How and why I stopped buying new laptops
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
I hope that this becomes more common for laptops soon. I think there's potential for an ATX-for-laptops layout, though I admit that would probably lead to slightly chonkier notebooks than what we use today. Maybe not though! Framework did it.
[1]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/zkmCLk
[2]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/NDcFZL
[3]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/QNPcxr
[4]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/H8fMcf
[5]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/fB2jnQ
https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Mainboard+Replacement+Guide/...
I still have to 3d print the enclosure for the gen11 motherboard to become a headless low power consumption server in my home, but I test booted it and it worked :).
I don't see a reason to invest in a laptop if 90% of the time you work in the same place. For the other 10% - buy a cheap laptop.
However the solution that I have chosen for travelling, when that is necessary, is different.
For my work, I need a large number of peripheral ports, as many Thunderbolt, USB Ethernet ports as possible and enough ports for multiple monitors. I also need at least 64 GB of DRAM, which excludes a very large number of the current laptop models, especially among the AMD models, which cannot be configured with so much memory.
Also, after becoming older, I strongly prefer a larger display, so I would want a laptop with a 17" display.
While there are a lot of laptop models that match my requirements, they are also very expensive and quite heavy.
I have realized that I can get all the features that I want at a much lower price and even at a lower weight, by using an Intel NUC or similar computer, together with a portable 17" monitor and a compact keyboard for the occasions when I have to carry it.
Even when I have used laptops, I have never used them on my lap or in any place where there was no power plug, so their advantages for such uses do not matter for me.
Besides the lower price and weight, the NUC solution also has the advantage of a better performance than most laptops using the same CPU, due to a better cooler that allows a high steady-state power dissipation without thermal throttling (e.g. in the current Wall Street Canyon Intel NUCs, the Alder Lake P CPUs with a nominal TDP of 28 W are configured to dissipate 35 W for an indefinite time, while many thin laptops with Alder Lake P cannot dissipate even 28 W without throttling).
When you have monitors at the destination, e.g. when commuting between home and office, it is much easier to carry in the backpack or in the briefcase a NUC than a laptop. A NUC-like computer weighs much less than 1 kg, typically between 0.3 kg and 0.5 kg.
Even if you go e.g. in a business trip and you carry with you a portable 17" inch monitor (weight around 1 kg) and a compact keyboard, the weight is less than that of an equivalent 17" mobile workstation, which weighs between 2.5 kg and 3.5 kg.
So yes, a NUC is much easier to carry than a large laptop, and when you already have a monitor at the destination it is much easier to carry than the thinnest and lightest ultrabook.
I have carried NUCs daily to the office for years, because it was much more convenient than carrying the laptop, but previously I have not also used them for most business trips, because I did not have a portable monitor.
A NUC can be also battery-powered like a laptop, e.g. by using a laptop charger from Anker or similar, but I have needed this very seldom.
Of course to each its own and is perfect that this solution works for you. But suggesting that is a lighter alternative to a real, modern laptop is incorrect. As it is the article that seems to advocate using obsolete browsers, obsolete editors and no modern software for the sake of saving money or the World.
The truth is that whomever depends on a computer for paid work needs performance. New processors (like the apple M1) are much faster than a 6-7 years old laptop. And, if the green cause is important, much more efficient energy management and longer battery life.
If you need power and quality (think images/video editing) you can't work with software and hardware of a decade (of two decades ago).
While the embedded energy cost in new devices is noteworthy, I've run through the causes and consequences, and we still have a rationale to keep pushing up performance and energy at hardware level before trying to gut features.
And once you get on that treadmill, you're generally stuck buying at the same price points because when you go downmarket, the manufacturers will remove I/O and BIOS settings, solder the flash drive, etc.
That said, buying slightly old(even refurbished with no wear) is a great savings and I always tend to opt towards that for computers.
You're aware of the treadmill. Hack it.
I'm sure someone will oblige by linking to the xkcd comic playing games 20 years behind everyone else.
