. I plan to install coreboot, erase the Intel ME and replace the fan in summer. My Phone is a Nokia N900 from 2009. I changed the battery about 4 times, otherwise the Hardware is fine. But the Software is getting dated, since unfortunatly not all of it is free software.

Both still perform very well for my workload. Financially I could easly replace those things multiple times but I enjoy to repair things, learn a lot by doing so, and the good feeling that I am not responsible for a lot of e-waste und resource profligacy that threatens our species.

It's been years since it was my daily driver, but my 2004 Dual G5 is still working. The interesting part is that it is still remarkably snappy for everything but internet-related work — the Finder responds well, and applications load and run with pretty much the same user-interaction speed as on a reasonably-modern Mac or Linux box. If browsers were not so heavy — running one of the PowerPC Firefox variants bogs down the system something fierce — it would not be an intolerable experience. I'm grateful for the machines I have to work with today, to be sure, but a basic office app doesn't seem too much different on a user level even across decades.

I'm still using my 2012 13" MBP for works, some things already breaking like the battery is now only last for an hour most and the speaker is damaged I think. So I'm always plugged my MBP to charger and use headset for any audio related activity.

The other issue that have been bugging me would be a slow time when building an app and the constant need to empty my SSD since it only has 128GB to begin with.

But this year I think I need to replace my laptop since I'm no longer able to use the latest xcode on this machine (I'm stuck at macOS Catalina).

Other than that, this laptop can be used for any lighter activity such as browsing, editing docs, etc.

I'm the third owner of my bike, it was a high end road bike in the mid 80s and has been used quite heavily since then by all three owners. The wear parts have of course been replaced in some cases many times, but most of the other non-drive components are original. It was converted to a fixed gear in the late 90s which saved a lot of rim wear, but I just recently had to finally replace the rims. I reused the front hub though, it's probably been rebuilt a dozen times by now.

I don't really track miles so it's hard to estimate but I'm on my sixth set of tires with it and I know the previous owner did at least as much.

Once you start making money it’s cheaper to fly to another Latin American country, and/or Miami if possible and buy there. You can generally travel with a laptop and phone, just need to unpack them first.

If not doable make friends with gringos online or at a youth hostel and try to buy before they leave, or bring next time. I brought a new MBP to a friend once. Need to convert to dollars though and exchange rate is high.

To answer the question, recently a friend was giving away a ten-year-old imac. I put in 8gb ram for ~$40 and installed Ubuntu mate and now it works great.

Brazil’s policy of massive import taxes and regulation to force electronics manufacturers to build local plants has distorted their marketplace so much that it’s really hard to compare it to other countries.

Ha. I have the same setup at my parents home, but a phenom x3 and a 4850, 16gb ram. Random HDDs. It still works great although bad with energy. I left that computer when I left Arg, next door to you.

They still use an Intel Dual Core from the times when dual core was all there was. I can’t even think of the model. 4gb of ram and windows 7. They prefer it over the phenom for some reason. I also brought them a newer laptop but they can’t figure out the non-desktop format for some reason and continue using the dual core.

Also Brazilian, I remember each and every time I was able to upgrade my computer. So much bliss. Living in the US now things are so much easier that you lose appreciation for what you're talking about. Keep the hustle going but allow yourself to improve your setup the second you can. The computer is the sword of the modern worker. If you were a samurai would you be swinging around some decade-old weapon?

Until recently I rocked a T420 laptop as my daily driver. I upgraded to a 480s but only because I found it second hand for a price I can't ignore.

Other than my social circle I never was a gamer, I never felt pressure upgrading my hardware.

As a Linux user there was no real reason to either, my system got faster over the years with software updates not slower.

Same with my phone. I use it until it breaks apart which is at least 4-5 years.

As someone else said, this works because I buy quality items to begin with. Thinkpads <3

Ship of Theseus. I new a janitor who used the same broom for his entire 20 year career. All he had to do was replace the head when it wore out, and the handle when it broke.

I have ASUS Asus G75VW i7 based gaming laptop from 2012 with 32GB RAM. Originally it was my software development laptop. Now it runs some dedicated heavy software yet still feels very fluid. I clone the SSD every once in a while using EASEUS backup and have disconnected it from the Internet in order not to ruin perfect setup by some friggin update from ASUS / Microsoft. Nothing ever broke on it (well I did change SSD to a modern higher capacity one at some point)

In college I worked for the IT department. They had a surplus department we had to wipe the HDDs, so I bought a few pallets of heavily used PCs. They were in rough shape. So I pieced together a collection for a LAN party. Then sold the best one and donated the rest to a school in need.

It was a fun summer project. Kind of burned out on that work later when I volunteered for a thrift store. Still fun to see retro PC gaming coming back around to that era of equipment.