I guess you cannot call it a 'luggable' like in days of yore, since it is not heavy, but I wonder if there's a snazzy term for a portable headless computer...
And a NUC is great when I visit my parents for two weeks but want to keep working remotely. That way I don't have to disassemble my gaming setup (thinking of cable management), or worry that something happens to the PC. It's still a great remote working experience, and cheaper than a capable laptop.
I see the appeal in both. But to be honest, I'm not in need for a high end machine for my work, nor hobbies, so I just use a work laptop for work, and spin up gitpod for my own stuff, which a chromebook could run.
I find this type of advice (change your laptop only every 10 years to save the world) irresponsible to say the least.
Imagine visiting a medical doctor with obsolte X-Ray technology, lab analysis tools etc. I wouldn't feel comfortable with that regardless of the money they saved or the illusionary "save the world" green footprint.
Of course none of this matter if one doesn't require the latest technology or software (e.g. Adobe etc.).
Getting things approved as a medical device, and then updating the software, operating system, etc.. for it is a huge pain in the ass.
I know that wasn't the point, but just wanted to mention it.
I don't understand this one. My laptop was born with Ubuntu 14.04 (actually it came with Windows 7, I formatted it with Linux out of the box) and software still runs and I'm still getting security updates. I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 now. Would it be different if I was on Windows? I think I would be on Windows 10 now.
The only problems I could think about are: software needs some new graphic card or more memory that could fit into the laptop. Add the lack of spare parts, but this is another kind of failure.
It really sounds like we need to bring back the term "luggable"
> In the 1990's the Ergo Brick achieved significant acclaim due to its unique design. Before powerful notebook computers came along, Ergo defined the category "transportable computer" with grace and power. You used a Brick if you wanted portable horsepower (in contrast with wimpy early notebooks).
If I need the big screen, or keyboard I just “dock” it to a USB-C monitor.
Invest in a laptop? With the current prices pretty much everyone that uses a computer professionally can afford a laptop.
But sure, you don't need icloud if you got your photos on DVD right ?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32614135
https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/#readme
> running and unlocking features in macOS on supported and unsupported Macs
Most of the Apple hardware bought for me has been by employers who understood I wasn't going to use Apple software. In the big scheme of things, it is better to have a reduced set of drivers and pay a bit more than have an employee fiddling on drivers because Acer skimmed another $1 off their motherboard cost.
My 2011 desktop has a 3.5GHz 4-core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM and of a 1TB SSD.
In the interim there's been the adoption of USB-C, improvements in energy efficiency and widespread 4K display support - but raw performance numbers aren't much changed. Go to Dell with $2000 and with the laptop performance penalty they'll offer you... pretty much the same specs, except the CPU will have some extra 'efficiency' cpu cores and be called '11th generation' instead of '2nd generation'.
Are you perhaps thinking of some previous decade, where 10 years meant 20x the clockspeed and 2x the cores?
If all developers have the latest and greatest computers, the software works great for them, meanwhile the plebs are forced to upgrade to keep up.
Maybe developers should have to use an older computer if only to check usability for everyone else.
The hard part is actually the software. Many industry developers will definitely choose convenience and ease-of-development over most other priorities like efficiency. Operating systems as well.
My refurbished Thinkpads all run stripped down Linux distributions. I recommend getting a good battery and tweaking the power settings to get the best life out of them (eg: https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-arc...)
My current laptop is a ~10 year old Dell. Has a 4TB SATA SSD in it, 1TB secondary SATA SSD in the media bay using an adapter. I have two mediabay batteries as well as a BDRW drive I can hotswap whenever. Extended primary battery. 16GB ram, i5-3360 CPU. Express Card slot that I use with several adapters, USB3 ports, onboard gige, WWAN card, Wifi, BT, backlit keyboard..
If you aren't /needing/ the extra grunt of newer chips for gaming, video work, low latency realtime audio work, CAD, etc, or want the absolute best size to battery life possible, then there is no reason to not use an older system.