I have been working with the same laptop (Lifebook) for years. I bought it second hand (40 euros). No upgrade done so far. I'm lazy to even replace the battery which completely run out. Still it satisfies all my activities (web development, image processing with OpenCV & pentesting)

Of course, there are situations where you may need a better hardware. But in most cases, people buy under psychological pathologies such as narcissism and insecurity impulsions

My home computer (which I also use for smart working) is from 2010, I updated it with a couple of SSDs instead of mechanical hard drives and I added 4GB of ram (totalling 8GB) but it is perfectly capable of my working needs. I only have Linux on this PC (and I only use Linux at work too), so I think this is the main reason it's aging so well. Other colleagues with Windows have various slowness problems, with more recent machines.

Using an external ssd drive to my 2011 imac would have kept me on it forever if Apple didn’t end long term support for it. I had to buy an m1 mac mini early this year.

Way less dramatic, but I recently got a $200 battery replacement on my 2013 retina MacBook pro that will make it last for years to come.

I haven't been interested in a newer model at all until the M1 restored HDMI and MagSafe along with the new CPU. Getting a strict upgrade in specs along with lighter weight and less heat/fan is tempting. But I'm currently not carrying my laptop around much (use a desktop at work), so can't really justify.

I’m still using a Phenom X2 with now 12Gb of RAM. I do have 4 spinny 7200rpm drives. Got gifted some of those hard drives from a former company as they were slated to be thrown away (proper methods were followed to ensure they were wiped). Been running FreeBSD with jails for a home server for a long time (now nextcloud, Smb/nfs, now plex, munin, a few other random services. I know it will die one day, but enjoying it while it lasts!

I'm still using an Acer Pentium Pro II Duo laptop running FreeBSD for light web-browsing and accessing remote servers with SSH, and stuff like that.

That thing is bullet proof.

I have a Macbook Pro early 2008 running Debian Bullseye. It took a bit of research to be able to boot from a legacy partition (grub-pc plays a role after installing in EFI mode). Also, thanks to a boot parameter setting (init_on_alloc=0) the suspend to RAM is finally working with the Nouveau driver. The battery has lost its capacity as you would expect. It works pretty well as a web kiosk, running Musescore, screen capture, etc.

In my area, there is a fantastic set of used computer shops. Much of my hardware either comes from or goes to them. Much of my used tech also goes to friends at a discount price.

I can't take the credit for this one, but a friend of mine is still using the Squeezebox media boxes from 2006 and on. He's had three or four different houses and still uses the same players, even picking up the off used one from used shops and eBay.

Not quite that old, but I work (daily) on a workstation from 2013. Apart from a memory bank, nothing broke and it still runs all the newest software I need, including Vulkan or Win10, which wasn't out in 2013 yet. There's no need to update.

In contrast, around that time I also brought an iPad and a Android phone (Galaxy S3 mini), I still use. Both can't be updated for years anymore and barely run the essentials.

I'm also running an older computer. A late 2008 era I7 920 and a Rampage II Gene X58 micro ATX motherboard! The upgrades I have done are 24 GB of memory an SSD and a GeForce GTX 960. It works surprisingly well even today! I have been building a system piece by piece to replace this however, a Ryzen system with a 2080. Just need a few more parts and I'll transition to the new system...

> When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

My phone. Its a Xiaomi 9T that hasn't had any updates for over a year, so I moved it to a custom ROM - Arrow OS. Still tempted to buy a new Samusung S22; but I'm trying to keep this running. Main problem now is that it sometimes fails to charge because the USB-C port is wearing out.

I applaud your attitude.

I am keeping to my hardware for as long as I can now. Ignoring fads and being more conscious about the environmental cost of making these things only has one inevitable conclusion.

And if I am in need to shop again, I also do so from the perspective of giving the hardware its maximum possible lifetime. Apple crap is notoriously bad at this, so your critcism is for sure warranted.

Very very cool. I'm writing this on a second-hand MacBook that was given to me by the very wealthy family I used to work for- it had stopped working completely and they said I should take it and see if I could get it fixed. I did, and I hope to have it for as long as I possibly can- I could never have afforded one otherwise.

I used my i7 920 from 2007 till 2016 with only the GPU changed from 4870x2 to R9 280. The reason I changed is intermittent problem with booting because of RAM not being detected. I am still using the replacement till now an i7 6700K with 32GB RAM and SSD and I feel I wont be changing it for a while since it is fast for it needs to do.

I have this idea that I can create node with old hardware to run erlang/elixir. the applications in my head are infinity... this gives me hope. I mean, imagine to release guides and everyone can make nodes and we interconnect them around the world! To what purpose? The beginning of a dyson computational network! Let us dream!