Oh, it has an NVidia 5200M 1GB discrete GPU as well as the Intel IGP and the NVS has taken a massive overclock without blinking when I do want to game and runs stuff like Minecraft and older AAA and even new independent games at playable frame rates without any issues.
Now, for /work/ I have a newer MS Surface Book that I absolutely adore. The battery life and display and portability are fantastic.
But it is my work laptop. Not personal. I refuse to buy a brand new laptop for home use lol.
The only problem is that we've got plenty of thought-to-be-durable laptops around that are complete garbage, including a high-end Thinkpad. It's really sad to see.
That said, our M1 MacBook Pro, an X1 carbon, and (very surprisingly) a Microsoft Surface Laptop Go (the cheap one that had terrible reviews - but with the SSD) are looking excellent in terms of long-term durability.
The Surface Go and the Surface Laptop Go are two completely different things!
The Surface Laptop Go is kind of a premium Chromebook-type thing that runs Windows (but can do Linux just fine). And it has AVX-512!
The real problem is exchanging data with the rest of the world. My old backup laptop from 2006 (Core Duo 2 7xxx) is probably still OK to browse with an adblocker. I'm not sure it would be OK to edit on a site with a SPA frontend (Medium, etc.)
My current laptop is from 2014 (i7 4xxx) and it's still perfectly OK to do anything I care about. It was never OK to do other stuff (e.g.: gaming or ML, which was not a thing back then.) Of course it's slower than more modern hardware but not by so much for what I have to do () Certainly not for browsing or word processing.
() It's slower than my customer's M1 on Rails test suites (5 s vs 8 s on a project and 50 s vs 75 s on another one). To be fair, my customer is handicapped by running docker on his Mac but docker and the M1 are their choices.
Yes older laptops can do an okay job, but they’re heavy, bulky, have low battery life, and dim low-ppi screens. Something like a 1080p Chromebook even with Linux installed is not that expensive and a nice experience. I’ve seen some people who will retrofit the old shells with modern components, I can see the appeal in these, but honestly these old computers really aren’t that good at just typing. There’s something to be said about the waste of the extra cells of batteries you will burn though lol.
I appreciate the environmental concern but I want to be real bout this aspect, because I HAD to use these computers for the purposes the author talks about. I have two of these old thinkpads that people rave about, both have fallen into disrepair and I keep one body around because I’m sure some modder will eventually be interested.
Old computers also have LOTS of issues with things like video playback.
They’re pretty useless to me on a daily driver perspective as things like Google Meet or Zoom similarly grenade the CPU and deliver a subpar experience in that regard.
I wish the lifespan of these machines were longer or had some form of an upgrade path like the Framework, as they’re contributing a pile to e-waste, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I do keep a couple of old notebooks around for nostalgic purposes and occasional vintage gaming, but I wouldn’t want to use one as my daily driver.
Warranty.
If you depend on your laptop for work, and one day it suddenly stops working, with the manufacturer's warranty (assuming you checked the correct boxes when buying the laptop) you can have a technician with spare parts the next day fixing it, and it'll be as good as new (and unless it was the storage device which failed, you won't even need to reinstall anything). After the warranty expires, things are more dicey; you might or might not find spare parts (assuming you know which spare part you need; a technician can come with several sets and take back the ones which weren't needed), if you do they might take some time to arrive, and if you don't, you have to buy a new laptop on a short notice (which might also take some time to arrive).
Unfortunately, the longest laptop extended warranty I've seen so far is only 5 years. Which means that, after 5 years of use, it becomes riskier to rely on it. It also means that the manufacturer expects it to work fine for 5 years (otherwise, they'd lose too much money on the technicians and spare parts), but not much longer than that.
Meanwhile there is pretty significant chunk of people live just fine with laptop outside warranty. I have never ever used warranty on any of my laptops. If anything breaks - I just go to my nearest indie laptop repair shop, or just fix it myself (watch youtube video and order spare parts on ebay)
I've heard other PC manufacturers are similarly bad. Do you know of any with a < 48 hour turn around time and a > 95% repair success rate?