I still use a laptop from 2008. I did get a new battery and swapped the HDD for and SSD. It's only real downside is that it's 32 bit and some software (mostly development related) is only releasing 64 but versions.

My desktop is from 2012. I've added more RAM, a video card, and a secondary SSD. Thing still runs great.

I have a 2013 machine (dell latitude, 8GB, Intel i5 I think) that I still use and for most things I don't see a material difference vs my newer machines. The major difference is the form factor, the 2013 machine is a big brick, a newer xps or my macbook is way lighter and more portable, if that matters to you.

My home server is one that I built in about 2010 with only had upgrades since then. It’s still in daily use. I also run a laptop from 2012 although my daily work machine is newer.

One of the keys to being able to do this is to invest in quality components up front so they last longer —- and then repair them if things break down.

I usually buy a decent machine and I use it for 5 to 7 years and I budget the machine around EUR 1200 max (EU citizen). I never throw away my "old" computer; I can always find someone in my vicinity that lacks a decent machine and I will gift it to them. I do the same with my phones.

You don't have to throw it away. You can give it away. Your gift displaces for some time the purchase of a new item. This still proves the point that you should aim to buy products where the consumable components are repairable and where the non-repairable components are durable.

> When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

Every time I sell my old computer.

I’ve been using my windows 7 desktop from 2012 until the beginning of this year. I had no particular need to upgrade but thought what the hell why not. I could have happily continued using it for the next few years. In fact I didn’t dismantle it and am now compiling on it.

My 2006 Mac Pro is still perfectly usable, regardless of what Apple claims. It's just loud. :(

Ha yes, 2008 Mac Pro here. Would be perfectly usable if it wasn't deprecated.

That violates the right of first sale, if they don't want to keep upgrading the OS they gotta let the users fork it.

So right of first sale means if I buy an eg book, I have the right to sell it used. If I buy a computer, I have the right to sell it used. So it should not become a brick right when I'm selling it.

They deprecated the 2006 WAY too soon. They blamed it on the 32bit EFI (same reason they didn't support gpu upgrades 2 years after release). It was pretty easy for a handful of major OSX releases to replace one or two files and boot it like normal. Everything worked fine. Was able to upgrade the gpu in a round about way as well. At one point I re-wired the sata bays to connect back to an areca raid controller. Then there was ssd and that kind of changed everything for "old computers."

I'd have it running linux today, possibly as my work machine, if it wasn't so loud and power hungry.

Reminds me of Justin Rohrer doing all his indie game development on old/donated second-hand computers.

https://usesthis.com/interviews/jason.rohrer/

Our family computer is a MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010). Last month my father-in-law talked me through opening it up, cleaning out the dust, and replacing the HDD with an SSD. Still runs great! Nice little unit.

Upgrading the HDD to an SSD is the easiest bump in speed you can get for an older laptop IMO. Now, SSDs are standard, but you can pump a lot of life into an older laptop with that simple swap.

Talk about your OS!

It's seen Windows XP, Vista, 7, Ubuntu 18, Ubuntu 20, Kubuntu 20, Windows 10 (Education) and then Arch.

Currently dual booting the Arch and the 10.

My primary laptop is a 2011 MacBook Pro, running Ubuntu most of the time.

I added RAM (to 8 GB) in 2013 or so and swapped the hard drive out for an SSD in 2015.

I have been contemplating an upgrade for about 7 years but haven’t been able to decide on something :)

I'm also tired of constantly upgrading hardware, but it's 2022 now and there's still no linux mobile device that compares to the MacBook Air in terms of workmanship, battery life, size, and weight.

You seem like a resource for people in the US to possibly define ways electronics could be donated to help those you mention affected by high prices. Would be good to help those most worthy and needy.

I feel like technology is at the point where we should be seriously considering the idea of personal computers that are intended to have twenty year usable lifespans. (That includes software stacks.)

I had a nice imac in work in 2009. A few years later I brought it home to work from home. I added an ssd and some RAM. My wife is still using it for Google Docs and my kids for Minecraft and Netflix.

Ditto for my 2008 iMac. I boot it from an SSD connected via Thunderbolt. Not bad at all!

My laptop is from 2016 (Dell inspiron 15), daily use and I expect to spend at least 6 more years with it, no reasons to change, and for the sake of the environment let's consume less

Well, I have a bunch of 32bit and single-core 64bit machines I wish I could repurpose but they are good to nothing with the current OSes. Software bloat is real.

I want to but replacing the parts is more expensive than buying a new one sometimes.

Still using my 2011 MacBook Air. It’s still doing mostly fine; it heats up from time to time, but I plan on using it for a few more years :)

If that computer takes more time to finish a job and you need more time, this means it is costing you money to use it. Just my two cents.

My desktop is about 13 years old if I'm not mistaken. My last two laptops were refurbished ones.

I still use my old HDD drives as secondary backup.

I'm still using an Acer Pentium II laptop running FreeBSD for light web-browsing and accessing remote servers with SSH.

That thing is bullet proof.

i've been using the same core i5 2500k that i bought in 2011 as my main work computer since then. i don't have any great financial hardship or anything, my work could easily have bought me a new computer. but it's been great, and there's been no reason to fix what ain't broken.

i've been through a number of laptops in that timeframe though.

My last MBP lasted for 10 years of heavy daily use with keyboard & fan replacements along with SSD & RAM upgrades

I’m still using an iPhone 4s but an upcoming overseas trip is tempting me to upgrade since my current camera is crappy.

I plan to upgrade to the am5 platform, same motherboard and cpu since 2012. i7 3770k, R9 390x

Also jumping on that Samsung qd oled train.

I'm using an iMac since late 2012 no issues whatsoever. I just had to change my OS from MacOS to Arch Linux.

Try better tools, that will show you another kind of life style.

I love it - this is true startup spirit and kaizen attitude.

I've been using the same workstation as my daily driver ever since I built it in 2010.

With several upgrades along the way, and help from tools like Total Uninstall to keep things clean and fight registry bloat and other artifacts trying to kill your performance.

One day soon I should get around to building a new PC, but it's *heavily* customized and takes weeks to load up all the software I use and get everything configured just right. So the incremental performance improvement hasn't quite been worth the hassle of a reformat.

It was a dream machine back in the day, and still holds its own. Specs for the curious:

  - Hex-core Xeon X5680, 3.33GHz stock, @3.6GHz
  - 48GB ECC RAM @1443MHz / CAS8
  - Areca ARC-1882ix-24 w/ 4GB BBU cache
  - 4x 960GB Intel SSD DS-S4610, 10% reserved spare, RAID0 boot
  - 8x 16TB Seagate Exos X16 in RAID6
  - Mellanox Infiniband
  - Legacy Adaptec SCSI card via PCIe x1 to PCI adapter
  - PCIe x1 to parallel + 4x serial, for legacy h/w programmer
  - Matrix Orbital BLK202A-GW LCD w/ 3x DS18S20 1-Wire temperature probes (http://goo.gl/9xLCE, https://goo.gl/iI7WpC)
  - Rosewill RCR-FD400 media reader, stock 3.5" floppy replaced w/ slim YD-8U10-2 USB model (https://goo.gl/E03WXf, https://goo.gl/gZDKAr)
  - Silverstone 1500W PSU
  - Coolermaster ATCS 840 case w/ top fans flipped upside down, beneath custom dust filter
  - Assorted Noctua NF-P12 and NF-S12B chassis fans, NH-D14 CPU cooler
  - RioRand 12V DC Temperature Controller hack for RAID card fan, in custom 3D printed enclosure (http://goo.gl/RZjg1u)
  - 3x LOGISYS ML12WT LED sticks on 5V-to-12V up-converter tapped into 5V ATX standby power,
    triggered by magnetic reed switch (https://goo.gl/ZjZqt5, https://goo.gl/zv5ZHE, https://goo.gl/6sRhkZ)
  - 2x SuperMicro M14T drive cage, fan removed (https://goo.gl/yKuOkF)
  - 2x TrippLite S510-18N SFF-8087 to 4-in-1 SFF-8484 (https://goo.gl/DGu1GH)
  - Dell UltraSharp U3011
  - 2x Samsung SyncMaster 213T, vertical (http://www.anandtech.com/print/1246)
  - Acer H5360 3D Projector (http://www.projectorcentral.com/Acer-H5360.htm)
  - Kinesis Contoured Keyboard (https://goo.gl/8fJp3B)
  - Saitek X52 Pro Flight Controls (http://www.saitek.com/uk/prod/x52.html)
  - 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Pro Wireless
  - HTC Vive Pro w/ Leap Motion accessory (https://youtu.be/oZ_53T2jBGg)
  - Canon imageFORMULA DR-C225 scanner
  - High-end USB 3.0 card
  - Saleae Logic Pro 16
  - Netstor NA211A-G3 External PCIe 3.0 expansion chassis
  - Many other accessories
  - 24x7 Prime95 stable, several Memtest86 passes

The internal illumination is a killer feature for maintenance. It's triggered by a Reed switch and hooked to Standby so it automatically comes on when you open the case, even when the PC is powered off.

You are doing it wrong. Why would you even do that when Apple sells a new shiny laptops every year. Besides what if your grandma uses that laptop? Wouldn’t it burst into flames and bring the house down? Apple does it responsibly and also helps the environment by changing the connector and not shipping the charging adapter sometimes. Can your ancient laptop do such tricks? Yes, Apple hardware fails as well but that’s always the user’s fault unlike your laptop’s.

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