I also have a 2009 Dell Laptop 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo with 8GB RAM running Windows 2010 that I just cleaned up to give my parents. None of the above is true.
You are also trying to compare a laptop an entirely different architecture that literally just came out to the other.
I mean, honestly, there were plenty of "arm laptops" the past 20 years and a lot of them ran cold to the touch and got 16+ hours of battery life. I know as I had several (Psion netbooks etc). The new Macs are latest evolution of H/PCs that have been around for decades. They just happen to be much faster ;)
On the other hand, you would be surprised how well Office365 runs on Windows 10 on my old Core2Duo 2.66Ghz Dell. It also has a beautiful 1920x1200 display before laptops went 16x9 and Gigabit Ethernet.
It was originally a company laptop for a failed startup I worked for and was to use to run Windows CE emulators while developing using .Net compact framework.
I've never seen people refer to processors by their ghz without giving a generation designation. I think stating what generation/model of c2d it is would be a far more effective means of communication that stating its ghz.
I had a dell studio with a t9660 that was a pretty good machine way back in the day. But you should refer to the cpu by its model number rather than by its ghz performance, since nobody will be able to identify it from that.
I haven't bought a computer in I don't know how long.
Mainly, I just get the cast offs from my extended family. I let them buy the newest and best and just use their old stuff. I have 2 desktops and 2 laptops, all cast offs. It's fine for my purposes. 99% of what I do is internet browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, VOIP and a few other low resource apps. Why do I need a brand new computer? What do I care if the chassis is ugly or not? Who cares about the "looks" of it? I mean, sure, if I worked in some area with intensive CPU stuff, like graphics, I can understand that. But I don't, and 90% of the world does not. My parents got a new computer last year, they went from an i7 to an i7, their old computer is 8 years old, everything works in a flash, still super fast.
A freaking i5 from 10 years ago is just fine. It's how I've always done it. I mean, if I purchased the two towers and two laptops brand new, in cash money, that would be $6000 or something like that. That would get me a lot of blow and hookers in Vegas. Let's keep our priorities straight, folks. For women..it would buy one little container of high-end mascara, so that's all to the good. Priorities.
It's good to me because it's the newest car I've ever owned. However sitting in someone else's car I realise that I could get an extra 50 horsepower for the same fuel consumption, as well as working air conditioning, and a few other creature comforts.
Yes, this car is simple in an almost brutalist fashion, and very easy to work on. There's also plenty of spare parts. But it's 16 years old and the bi-yearly inspections are getting scary. The last inspector pointed out that I'll need a new exhaust system soon.
I'm not sure what is a fitting death for an old, dependable car once its maintenance becomes impractical.
I feel the same way about an old laptop. My T510 is heavy, the battery life isn't great, and it's slow as molasses. I can't imagine carrying that behemoth around when I got used to a Macbook 12.
Imagine having to do any testing for a mobile app or a new website and you go like "oh sorry I only use a light web browser" or having to code anything more complex than 90s cgi scripts "oh no I use only notepad" .
Or receiving an excel or word document to edit, notepad is not going to cut it.
For business use you do need a browser. Fast, with security updates etc. For some people doing web development having access to professional products e.g. Adobe suite is a must too. And no, you can't do that on linux.
I think the reverse: Silly to build software on a bleeding-edge machine then act surprised when it runs like trash on customers' hardware. Instead build it on a trash machine and it will fly on better hardware.
I expect it is not such a good strategy for those whose code can't stand on its own legs outside of a Chrome distribution or VM, though.
On top of that it has 1Gb ethernet, full size HDMI, mini-SD card, USB-C charging, and a great little keyboard.
As a longtime "mac person" this capable, but ugly little laptop feels a bit freeing. I don't have to dote over it, worrying about breaking a $2k laptop, I get all the ports I need, and linux just works.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stop...
So, if you stopped buying laptops once a year, this would reduce your energy footprint by about 10%.
"This is the last new truck I'll ever buy!"
"This truck does everything I don't need anything more!"
"Older trucks are better, I can work on them!"
He just took delivery of his 4th new truck since saying this.
While he does get good value from his truck (150K+ miles each) they don't last forever, they do improve (slightly) and despite his claims that "older trucks are better" he keeps buying new.
They changed the EPA fuel economy rules after the first truck was released, so those aren't comparable.
At work I was using a Macbook Air by the time I gave up on the Thinkpad, and my Android phone was taking over a lot of my use. The Thinkpad was hardly deficient even ten years ago; the hinge was the biggest problem.
It lasted 10 years upgrading hdd to ssd and incresing RAM.
But in the end I had to change PC, it couldn't run any browser, CPU was just too slow, even for Pale Moon.
One of them is a HP laptop from 2003 or so, running Windows XP and Ubuntu.
It still works just fine, and often is lifesaver when more recent laptops just break for no reason.
That thing from 2003 just keep working happily, refusing to die no matter what.
My main concern buying old PC laptops is screen quality. It still possible to buy a laptop with a shitty screen in 2022, even a brand new one.
Company issued laptops are also weird. If you replace laptops every two years, the why buy the top of the line model? Sure some jobs just benefit from the exstra resources, but even many developers could easily do with less.
If getting new hardware makes an employee happy and/or allows them to get a job done even slightly faster, it's basically free to the company, so why not?
A personal machine is a very different cost/benefit calculation to a work box.
Amazingly durable hardware that just works. Unfortunately new major Mac OS versions are no longer compatible. I figure when it breaks, if it’s gonna be more than $250 to fix it, that it might be time to move on.
It will be sad when it dies. It’s been around the world with me. Helped me accelerate my career, beachball during an interview which I think caused me to not get the job, and helped me for dozens others. In the end, it’s a tool, like many others, just with my memories attached.
Advocating obsolte hardware is just wrong.
My previous laptoop was an Macbook pro intel 64gb ram full specs. The M processor is much faster, even with just 16GB ram. Now if going strong means use the terminal, Vim etc. all is good.
If you use a laptop professionally you do want the latest updates from apple, not a Github repository.
And even so, you you should be able to install chrome and firefox, so you can enjoy at least a modern browser.
> Advocating obsolte hardware is just wrong.
Strictly speaking it must be the software that is obsolete.
>I absolutely accept and respect whomever wishes to live in the past but technology is in the now.
>Advocating obsolte hardware is just wrong.
I disagree; technology is simply a means to an end. If the user, being informed of alternatives, is satisfied with the experience, it's the right tool for the job.
Of course there are (obsolete) alternatives to all these commercial "ecosystem" sofwares. I feel that some people don't upgrade (latops, phones) under the excuse that "it works for me, is the right tool for the job". Or worse: are simply afraid of learning new things and using new software.
I have a feeling that many reader feel like not updating the hardware is a sort of protest against big companies. It isn't as Apple is continuously selling more phones and laptops. My guess is that the younger audience wants to be updated, the older not so much.
This is entirely fine for a subset of people but not fine if you want to be competitive in the IT business.
If you do commercial work you need to be up to date and in line with your team and company demands. If time is important, a faster processor and software optimised for it, can save you many hours. This to me is worth fare more than the price of the hardware.
Of course there will be exceptions of coders being as efficient or more efficient with basic software and older hardware but why limit yourself?
My point is that the article seems to suggest that is a good idea to stop buying new laptops. It isn't.
The GPU and boot SSD are a month old though. I somehow bought one of the cheapest currently-working GPUs: a ~$300 Radeon RX6600XT w 8GB RAM.
I'd like to claim foresight, but I explicitly decided not to spring for a beefy ML card.
I got it because my old NVIDIA <spit on floor> GTX570 can't run xscreensaver any more and is missing a video codec I wanted.
It takes the radeon under 2 minutes to generate a batch of images.
Shout-out to ifixit for providing kits and walkthroughs!
If you care about little things like speed, battery life, heat, etc.
The biggest thing I write on it is journal entries, emails, and mostly small microcontroller code or lambda endpoints for my own hobby projects.